Dance, Embodying the Music, the Solstices and Equinoxes

This piece was an installation made for people to dance with. The movement in the shapes is conducive to flowing embodiment of the people in the space experiencing the music being played, and also for the musicians while playing and receiving the dance back from the people dancing. The large scale of the images reaches anywhere in the room and encourages the dance.
I was very glad to install this at Anna Du Ve’s Soul Jam conscious dance at Siteworks in Brunswick, just before the 2020 Summer Solstice in Naarm / Melbourne, Australia.

As described by Anna, the Facilitator of Soul Jam; “Soul Jam is an Open Floor Dance Workshop, backed with live, improvised music from a collective of eclectic, sensitive and passionate Musicians. Open Floor Dance is a dynamic, lively practise of mindful movement and self-inquiry. Through free-form dance, we explore and express our authentic selves. Soul Jam is what happens when Dancers and Musicians converge, jamming with their respective instruments – swirling those sweet sweet souls into harmonic magic, weaving a tapestry of self expression, making art as process, and processing through their art, together.”

The images describe the December solstice, which is simultaneously the summer solstice in most of the southern hemisphere and the winter solstice in most of the northern hemisphere. The up and down arrows refer to the northern and southern movement of the sun’s apparent path across the Earth. The black and white segments reflect the maximum/minimum daylight that occurs at the solstices. The spirals on the ends are about the way that the sun appears to spiral around the sky at the north and south poles, although it doesn’t actually begin in the centre like these spirals do. The change in the spirals from black to white describes the way that the sun becomes visible/invisible at the poles when it crosses the equator at the equinoxes. After many internet searches, I found a thorough description of the Earth’s rotation throughout the year and the way the sun appears to us around the globe, especially at the solstices and equinoxes at www.skymarvels.com.