Dance Upon Our Earth - Stories that tell of the dances of life.

Kia Ora - The last of the emails sending out the digital downloads of Dance Upon Our Earth, were emailed out today and all the CDs have been posted. All that remains is a BIG thank you from me for your support. I'm hugely grateful and apologies for the delay in getting out the rewards - the album's arrival coincided with a Cycling Festival I was involved with here on Waiheke. Would love to hear your feedback on the album - so do drop me a line. Kind wishes, Tanya

Thanks to everyone who's helped the campaign reached its minimum target - big Batty claps and flaps of appreciation. The campaign finishes this Sunday and I'm hoping we might be able to reach $4000. Since Craig arrived back in NZ, we've had a tech talk and worked out we'll need to employ someone to help mix down the tracks we record - something we'd hoped we'd be able to do with the technology we have - but it's a 'computer says no' situation!! . So if you had intended to pledge and still want to, there's still time to pre order an album or enjoy some Bat -mosphere with one of the other reward choices. Our dates are all locked in for an August recording session in Kerikeri - it's going to be great! And I had an update from artist Kirsty Barlow - the rough for the album cover artwork - exciting!!

Hip -hip hooray! My minimum target has been reached! A BIG batty clap for your support and generosity.The campaign still has nearly two weeks to run - so I'll be continuing to fundraise and any extra funds raised will be used towards my 'millionaires wish list' I created yesterday! (funny run of events detailed below if you're interested).

However I thought I would celebrate reaching my target on my Pledgeme Campaign with the gift of a  story! We were asked to record a story for a storytelling festival in the UK called Festival at the Edge (FATE). Pete and I performed onsite last year in Shropshire. We thought you might enjoy  it too - a very quirky Finnish tale – a testament to, too long winters.

I spent yesterday investigating the formation of the earth, tectonic plates, molten worlds, Pangaea and more. I'll  be dancing the material  today at 11am here on Waiheke Island at the Sustainability Centre as part of Plastic Free July – do join us if you're in the locale :-)

So this morning I woke up a millionaire!! Seemingly my Pledgeme campaign had reached it’s goal and then exceeded it by $1,253,780!! Wow I thought – I could invite the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra to do some of the musical scores, I could self publish an accompanying teaching resource to go with the audio, pay more artists and musicians to be involved, give copies of the CDs away for free to New Zealand schools & ECE centres, work on more teaching resources and donate money to groups who are doing the mahi restoring wetlands, saving native bats and working with bee health. BUT it quickly became obvious that some kind person making a pledge had go a bit muddled – easy enough to do online on keyboards!! (we’re working to rectify this). But even knowing that it was an ‘error’, I still felt like I really had been given $1,000,000 plus dollars – like the universe just wanted to remind me that what I was doing was valuable and that I really am the richest woman in the world, being able to do and share what I love. Thanks to everyone who has Pledged – we are actually very nearly at the goal – just a few hundred dollars away – and I’m sure the good people at Pledgeme will sort it all out. Should we go over the goal – I’ll use any extra money towards my wish list above. The whole experience has inspired me to donate $1 from each album sold to an environmental group – I’m open to suggestions J

Hooray and whoop, whoop! Yesterday my Pledgeme campaign reached $3175.00! A heartfelt thank you to all of those people who have pledged. This week our local paper the, Gulf News, ran an article talking about the kaupapa of the album and the Pledgeme campaign. A BIG thank you to Erin and the Gulf News team for sharing my story. This Tuesday (9th July) I'm running a workshop, as part of Plastic Free July, for children/families on Waiheke Island who'd like to come along and dance some of the material on the new album. It will be held at the Sustainability Centre at 11am. The cost is $5 - with all proceeds going towards the costs of producing the album. So if you're on Waiheke please do come along and if not, there's still time to pre purchase your copy of 'Dance Upon Our Earth' or other batt -mospheric experiences!

What I love about working with children is what we learn together.

To me questions are so important – deep questioning propels us into the heart of things.

Reflecting back on a previous session about the earths relationship with the sun and moon, one of the children asked me today, how the fire got onto the sun?

“That’s an interesting question,” I respond.

Another child explains the sun is in fact exploding gases (both children are 4 -5 years)

“But, “she says, “ How did it get there?”

And I think, yes how did we arrive at the reality we are experiencing in this moment?

I explain that I don’t know the answers to all of their questions but I love them asking them and that together we can look for answers to these questions.

Some one else explains that there are people called scientists who know the answers to these questions.

There is some agreement about this statement. I offer the thought that scientists can change their minds about what they know. When we discover something new that refutes what we thought to be true, our world changes – and we talk about how people once though the world was flat.

Then I say to them, “I have a question for you.”

We have been dancing the story of the long fin eels/tuna today, their life cycle.

“How do the baby eels know their way back to the rivers/lakes/ wetlands, where their parents came from?”

There are many responses to this – maybe their parents left footprints, maybe they could smell their way, maybe they just remembered.

I ask, “Is there something you know that nobody has ever told you. Something you’ve never read or seen or experienced, something that you simply know?” I wonder quietly to myself – are we lost animals, who has forgotten our deep knowing? Or is this the game – the journey? To play as if you have lost something precious, so you can experience the joy of it’s rediscovery.

How are we like those tuna? And will our deep knowing lead us home?

Today is Friday and I'll be dancing this afternoon with the children here on the eco village the material for my new album, Dance Upon Our Earth. In the first session I shared with the children we danced the story of water.
We investigated – what was water and where did it come from?
The children and I danced all the different experiences they had had of water from the natural sources of the moana, the awa, the lakes, rain, waterfalls to the human mediated experiences of water tanks, taps and hoses. One of my favourite moments was dancing taps and hoses – controlled and wild squirting water. We discussed the water in our own bodies and the roll all these bodies of water have in our well being and the well being of our planet.
Water lends itself wonderfully to movement with wonderfully evocative language - splashing, swirling, tumbling, cascading, rolling, crashing – maybe because we are largely water ourselves, born into water and of a watery planet, we find this dance so compelling.
Our ideas distilled into the dance of the water cycle – evaporation, condensation and precipitation – we danced the clouds, the thunder/lightening and rain, the gushing, rushing water as it races from a rain born puddle, to a rivulet, to a stream, river and down into the moana, where the waves crash and roll. Then droplet by droplet we are called by Tama-nui-te – ra back to the sky where our journey begins again, as the clouds gather. the circular dance of cycles that we repeat several times.

Very exciting! Today I have found the artist to work with to create the artwork for ‘Dance Upon Our Earth’ (the current featured artwork is borrowed from my Elemental album and created by Helen Bacon) Her name is Kirsty Barlow

She’s a kiwi artist based in Canada. I came across one of her posts on Facebook – she’d posted a picture she’d done of Buffy Sainte -Marie, a singer-songwriter, musician, composer, visual artist, educator, pacifist, and social activist. Buffy was one of my childhood songstresses – discovered in my parent’s vinyl collection. I’ll take it as auspicious tohu, we’ve been connected by Buffy – a musical social activist. I’m so looking forward to collaborating and creating with Kirsty. Prepurchase a copy of the album and you too can enjoy Kirsty's fabulous artwork.

http://kristybarlow.com/

The creation of a wetlands sanctuary for the long finned tuna/eel at the Awaawaroa Eco Village is a testament to what can happen when children grow up connected to their environment and other life forms.

As a teenager and resident of the Awaawaroa Bay Eco Village, Tilde Sorensen proposed that the wetlands where we live have a rahui placed upon it, preventing the fishing of the long fins. Tilde had discovered that that these eels, endemic to Aotearoa, have no protection and rank as endangered as some of the kiwi.

Tilde’s passion for the long fins propelled us as a community on a journey, which included helping create ‘Velvet’, a tapestry tuna created by schools, early childhood centres and environmental groups across the country and then swum to parliament to call for protection of these animals, commissioning resident Waiheke carver Danny Shortland to carve the story of Tuna Roa. The unveiling of the carving celebrated the ‘opening’ of the sanctuary at the Eco Village.  

One of the stories on the album ‘Dance Upon Our Earth’ is about the life cycle of these remarkable animals, the mysterious ‘water dragons’ of our wetlands. To date mystery shrouds the life of this creature who is greatly deserving or our care and attention, as is its habitat. Only 5% of New Zealand’s wetlands remain un altered.

Dancing the story of the long fins, will raise our awareness of this animal, it’s uniqueness and how our well being, is connected to its.

To workshop the material for this album, I'm working with the children who live on the eco village with me (and some of their friends) every Friday afternoon. The children are between the ages of less than 1 year and 10 years .We meet togther in the community house for 45  minutes - 1 hour and dance ideas. Last week we danced the story of our only indeginous mammal in NZ, the bat (pekapeka). I always begin by asking the children what they already know about the idea/creature/phenonema we're going to dance, and their ideas are fed into the explorations. We had a great time exploring echolocation, and how it is to 'see' with your ears. I'll be writing teaching notes to accompany the album, which will include some of extension ideas we've used. Here is a snippet of the action, story dance of the pekapeka.