LIVING LANDSCAPES Premieres in Pittsburgh

Living Landscapes, an environmental film which fuses documentary and dance highlighting the water and air quality concerns of Pittsburgh, will make its premiere. 

Living Landscapes “the premiere,” is both a film screening and a dance installation nature walk held in the Audubon Society’s nature preserve at Beechwood Farms in the Fox Chapel area. Audiences will be able to partake in a nature walk via access to their trails and experience small, site specific dance installations along the way. Film screenings will be hosted in the covered barn area at 6pm & 7pm throughout that time (film runs a little under 20 minutes). The nature walk begins at 5:30 pm and runs continuously until 7pm, so audiences can walk before the film screening, after, or both!

The project started with Simmons interviewing Myrna Newman from Allegheny Cleanways and Ariam Ford from Grounded for this project to gain insight into their environmental nonprofit organizations, who they are, what they do, and ask what they feel are Pittsburgh’s prevalent concerns. These two amazing women had much to say and became the foundation for the text found in the film. The challenge of the film was to teeter the line between documentation and dance film, providing a little history and insight into current concerns while expressing reactions and emotions through dance on film.

Simmons says the film has gone through a variety of concepts and collaborators since the first filming. Cinematographer Arvid Tomayko filmed the original shots with Simmons and dancers over a 6-day excursion into the woods of McConnell’s Mills State Park. Multiple sites were utilized for filming and rehearsal space was donated from Slippery Rock University for the first three days. Due to Covid-19 constraints, the group had to take specific precautions and isolate themselves for this retreat.

Simmons then began the search for a new film editor and composer for the work. Simmons found Dancing Camera, a company based out of New York City with remote editors and began working with Julie Rooney (Denver, CO), a film editor based in nature documentaries. Rooney and Simmons began an 8-month long process of discussing possible rough cuts, order and sequences, how nature documentaries are created and how this approach to the dance film might be similar, and the ability of storytelling through shots alone without a storytelling script. Long time friend and composer Andrew Griffin (NYC) and Simmons also discussed the themes, concepts, strengths and weaknesses of the film throughout this time.

Griffin says about the composition, “I think the most challenging element has been finding the exact harmonic scape for the film. We’ve gone through many iterations of what the film could be, so the music that I was writing at the beginning of the process is no longer what matches its current state.”

The collaborators felt there was a missing element, contrast, that needed to help tell the story. Simmons went to Cassie Dietrich, Slippery Rock University senior, for extra filmography work. Simmons and Dietrich took an 8-hour day and visited four sites to collect pick up shots that showed the impact humans have on our environment. The duo visited a hauling/recycling facility, a car junkyard, a tire yard, and a few of the original McConnell’s Mills sites to create one more character for the film, which helps show reflection, agitation, and regret.

After months of editing, resting, and re-looking, the film and compositions have come to fruition. Griffin has set an incredible score with cello and violin and local percussionist Jeff Berman (Pgh) has come on board to add percussion contrast. Actors based in New York City will be portraying the voices of the work with some text abstracted and some text taken verbatim from the original interviews. 

The premiere event features dance installation works along the trails that will portray human bodies in nature with only the natural sounds of the trail to accompany. Audiences are encouraged to observe and reflect on the appreciation of this land, their environments, and how we relate as humans to it. It is the hope and goal of this production to emphasize that humans should understand they are a PART of nature, not an outsider looking in. There are individual ways we can daily contribute to a healthier climate and there are organizations doing amazing work to get involved with.

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