Climate Change Project

Echoes and Anchors: dancing through a changing climate

Do the seasons still feel the way they did when you were young?

That question was the starting point for Echoes and Anchors, a dance film made by older dancers from Teifi Dance in west Wales, as part of our Gwanwyn climate change project.
Led by choreographer Geraldine Hurl, the group met regularly to talk about climate change: their memories, their worries and their hopes. They then turned those conversations into movement and took their dances outdoors, filming at Cwm-yr-Eglwys and on the coast at Goodwick, near Fishguard.
Here are two interpretive dances that focus on the echoes and anchors of movement as well as the memories of seasons past. The full film can be seen below.

Seasons Past

Each dancer chose a childhood memory of the weather or the seasons and turned it into a simple gesture. In small groups, those gestures became dances about a time when the seasons had a steady, reliable rhythm, and about how that rhythm is starting to break, sometimes in dramatic fashion. Look out for the woodland, the old churchyard and the meadow of buttercups by the sea.

Echoes and Anchors

In the second film the group comes together on a narrow path, flanked by the sea. Familiar movements return as ‘echoes’ of earlier times, inspired by choreographer Pina Bausch's famous ‘seasons march’. The "anchor" is the group itself, coming together and creating a sense of community. When the world feels uncertain, hope is found in coming together.

In the dancers' words

"Age is just the number of years we have lived on this planet… Every wrinkle is a laughter line, every silver thread of hair a sparkly blessing… We are all in this together, let's dance on together."

"After feeling a bit reluctant to venture out this morning into a cold wind, I've come home feeling so open to life and new possibilities."

"Your support, openness and kindness made my dream of having a chance to dance come true… and I loved it!"

Gwanwyn

Through our projects, we have seen older people become some of the most passionate campaigners for climate action. This year, Gwanwyn supported creative groups to respond to climate change in their own way. Teifi Dance's films sit alongside projects with Creative Lives (Sketching St Fagans) and Age Cymru Gwynedd a Môn.
You can watch the full film below.