April 12 // 5:00 PM
Hickory Hill Park

All performances are free and open to the public. Beginning at the Conklin Ln. entrance, the performance will move along the trails. RSVP through Eventbrite here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/here-with-the-tallgrass-tickets-1308533963309?aff=oddtdtcreator
 

Program

Here with the Tallgrass

Choreographed by Sophia McLaughlin in collaboration with the dancers
Dancers: 
Fabiola Castaneda-Santiago as Rudbeckia hirta
Gariana Clinton-Nelson as Cirsium discolor
Jackie Fuentes as Daucus carota
Ally Meinders as Erigeron annuus
Emily Pyburn as Solidago canadensis
Trinity Woody as Verbena hastata
Dramaturgy: Lauren Linder
Stage Manager: Mariana Tejeda
Costume Design: Juliana Waechter

 

This dance was made in collaboration with the surrounding plant species. Using the structure of a botanical field survey, observations of plant life and environmental factors were recorded through written, visual, and movement language. All these observations have influenced this dance.

As we move through the three prairies where this data collection occurred, you too, are invited to observe and notice the plants and space around us.

What details in the myriad of plant life do you see?
How many different textures do you see? Feel?
What are the sounds both near and far that you hear?
How many shades of color are around you?
Where do you feel light on your body?

The dancers will lead you through prairie and forest, over bridges and mud, through narrow paths in wide spaces. As we walk these trails together, know that you are right where you need to be: here with the tallgrass.

Meet Sophia McLaughlin

Headshot of Sophia McLaughlin, smiling at the camera. Out-of-focus pine branches and needles can be seen in the background.

Sophia McLaughlin is a dance artist who centers her practice on the intersection of botany and dance. In her current work as a graduate student at the University of Iowa, she utilizes the knowledge of plants and the framework of botany to influence her choreography. Drawing on botanical field methodologies, her work exposes plants' inner worlds, relationships, and uniqueness by transferring the specificity of plant attributes to the specificity of the body. She sees this research as an aspect of repairing our societal disconnection from the earth by listening to and embodying plant species and their processes. 

She holds a BA in Dance and Botany from Connecticut College, where she worked with choreographers David Dorfman, Heidi Henderson, Lisa Race, Shawn Hove, and Ellie Goudie-Averille and botanist Chad Jones on the spread of invasive plant species. Her work has been shown at her attended colleges, the 2019 and 2024 ACDA conferences, the Prompt for the Planet 2024 performance, as an artist in residence at the Sable Project’s Water in the Wood 2021 performance, and as an interdisciplinary artist at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation.