Concept

Graveyards are often depicted as conveying peace, stillness, silence: places where the tireless mechanism of time and movement is paused.

Through my personal exploration of the five historic graveyards in Edinburgh, I have observed and felt the exact opposite: decay, growth, aging, erosion, rot, blooming, withering; all constant and unstoppable manifestations of movement and transformation. 
Death, rebirth, and regeneration all occurring at a molecular scale. I have chosen to represent the constant evolution and mutation of materials, surfaces, and textures that I observed, through costume. 
The narrative that I want to express will be communicated through contemporary choreography, a performance built entirely on movement and void of dialogue to reflect the non-human focus of the story. 
The characters are essences, elements, and substances inspired by characteristic landscape features of graveyards in general, as well as observed and documented by me.

The choreography is set amongst the headstones of St. Cuthbert’s Kirkyard, the odd and unconventional moves of contemporary dance emphasizing the equally unconventional nature of the life which thrives in a location so centered around it’s absence. 
The performance follows the transformation of two recently buried human bodies, as they are introduced into the underground’s ecosystem, and acted upon by four elemental nymphs/spirits (the embodiment of decaying agents such as mushrooms, lichens, insects etc).

The elementals will physically interact with the bodies through the choreography, gradually undressing them, removing the outer, heavier, layers and pieces of the costumes (representing the decaying, rotting flesh - now a burden) in order to distribute them throughout the organic space. The space will swallow them up and give their particles/energy new life: the representation through choreography and costume of the liminal space beyond death. The removal of outer layers will reveal light, simple, earthy garments on the bodies, echoing the costumes of the elementals and conveying a transformation from one life form into another. The dancers will interact with the graveyard space as a unique stage, using the soft, malleable, uneven ground interrupted by contrasting solid, regular headstones as surfaces for their costumes to drag onto, float over, and sink into.