Earth Incantations

In the Autumn of 2022 myself, film maker Jemma Cholawo and four dancers from South West Dance Hub spent the day at Scorhill Stone Circle on Dartmoor. The creation of Earth Incantations had begun.

The Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter commissioned this new piece of dance to as part of the Earth Spells Exhibition Lates event. Grants from Arts Council England and Exeter City Council allowed us to work with film, sound and costume in the development of the piece. The main inpsiration for the exhibition came from the donation to the museum of a cauldron which belonged to the white witch of Dartmoor.

The circular skirts represented ritual, circles of life, spiral patterns in nature with the white bringing in the spiritual and healing practices of the white witches. It took a lot of experimentation to find the right weight of fabric, I stitched many lengths of climbing rope into the hems to give the right weight and enable full circles on spinning.