Spring 2016 Fellow
Fellow: Corinne Cappelletti & Eva Perrotta
Project: ro͞odərəl
ABOUT ro͞odərəl (of a plant) growing on waste ground or among refuse
ro͞odərəl (of a plant) growing on waste land or among refuse was a movement-based practice and information-sharing platform where Corinne Cappelletti and Eva Perrotta brought audiences into the streets of New York to understand the role that wild medicinal and edible plants have on our well-being, our community relationships, and our understanding of reciprocity. To look at this reciprocal relationship between the body and the earth, they led experiential foraging walks; practice an honorable harvest; and organized community discussions, holding up a mirror to understand experientially how our body-landscape reflected the natural environment.
ro͞odərəl is built on the foundation of Corinne and Eva’s collaborative performance and choreography, which began in 2011. Personal research in tandem with their creative process fed the growth of this social platform and was guided by two primary goals: to understand the life, function and characteristics of the wild plants of Brooklyn, NY and to foster a reciprocal relationship between the natural habitat and the urban community through the body and movement. Their personal research included the study of plants and wild-crafting as well as foraging and revisiting sites of foraging to delve more deeply into their personal relationship with reciprocity, particularly through a somatic practice they were developing with dance improvisation and the earth, called “the honorable harvest."
ro͞odәrәl created conditions where we could re-imagine our shared power, social responsibility, and the inherent local wisdom of people and plants through three community offerings:
Eco Dance Labs (EDL) were participatory walks framed by pairing ruderal plants with a body system. The four thematic EDLs they offered from June 2016 through September 2016 included: the lymphatic system: Detox with Dandelion; the nervous system: Unwired with Pineapple Weed; the respiratory system: Intake/Outtake with Plantain; the circulatory system: Opening Flow with Mugwort.
Each EDL aimed to shift one's attitudes toward wildness and weeds, by claiming one's space and deepening one's practices with nature in public spaces. Framed by a body-system thematic, based on the plant-spirit and healing properties of each species, participants practiced movement scores while walking a route to destinations they identified and interacted with the plants. These experimental and playful labs aimed to re-connect participants with their natural environment, inside and out.
Public actions | Plant Tag: Corinne and Eva invited communities to walk in their neighborhood and “plant” tags on fences, trees, and park benches. Tags about plant properties and uses were printed on seed paper, and contained a variety of medicinal plant species and other common spontaneous urban vegetation.
Wildcraft Workshops encouraged EDL participants to return and for others to join. In the workshops participants learned how to make remedies using the plants presented during the summer walks, such as infusions, tinctures, salves and smudge sticks. Check their website for more details about their practice.
NEWs and Updates
Past Eco Dance Labs
August 24, 2016: Intake/Outtake with Plantain
Corinne and Eva had their second to last Eco Dance Lab, which investigated the respiratory system in relationship to Brooklyn's native weed species, mallow & muellin.
June 8, 2016: Detox with Dandelion
ARTIST BIO
Corinne Cappelletti and Eva Perrotta are both Registered Somatic Movement Educators/Therapists from which they devise participatory walks and body-based arts in Brooklyn, NY. They create deep-rooted, shared experience through performative, public actions from which result a wild-crafted choreographic landscape.
Their process is grounded in the study of how nature grows and the act of witnessing its imperceptible changes. Within natures' slow and steady growth process they find self-support and engage participants in an act of reciprocity. They experiment, craft and perform in an inclusive way, committing the necessary time and attention for each individual. As a container of support and witness, they stretch the boundaries between people and place within the practice of seeing and being seen.
Eva and Corinne build dances with the community of plant-life and people, drawing from what is available locally. As collaborative participants in the making of dances and community we, the audience and performers alike, can rediscover our shared environment and our individual selves. With this, a self-sustaining relationship can develop; one based on reciprocity and a co-creative system of giving. Self-sustainability and movement in relationship to community and the natural environment are at the heart of their artistic work.