In the video you would see coming into focus from a complete blackout, six shades of green aerial fabrics hanging in space. They resemble tall trees. As the video pans out, you notice people rolling across the floor, arms and legs spread out. Some stop at a a tree and start climbing them, with their feet going up the tree first. Others keep rolling across the floor. Focus goes to a single tree with a dancer in it. They climb and wrap themselves in and around the tree, with dynamic and with surrendering movement. It shows some conflict and difficulty. Focus goes to other trees and the dancers have similar movements and are evoking the sense of tension. The dancers drop down, roll to climb another tree and so on. We see the dancers climbing all the way to the top of the trees, with huge gestures that make the trees sway seemingly violently. The dancers drop down to the floor, and the trees fall straight down. This is the mechanical part of the performance as the rigging on the top of the fabric trees is hooked up to actuators that facilitate the instantaneous and dramatic falling of the fabric.
Zoom out and fade out for a few seconds. Fade in to one lone tree standing- two dancers are close by and start to climb the fabric, together. This becomes a slow, deliberate interactive dance between the the two dancers as well as the tree they are defying gravity with. Shots here would pan in and out depending on the movement of the dancers and the movement of the fabric tree.
They slowly merge into one mass as they descend the tree and disappear, leaving the tree standing alone. Zooming out on the lone tree there is a long pause, as you can still see the remains of the other trees on the ground. Fade to complete blackout. Credits roll.
I would like the quality of the film to resemble the very grainy, not high color, film quality of early silent movies, with many fade ins and outs and a soft moving black border during the pans and zooms.
Trees of Heaven will be a video documentation of a dynamic aerial performance addressing the complex and often devastating relationship we create with our forests and nature at large. I would like explore this conversation and use it as my inspiration for choreographing aerial silk dancers and editing the piece to leave the viewer with beautiful images that inspire reflection on our impact and our future sustainability with our forests.
