Creature: A Movement Meditation

Overview

A short dance film and an invitation to move: this creature draws you out, barefoot, into wet grass, squidgy mud, running water. Let your feet, then your body, respond to the feel: sliding, squishing, flowing. Open the door to your inner animal and respond to the sensations, to the textures, to your instincts.

Creature: A Movement Meditation is a digital dance offering that invites participants to join Kalila Kingsford Smith in a guided movement practice to get in touch with the animal within. Participants are welcome to view the dance film from the comfort of their homes or to engage fully in the experiential component. This offering is framed as a solo-experience, but participants may “bring a buddy” if they’d benefit from a communal experience. Choose your own adventure.

To engage in the full experience, audience members are encouraged to take their viewing devices “on the go” and find a place outside where they feel safe to interact with a natural element (grass, dirt, sand, a tree, water, a river bank). They will be guided into a responsive movement practice that calls forth their inner animal. 

If participants enjoy the movement meditation and want to share your experiences with a broader community of creatures, the final invitation is to repeat and record a small version of the movement meditation. This can be shared via social media or by submitting it through a portal on kalilakingsfordsmith.com.

Visit kalilakingsfordsmith.com for supplemental materials for this digital offering including: a transcript of the movement instructions, an audio-only version of the movement meditation, and a portal to share short videos of your creature practice. 

Concept, performance, and video editing by Kalila Kingsford Smith; Ambient meditation music by Alina John. Filmed in Long Lake, NY. 

Kalila Kingsford Smith

Kalila Kingsford Smith is a choreographer, dancer, and movement professional based in Philadelphia. Fundamentally, she believes that dance is healing and transformative and invites performers and audiences to investigate themselves as participants in the art-making process. She builds interactive dance environments that are responsive to the characteristics of the movement space: whether a theater, a nature trail, a museum, a city street, or a Zoom room. Informed by her training in modern and contemporary dance, her movement style flows between tension and release, momentum and suspension, improvisation and composition, and storytelling and abstraction. Her current improvisational practice invites participants to access their inner “creature,” the parts of themselves that are pre-thinking, animalistic, and responsive.

Credits

Kalila Kingsford Smith is a choreographer, dancer, and movement professional based in Philadelphia. Fundamentally, she believes that dance is healing and transformative and invites performers and audiences to investigate themselves as participants in the art-making process. She builds interactive dance environments that are responsive to the characteristics of the movement space: whether a theater, a nature trail, a museum, a city street, or a Zoom room. Informed by her training in modern and contemporary dance, her movement style flows between tension and release, momentum and suspension, improvisation and composition, and storytelling and abstraction. Her current improvisational practice invites participants to access their inner “creature,” the parts of themselves that are pre-thinking, animalistic, and responsive.