Saṃsāra: A Saunter through Animate Landscapes

An ensemble of dancers and musicians weave an ambient performance art experience in the Japanese Garden. Traverse the seasonal cycles of life and death, while tuning into the more-than-human world of ecological relationships. Roam the winding path and waterways of the garden as performers amplify facets of nature through movement, poetry, and sound, discovering the bonds that entangle us to each other. Songbird & Starling is excited to invite you on this emergent journey from meditative stillness to playful humor and back again. 

This piece will honor Japanese culture through incorporation of the post-modern somatic trance practice and dance theatre method known as Butoh, originally developed by Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno.

Do you hear those whispers in the breeze? The bamboo forest imparts ancient secrets to those who listen.

The Ashland-based Songbird & Starling artist collaborative crafts immersive experiences woven from threads of mythopoetic visions to heal our relationships with sacred bodies—personal, communal, & ecological. They search for stories that can hold us in these times of rupture and transformation by honoring traditions and mythologies of old alongside boundary-bursting experimentation and deep attunement to the Earth. In engaging the interdisciplinary arts of dance, music, poetry, and ritual theater while shattering the traditional separation of performer and viewer, Songbird & Starling transports audiences into a liminal space of imagination, play, and reconnection where we can rekindle our inner magic.

This performance features co-founders Lilith & Aurora Quinn, along with Crystal Mays, Saturn Lanturn, Ellen Bird, Rylan Mount, Greg Grano, Jeff Solomon, Lindi Jo, and Nick Cruz.