Dear Friends,
Here is the latest news from my heart to yours — Kinship: Bodies of Belonging has been slowly emerging from deep in the bedrock of my body and life these past many months. Below I offer a glimpse of what’s forming. If you feel moved in any way to respond, I would love to hear from you!
In Joy,
Jeni
OVERVIEW | Mid-Summer - Present
Kinship: Bodies of Belonging
is a multi-site dance work that engages community, landscape, and weather patterns, featuring a sculpture conceptualized and designed for this project. From Summer 2024 - Spring 2025, Jeni is regularly traveling to three primary landscapes, developing work in responsive-relationship with the region, seasonal changes, and communities (human and beyond human).
A more extensive description can be found on Jeni’s artist page. Enjoy!
ON LOCATION | field notes
Dry Brook: The water is running beneath the ground right now, Tom says. Eventually it will begin to flow above ground, overflow from the mountains. As we walk, he shows me where the tributaries will cross into and eventually fill the dry stony bed beneath our feet. His stories also flow: of humans, relationships, questions that shape a life. We make a small fire by Sycamore. We offer gratitude, senses alive with lisstening. Creature-sculpture rests nearby, spine made of sycamore fallen to the ground on land much like this one. Here is kinship.
Daily Life: Comings & goings. Monarchs & dragonflies. Rain on spiderwebs, boldly shining. And threaded-through with indivicual and collective harm. And threaded-through with individual and collective care: in loss, in devastation, in efforts to save a life, many lives. Insects whir and sing. Neighboring chickens roam and forage. The smell of billy goats. Through an open window, sounds of washing dishes intermingled with drying-leaves rustling, inner tones of thoughts rising, falling. The sky changes again and again.
Blue Deer Center: All Time- No Time, streaming through-in-around my body. I am wonderment. Here always…and only for a blink of a moment. The places within me, the shapes of holding, clarify. In all time-no time there is nothing to hold onto, nothing to grasp — I soften. My breath becomes indistinguishable from all else. Here is belonging.
