Alive

Alive is a contemporary circus performance, a living sculpture, an immersive experience, opening our human imagination to the both mythic and scientific idea of the tree being alive.

Waking up the tree to our human imagination

We gather around a large tree at sunset. In the twilight, the tree begins to emerge through patterns of light. Under the tree, mirrors are scattered like small forest lakes, reflecting the tree’s branches and reminding us of the root structures beneath our feet. Surrounded by the tree’s structure, we are invited to sit or lie on blankets among the patchwork of mirrors, looking up into the canopy of the tree.

As our imagination branches out in the treetop, the tree slowly begins to awaken. Light projections make the branches move, and change appearance, as if sunlight or water reflections danced over the branches. A faint soundscape of deep tones immerses us. Gradually, we discover physical movement in the tree. With animated motions, human-like beings grow out of the tree.

The bond between the tree and the human

Alive is a site-specific performance that explores the human entanglement with and relationship to the tree. As an audience, we sit together under the tree, surrounded by the roots below us and the crown above us. The majestic sculpture of the tree is brought to life in our human imagination, through light and video projection on the tree trunk, vertical dancers in the tree’s canopy, ‘relational costumes’ that stretch between the tree and the dancers, and a supporting acoustic soundscape. Through these artistic approaches, Alive reimagines site-specific performing arts in a way that situates the tree at the center of our performance world.

Team

Instruction: Amund L. Bentsen
Visual design and Choreography: Benjamin Skop
Video design: Jesper Berger
Music: Louise Alenius
Costumes: Charlotte Østergaard
Vertical Dancers: Esther Wrobel, Heidi Miikki, Zelda Storvik

Alive is produced by Acting for Climate in collaboration with Sydhavn Teater, Passage Festival (Helsingør), Dynamo Workspace (Odense), Malmö Festivalen, and the City of Copenhagen.

The tree at the center

The tree has an evolutionary and mythological place in human history. Ever since trees co-created the air that is the foundation of our lives, the tree has accompanied us. From the life-giving fire, which is said to be the beginning of the development of human culture, to the wooden instruments that formed the framework for our rites. Over the past 10,000 years, we have lost 57% of the world’s forests, and half of this loss has occurred within the last 50 years. The tree of life is diminishing, while human civilization is spreading. We are in a friction-filled relationship with the tree. Can a deeper understanding of the nature of the tree show us the way to a sustainable future? 

Alive gives the tree back its central role in the living assembly: as an actor and partner in the more-than-human world, we will rediscover the tree as a space for immersion and devotion. A place where the audience can experience cohesion with the tree and with each other.

Developing the site-specific

Alive develops the field of site-specific performances and sets the tree at the center of our imagination in 3 ways:

(1) Relational Costumes

We are developing knitted branchlike stretch costumes, which will connect the vertical dancers to the tree, and open up possibilities for new movement qualities to emerge in the push and pull between the artist and the tree. This opens up a bodily dialogue between the human and the tree.

(2) Video and Light Scenography

Mimicking the tree’s internal processes and external habitat, we create video & light design and project them on the tree. From natural phenomena, like reflections of water or light on the tree trunk, to internal processes normally inaccessible to human perception – the tree sends chemicals to its leaves, or water up through its trunk. We can make the tree’s living being visible by giving the audience visual images of the tree’s active internal processes!

(3) Point of View

By having the audience sit in a mirror scenography, enclosed between crown and roots, we challenge the classical notion of the external observer looking at the stage. Instead, the audience is placed amid the world they are observing.