The Croft Residency

The Croft Residency provides residents a platform to cultivate their creativity; a refuge in nature where they can draw inspiration and nourishment from the environment and share their art with the Northern Michigan community and beyond.

The Croft Residency is a creative residency program for movement. We hold space for embodied engagement. Movement research that is nourished by time, site, and location. We do this through our Rootstock, RADicle, Scion, and Stand residencies.        

Our Nature 

Our connection to nature was once celebrated and deepened through storytelling and artistic expression. We moved with our surroundings not through them. The fall of our foot meeting the earth as a dialogue. Each step equal parts listening and expression. Weaving our appendicular selves through nature. We danced to honor and celebrate our connection. We danced together to keep the gift of our connection alive. For its heart to keep beating. 

Until we began to celebrate our steps taken. Our feet no longer listening. Expression their sole purpose. Our gift-exchange with nature forgotten.

Without this exchange, Our movement lost its softness. Our embodied story lay in hibernation. A faint beat, Removed from our appendicular nature. Our footfall becoming ever heavier. Compressing the articular surface between us. Binding and holding our movement. We search for relief from this holding. To feel inspiration. To breathe.   

We exhale deeply. Letting go for a moment. Softness. In the release we feel the faint beat, murmuring from its torpor. An animation of connection. Moving from within. We remember the gift. That its life is dependent upon its continued exchange. It must be shared to stay alive.      

In honor of this, we move. We create as a way to shape our individual acknowledgment that we are alive, together. Our bodies’ movement animating the heart of this connection. We dance to feel our stories. To move with the poetry of our being. To reawaken the listening in every step. 

Photos: Single dancer is Victoria Awkward of VLA Dance in Boston, MA. The photo with two dancers is of BAIRA MVMNT PHILOSOPHY, Bryan and Shaina Baira of Detroit, MI. Photo credit: Benjamin Cheney.