Winter Fieldwork: community and hygge

A personal reflection on winter and art making:

Winter Fieldwork was the most meaningful performance I have seen this year. This piece gave me a renewed spirit to engage with Minnesota’s winter. The evening shed a warm glow onto my memories of winters from my childhood when there was a game afoot and the cold wasn’t bothersome. I felt an overwhelming sense of community, and it reinforced my belief that dance needs to engage audiences in new ways: more accessible, less separated ways. Thank you, Laurie Van Wieren and cast, for crafting such an experience!

We arrived at Silverwood Park, a place that has come to hold a lot of meaning for me, and gathered in a dimly lit event space. There were chairs that faced a wide wall of windows. The light outside was fading so that the snow covering the ground looked blue around the old oak trees. People in red winter gear came from around the corner and over the hill and interactions ensued. I was less intrigued by the movement than I was excited about the image as a whole: players of a game in red, puffy jackets, scarves and hats, setting up the rules of the night.

The whole evening seemed a slow-motion obstacle course that we got to walk along. There were unspoken, childlike rules, sleds on the ice, traversing as a mass of audience across a frozen lake, arriving at an island of red woodland people, trumpets, and lanterns. It was out of a dream.

This past year I have been interested in site-specific work and this performance reinforced my interest in dance outside a theater. It allowed the audience to engage with their surroundings, nature, the changing light, and each other. I saw small children in awe when they saw the skating sleds (myself included). People were heartily tromping through snow and ice. Come February, I needed some hygge, cozy spirit and this hit the spot like bean chili.

After that night I was thinking, "What does it mean to feel community as you watch a piece and not just see it represented on stage?". I spent the walk with my three best friends. I am sure that impacted my sense of community. Though sometimes we drifted and walked on our own, left to follow our own whims of where we watched from, how fast we walked, what we stopped to notice.