Seasons of nature
Responding to The Spring by Madeline Shann
The Spring, 2022 (Film still)
What is best communicated through dance? Perhaps the fragile but sturdy balance between humans and the natural word. Madeline Shann invites us to think as much through her sensorially stunning film The Spring, a visual and sonic unwrapping of spring through dance.
The Spring is beautiful in both name and in nature. As an outspoken believer that spring is the best of the four Gregorian seasons, I believe it’s a season that evokes hope and growth, and is a reminder of our human connection to nature.
The Spring begins with Shann’s lens zooming in on natural minutiae that are either hidden from or unnoticed by the naked eye. These sights are soundtracked by serene birdsong, guiding us to watch at a slower pace, a reflective state we later see manifested in Rudzani Moleya’s expressive, expansive dancing. Watching these close ups of the moss, the bark, the water, I feel grateful that Shann is paying attention to the intricacies of these natural elements that I don’t have in my local climate. Even if I did, perhaps I wouldn’t even stop to stare at them, as it’s so much easier to take in surroundings from a macro perspective. I became curious to step outside and bring the same attentive eye to my local surroundings, imagining the sounds these sights would evoke, and exploring with the same wonder that Shann illustrates through the close ups of skin, beings, and rocks as Moleya wanders.
The Spring explores the proximity that we, humans, have to the natural world by setting us in the season that has represented a dichotomy of the greatest restrictions and reprieves over the past few years. Spring has always brought a sense of release after the harsh conditions of the winter season when our movements are restricted. The coronavirus lockdown closed us off into our homes, except, for those of us who were able, a mandated daily walk outside. In March 2020, spring and all its nature became the site of the only thing we saw outside of the four walls of our homes. The fruits and labour of spring are the basis of acts of communal gathering and support, such as through mutual aid and medicinal herbal practices that were variably born of the pandemic and around long before it broke out.
But at the same time, the looming mortality of natural wonders big and small has been brought to our attention, and campaigns plead us to take care of the local and global natural world. The Spring portrays this paradox through the tone of the sounds, designed by Xavier Velastín: after the natural sounds that open the film, we hear, are frightened shudders (Becky Wilkie’s vocals) as if brought about by feeling cold, inviting us to look more closely at perceived serenity to see where cracks of incongruity may be starting to appear. As we investigate, we make our way upwards towards a birds eye view until we reach a visual and sonic climax, and then our climate changes and now we are looking up, supplicant. Have we fallen? Moleya is smaller, multiplied, confused, and the water and sounds are glitching. The water runs upstream, not in the natural direction of a river but instead somehow running uphill over the rocks. This simultaneously natural and absurd sight is startling – is this possible? Shann reassures us at the end, when the water’s flow reverts to its natural direction. This choice carries so much meaning around what we accept as true, or acceptable, just because of its natural appearance, and what we might not notice until it has already been turned upside down. Shann delicately but explicitly illustrates this urgency through directing Moleya’s dancing to traverse the space, moving widely across it while maintaining a closeness at all times whether we are looking on from above or at eye level. What is it that brings Moleya back down to earth? Touching the earth itself. From that point we return to the normal runnings, the correct flow of the world.
Another curious dichotomy in The Spring is Moleya’s daring yet delicate movements around the space, taking care as she moves across these natural terrains, yet wearing a top with a snakeskin pattern. Are we, as humans, with our well-meaning explorations and long walks in the park, snakes in the grass for simultaneously being behind its destruction? Do we all have this relationship with the world around us in which we are able to wander in our most vulnerable, bare skinned selves, but also cause the flow of the water to turn on its head? The closing scenes include both of these outfits, leaving these questions open in a way that could be the closest depiction of our intricate and continually complexifying relationship with the world around us.
The Spring is an experience of reflection and gratitude towards nature, and a beautiful addition to the idea of this season as one of renewal, sowing and shedding. Shann and Moleya come together to create a language through which we can begin to articulate this dynamic, and perhaps begin to walk towards a more sustainable balance.
