Holding The Forest Floor

Holding The Forest Floor

Holding the Forest Floor is an outdoors, site specific and improvised performance aiming to connect us to our senses and the natural world. Alexandra uses improvisational scores to connect to here and now, creating an organic performance that stays true to the performers state of being and mind. The audience is invited to pause, follow, drift and come back, observe from afar or just pass by.

Holding the Forest Floor is the continuation of artist Alexandra Tsiapi’s research on the relationships developed between moving/dancing bodies and the connection between body and the natural environment. Through this work the group of dancers explore themes of support, connection, communication, exchange, trust and symbiosis. Fascinated by the amazing world of fungi, their incredible properties and mechanisms, Alexandra collaborated with Aberdeen based mycologist Vasilis Kyparissis to learn more about this vast kingdom. Through Holding the Forest Floor Alexandra hopes to introduce more people to what fungi have to offer.

Performers: Alexandra Tsiapi Jenna Corker, Francesca Till, Carmen Berbel Lapaz, part of Vaiven Movement Collective

Alexandra Tsiapi is an early career dance artist specialized in performance and choreography. Alexandra works with movement improvisation, characterization and voice drawing inspiration from the urban world around her and the natural environment, and finds joy through connections created between bodies in space. She likes to question the space which she finds herself in, the space where a performance takes place and the boundaries that separate the audience from the performer. 

She is part of “Vaiven Movement Collective” along side Jenna Corker, Francesca Till and Carmen Berbel Lapaz, where she explores her practice through film, outdoor work and site specific work.  

Jenna Corker is a contemporary dance artist interested in the performance of dance and all that comes from making and sharing dance with others. Jenna has been making, teaching and supporting dance in Scotland for the past two years.  

Carmen Berbel Lapaz is a trained designer and dancer, researcher and facilitator working with creative movement and imagery, drawing from both the natural and the fantastic. Carmen is interested in improvisation as a way for exploring juxtapositions and problem solving.  

Francesca Till started her dance training with Il Laboratorio, an experimental and inclusive dance school, where she now teaches and participates in dance projects. Francesca is interested in genuine performance and cross collaborations with different art forms.