Moving with the rhythms of deep time

What possibilities open to us when we move with mindfulness to the rhythms within, without and passing through our bodies? - rhythms of our breath, our heartbeat, of the larger bodies and ecological cycles of which we are a part - rhythms of air, water, minerals and pollutants constituting and absenting our materiality. What can it mean to attune ourselves to the rhythms of rock formation and weathering, of continental drift, of geological time scales and the breath rhythms of our living planet? What mattering emerges as we honour rhythms of deep time, of slowness, sustainment and staying with over rhythms of shallow time and fast living?

I will speak about my current practice-research project Living Stone which investigates how durational improvised dance can help us make sense of the immensity and rhythms of geological time and deep future through developing an embodied sense that we carry deep time within us. Here I offered Deep Time Bodies, a participatory project comprising nine workshops exploring our elementality - including our lithic trans-corporeality - and leading to a performance in the Fossil Stories gallery of the Great North Museum Hancock. We investigated finding collective rhythm as a group, fostering trust and connection as we moved with bones, rocks and fossils from the museum’s handling collection and situated our improvisation within the gallery’s architectural rhythms and the rhythm of its narrative of geological epochs.