Bosque is the final part of a trilogy. How did it begin, and how did it develop over time?

I began with Tree, a photography project featuring an upside-down body. I thought it was a powerful image because it was as if the whole world was flipped. The idea was to change our perspective to see things in a new light. While thinking about how I could become a tree, I came up with the idea for the costume with the skirt. At first, we saw the city as a background for the photography, but when I started to develop Trees, which features a dozen people, it became a performance space. However, the trees were not connected by their foliage, the skirts were very short, and we positioned ourselves at random. People could walk between the performers. And the performers had only one chance: they would maintain a headstand for as long as they could, and when they couldn’t hold it any longer, they would just wait until the last person had come down from their headstand. Bosque is an occupation of public space—we create a landscape with the skirts, which are larger, connecting all the trees. It poses a question: what if this space was occupied by nature instead of concrete?

To what extent were you influenced by Indigenous perspectives?

What I find most touching in Indigenous traditions is the lack of separation between nature and people. All is one. We are nature. That’s partly what this performance is about. When you’re there, head down, imitating a tree in a way, you’re actually training yourself to be a tree. How can you understand that as part of yourself? Nature isn’t there for you to use it or profit from it. It’s simply you. It’s so important and beautiful to talk about care and community. But how can we really do the kind of things that enable us to be caring? In this regard, something very moving happened when we performed Bosque at the Biennale de la danse de Lyon with a very large group. On the first day, there was a storm with wind so strong that people were falling down and the fabric went wild. I was really touched because the participants cared about the performance, about my work, not just about themselves. In that moment, I really felt that we are doing something worthwhile. It’s not about performing but sharing responsibility. When you drop down, someone else rises up. It’s so beautiful to see people taking care of each other throughout this collaborative work. We work a lot on the idea of attentiveness during the two days of workshops we hold with the performers in each city where we present the piece.

The idea of the collective plays a central role in Bosque—but in a sense, the individuals are isolated, since they can’t see the others. How do you handle this paradox?

Yes, that’s something we talk about a lot. We consider this work a collective undertaking, but each individual has to tackle a physical challenge by themselves which is difficult even for Aline and Nina, who can hold a headstand for 20 or 25 minutes. It’s quite the experience!

We take confidence from belonging to a collective, even if we don’t see each other. And what’s wonderful is that we’re able to make connections and form a group in a very short time. We often use the metaphor of mycelia, the underground fungi that connect trees to each other. We don’t see it, but the performers are connected and transmit impulses. When actions take place, magical things can happen, like when two people simultaneously make movements that echo each other.

Bosque was created right after the pandemic, during which our lives were so isolated. I wanted to see how people were ready to be together again and tackle challenges as a group. The project restored my faith in community and opened up new ways to imagine the future. I always wonder, if we can come together to make artistic projects happen, what else can we achieve collectively? What other changes can we make?

Interview by Fabienne Cabado

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