How did you approach the topic of insects in the city as a dancer and choreographer?

“Dancing is first and foremost movement. The contact improvisation dancer Steve Paxton coined the term “small dance” meaning movements that your whole body makes, even when you think you're standing still. But a living body never stands still. Our bodies are always in motion, they are continuously “dancing” at all times. And the same goes for our living environment: There are small movements all around us. I find that to be a fascinating and beautiful approach to the world. Everything around us is alive, so to say dancing, all the time. But we tend to forget that far too often. In a crowded world such as ours, we take notice mainly of re the biggest and the loudest things. Yet every movement, no matter how quiet and small, is incredibly important. My idea is therefore to choreographically amplify these small, inconspicuous movements, which are no less important, but perhaps even much more basic and profound, and to make them heard. If you listen and look around carefully, you can experience so much beauty.”

How can humans and insects find a better co-existence?

“I think we humans – mind and body – need to learn again that we are just a tiny part of our ecosystem. I get the impression that we behave as if none of our environment can affect us: neither the climate and biodiversity crisis, nor the floods or the insect extinction. But we know that it does. I am saying: We need to realize our connectedness again, to transform this knowledge into embodied knowledge, and we have to learn anew to actually feel this knowledge as well. We have to get angry when we hear that 75% of insects have disappeared in just three decades. We need to grieve when it comes to what this means for us. We need to relearn the fascination, enthusiasm and gratitude that we have for these creatures. Only then will we really want to change something about this situation.”

What kind of insights do you expect from your artistic research, being primarily concerned with the sound of insects? What role does one’s own body play in this?

“Our own body is a resonance chamber for what we experience every day, for our relationships with other people and with our environment. Adrienne Maree Brown speaks of “fractals” – patterns that reflect on a small scale what happens on a larger scale. Of course, I can't stop insect extinction with my performative research. But my research always arises in a collective confrontation with other bodies and entities (in this work, it will also be the sonic waves that bodies make). In the preparatory workshops, we will explore together on a small scale what might be required on a larger scale: really listening, comprehending movements, dissolving categories such as “small” and “big” – and all this with our own bodies. We need to use our bodies to begin to understand, immerse ourselves and transform our knowledge, experiences and memories into embodied knowledge.”

SLInBio is financed by the BMBF as part of the funding program “BiodiWert – Appreciating and safeguarding biodiversity in politics, business and society” within BMBF's Research Initiative for the Conservation of Biodiversity (FEdA).