OUR DANCE FILMS

DANCING WITH THE LARGEST BEING ON EARTH

Released March 2022 | Filmed by Joshua Samson
Location: Pando Aspen Grove
Song: “Oxotocanxoxo” by Samba Fogo

Dancers in the Return Dance Project dance with the largest living organism on Earth by weight: Pando Aspen Graove, affectionately named “The Trembling Giant.”

P A N D O

Every "Tree" you see here is actually part of one great being. We were privileged enough to dance with him. He is suffering now, dying off from imbalance. We came to behold him, experience him, hear his song and dance in gratitude with this great being. This forest used to be cared for by indigenous people who nurtured this great being's life. After 100 years of colonial rule, fire suppression, cattle herding, and the decline of predator species leaving an overpopulation of deer and moose, this forest is now dying. But there are efforts to save it, and we made this video to connect with this great being, and to draw attention to these imbalances.

We dance with our feet on the Earth and our hands in the soil.

PANDO, a poem by RJ Walker
I am older than my name. Older than the concept of names, but I am called Pando, The Trembling Giant. There is none heavier. None larger. None older. I have known death, because I have known time, because I have known life. And it scared me so much, I dared to grow beyond it. I see them come set up their feeble shelters inside my guts, and listen to the scream of the wind through my aspen throat. You think you are immortal, with your thunder capture, and your stone making, and your Earth-moving. You think you will live forever, through your offspring, through the scars you leave on the land. But I have already seen your extinction, creatures, and it is the same as mine. Your offspring will burn. In a fire of their own making. And for all your music, and poetry, and color, nobody will be around to hear you scream. I was like you once, I wanted to be big, to spread until I covered the Earth, and became it. And Like you, I thought I did. I thought I could. I thought I was everything. And then I would find a little bit of empty on the edge, and I would rush to fill it. Only to find another bit of empty, and another, and another, until I became this hoak – the largest living thing on Earth. You dare to become the world, too. But you too shall shrink as I am, because you are not a living thing. You are fire. You believe that less of everything less means more of yourself. You have filled the world with an emptiness so dark and deep, not even I can fill it. I am dying. Shriveling at the burn of you. I have grown too large to escape. And now, I want nothing more than to be a seed again – a thing full of promise, ready to sprout into a world that does not yet know me. Foolish forest. Foolish fire. Foolish growth just to grow. I could contain a million years of stories, but instead, I have only this one: about a tree who shrank to death because he became giant About a people who want ed everything so badly, they destroyed everything. We still have a little time. So come, visit me. I’ll tell you what the wind is. And maybe you can tell me what music is. And maybe we can become the opposite of what is killing us. Before it does.

four sacred things

Released May 2021 | Filmed & Edited by Sugarhouse Studio
Location: Goshute Territory (Land colonially known as Wendover, Utah)
Song: “Nebuofo” by Fatoumata Diawara and Roberto Fonseca

Dance to the desert