With sky, sunlight, clouds, wind. With ground, grass, trees, songbirds. (We are held)

With sky, sunlight, clouds, wind. With ground, grass, trees, songbirds. (We are held) is a series of site-specific open rehearsals by Tanya Lukin Linklater taking place over four afternoons in High Park leading up to and during the opening of the 2024 Toronto Biennial of Art. Building upon her 2023 project presented with TBA, The sky held me and her sculptural work Held in the air I never fell, featured in the 2022 Biennial, the program extends recent research and conversations between Tanya and Anishnaabe and Cayuga knowledge holders around High Park’s Black Oak Savannah and thunderstorms’ physiologic and metaphoric meanings. With invited dance artists, Tanya leads a choreographic process in relation to plant life, weather, and other structures in our lived environment that sustain us. Through sensory investigations grounded in place (the prairie ecosystem of the Black Oak Savannah nestled within the Great Lakes watershed), the rehearsals generate structured improvisational dances, deepening our understanding of and connection to our environment and the weather.

Note: This program is drop-in between 1:00 and 4:00pm. Registration is not required. Visitors are welcome to attend these performance-based open rehearsals to observe the processes that Tanya and dancers work through while in High Park.

–

This program is a part of Your Timing is Perfect: Moments and Movements of Inquiry, a performance series in which artists investigate the body as a living archive, exploring its extraordinary strength and resilience, as well as its tenderness, vulnerability, and limitations.

This program is generously supported by ĀNANDAM Dance Theatre.

–

Interested in more programming in High Park?

On September 21 and 22, Tanya and the dancers will be joined by 2022 TBA Storyteller Melly Davidson, who will be leading visitors through embodied listening and learning activities based on Tanya’s new Mobile Arts Curriculum learning resource We are with. With sky, sunlight, clouds, wind. With ground, grass, trees, songbird, which explores High Park’s Black Oak Savannah and community stewardship practices.

For information about this Storytelling Session please visit the What’s On page or “Related Programming” below.

Image credit: Tanya Lukin Linklater, The sky held me (rainfall on hands hair lips), June 6 – 10, 2023. Program Held at High Park Nature Centre. Photography: Drew Berry.