‘As your heart breaks open there will be room for the world to heal.’ - Joanna Macy 

How can outdoor performance support spiritual connectivity to our natural world? The climate crisis is a pressing challenge and culture plays a crucial role in growing climate consciousness. Land Empathy is a ritualistic dance performance by award winning choreographer Richard Chappell, exploring how we can deepen our connection to natural environments. We need to have hope in the face of climate and ecological disaster in order to take the action needed to save ourselves and fellow species. 

In Land Empathy, mother nature is dying, or perhaps already gone and is represented by a sculpture created by Anna Gillespie for XR’s large scale event Funeral for Nature. She is encased and suspended in the scaffold of the man-made built world; separated from the earth that she both is and that sustains her. The dancers experience this grief through their bodies as they witness the aftermath of climate destruction. They anoint themselves with white clay as a public declaration of grief and disavowal of the materialism that we are all complicit in. Whilst there may be no hope of reversing the destruction we humans have wrought, the dancers’ express their compassion for the Earth. The red earth they touch and subsume themselves in represents Empathy for the Land even in the face of despair that recovery is even possible. The red clay represents compassion and it’s important role in restoring strength to activists across the globe.Despite its somber tone, Land Empathy ultimately adopts University of Cumbria Professor Jem Bendall’s philosophy of Doom and Bloom instead of Doom and Gloom. The work ends with an embrace into compassion and deeper and more emotionally held connection to nature. 

Festivals and Venues: Greenwich and Docklands International Festival, Sterts Arts and Environmental Centre, Dance International Glasgow, Sismograf Festival

Choreographer: Richard Chappell 
Composers: Larch (Matthew Allmark and Kai Hellstrom) 
Sculptor: Anna Gillespie 
Dancers: Marla King, Juan Sanchez Plaza, Riz Golden 
Dramaturg: Neus Gil Cortes 
Climate Justice Facilitator: Marla King 
Set Designer and Creative Facilitator: Charlie Knight 

Land Empathy has been commissioned through Stomping Ground by The Place, Greenwich and Docklands International Festival, Sismograf, Tramway, Strike a Light and FABRIC, with additional co-commissioning from Theatre Royal Plymouth and The Linbury Trust. The work has been created with support from 101 Outdoor Arts, The Place, Global Systems Institute and National Dance Company Wales.