26.02.2025 / þ thorns þ

Episode Ten: Helle Siljeholm and Simone Kenyon

þ thorns þ

In this conversation, Helle Siljeholm and Simone Kenyon excitedly shared their practices with each other, finding a joint interest in making work in relation to mountains.

This episode is a conversation between Helle Siljeholm and Simone Kenyon. Helle is a choreographer and visual artist based in Oslo, whose project The Mountain Body centres around the development of a series of choreographic and sculptural interventions in various mountain sites in the world. Simone is an artist, dancer and producer whose project Into the Mountain investigates the physical, cultural, and social connections to mountainous landscapes in Scotland, where she is based. In this conversation, Helle and Simone excitedly shared their practices with each other, finding a joint interest in making work in relation to mountains.

Find out more about Helle and Simone on our People page.

To the Glossary Helle donates Deep Time / Geological Time , Land Art , Material Witness and Activism .

And Simone donates Kaleidoscopic Becomings , Mountain-Place-Relational , Stravaiging and Confident Plainness .

This series is produced and edited by Hester Cant.

The series is co-curated by Emma McCormick-Goodhart and Martin Hargreaves, with concept and direction by Martin Hargreaves and Izzy Galbraith.

Transcript:

MARTIN

Hello, you're listening to þ thorns þ, a podcast where we bring you conversations between artists in relation to concepts of the choreographic . thorns is produced as part of the Rose Choreographic School at Sadler's Wells. I'm Martin Hargreaves, head of the Rose Choreographic School, which is an experimental research and pedagogy project. Across a two-year cycle, we support a cohort of artists to explore their own choreographic inquiries , and we also come together to imagine a school where we discover the conditions we need to learn from each other.

As part of the ongoing imagination of the school, we are compiling a glossary of words that artists are using to refer to the choreographic . Every time we invite people to collaborate with us, we also invite them to donate to the glossary which is hosted on our website. There is a full transcript available for this episode on our website, together with any relevant links to resources mentioned.

This episode is a conversation between Helle Siljeholm and Simone Kenyon. Helle is a choreographer and visual artist based in Oslo, and Simone is a UK based artist, dancer and producer. In this conversation, Helle was in a studio in Oslo and Simone in Edinburgh. This was the first meeting between the two artists, and they excitedly shared their practices with each other, finding a joint interest in making work in relation to mountains.

The transition sounds you will hear in this episode are field recordings from their respective practices. You will also hear choral recordings that respond to resonances in the landscape, coming from Simone's work.

HELLE

I have, uh, quite a few words.

SIMONE

Go for it. I might write some down so I can remember them.

HELLE

I found it very different. It's difficult to actually define one word when it comes to the mountains, because I think that the mountains are so complex, and it's about many possible entry points. I have More-Than-Human Bodies, which is of course my term.Sensing Work, Deep Time or Geological Time , Mountain Imaginaries, which I'm not sure it's a… Interconnectivity, Land Art , Material Witness that I borrowed from Susan Schuppli's book, Transformation, Polyphonic, Collectivity, Community, Solidarity, Activism .

SIMONE

Brilliant. I couldn't write them all down fast enough.

They both laugh together.

SIMONE

There's definitely some crossovers there. I don't know, do you want to talk about one of those first or do you want to hear a few of mine to kind of…?

HELLE

I would love, yeah.

SIMONE

I've actually only picked three. So, the first one is Kaleidoscopic Becomings .

HELLE

Ooh!

SIMONE

The second is Mountain-Place-Relational . And the third one is Stravaiging .

HELLE

Stro- Can you say that last one again?

SIMONE

Stravaig. To stravaig. It's a Scots word for ‘to wander’.

HELLE

A beautiful word.

SIMONE

Yeah, but I also, yeah. I wondered if there was any word in your language that would have a similar feel or description. Maybe it's because I'm thinking of Stavanger in Norway.

They laugh together.

SIMONE

Because that's the only place I've been to in Norway. But when I say stravaiging , it often makes me think of that place. I don’t...yeah. So those are my three words. And actually, if we do have a longer list that we can include, there's something, a quote from somebody who's in the choir in the project where she described the experience of the performance as a Confident Plainness . And I really like her description of Confident Plainness .

HELLE

I would love to speak a little bit about this, because I also know that we have one other thing in common. When I saw your work in Cairngorms…Cairngorms?

SIMONE

Oh, in the Cairngorms! Yeah.

HELLE

Yeah, that's how you pronounce it!

They laugh together.

HELLE

And the Nan Shepherd book.

SIMONE

Yes, The Living Mountain! So, the performance work that I developed is basically working with her text, as a companion in the work. So, the title, Into the Mountain, is actually a direct quote from her book. Because she talks about walking out of her body and into the mountain. And I was really curious to explore that in different ways. And it was the only book about mountaineering written by a woman, that really explored that embodied sensory experience. So, I dedicated eight years to exploring that as well, it's continuous, right? Continuous exploration. But yeah, she's definitely a key collaborator across time, I would say. Yeah, what's your experience of that writing? Have you read it?

HELLE

Yes, I have. And I also used it as an important reference. The book was brought to my attention by a producer working with the Mountain Body Project, and her name is Annette Wolfsberger. We were also looking at female authors that writes about mountains because mountains can be a very patriarchal and male field of research.

SIMONE

Oh yes!

HELLE

With also the traditions of mountaineering. So, we used her book also as a companion in a sort of work in process, work that we did in a cave on the west coast of Norway in Ålesund.

SIMONE

Amazing.

HELLE

Which was also very much about listening. We also used references to the Deep Listening practice of, uh, now I'm…

SIMONE

Pauline Oliveros?

HELLE

Yes! Thank you. Which was amazing. Like this score based. And what I really loved and I, uh, you know, these passages that she writes, that asks for a very different way of being in the mountain, that is not about ascending. Which I thought was really beautiful. And also that she lets the eye, the perception being the mountains itself. Instead of us. Like, so she turns this, where I think the intrinsic value of nature comes across. So, yeah.

SIMONE

Absolutely. Oh, that's fantastic you worked with her text. I'd love to know more about that cave piece. And it's interesting to hear the connections and similarities, because I also worked with Hanna Tuulikki, who's an artist, who worked on the vocal score of the Into the Mountain project. And we did a lot around Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening. But with a community choir that we'd assembled with women across the national park of the Cairngorms. Which is quite a widespread. So, the mountains are a wall in between two villages, if you like. And so, we had women working on the vocal elements in different sites around, around the Cairngorms.

HELLE

Oh my god. This sounds wonderful!

SIMONE

Yeah, that was quite a big part of that, Deep Listening to what was there. And then I think certainly for Hanna's practice, not that I want to speak for her, but you know, our collaboration, we really spoke a lot about in her work, the mimesis and trying to embody sounds of the place to understand how things are moving and shaping in the place itself. So that was a really interesting element of the project as well.

But yeah, this Deep Listening. And I think that's where the term, I call it a term very loosely, but the term of Kaleidoscopic Becomings came about through the project. In that way, that I was trying to understand what Nan Shepherd was saying as well about these perspectives. But, when you're kind of, inside that experience of mountaineering, and walking, and moving, and with others, this kaleidoscopic sensation happens, where you can just… She talks about the shifting of the head can then open up a new world. And it's almost like the kaleidoscope. You turn just a fraction and everything's reconfigured. And I think that for me, explains this like, continuous awareness of looking at things from new perspectives. Or from decentring. Or attempting to decentre my perspective. Or the people we work together with.

I was working on another walking arts project before I started this project. And it was also in the northeast of Scotland. And I could see the Cairngorms Mountains from this circular walk. I was trying to design a circular walk that met all these different places, and went across some of the land that's not really walked upon, because of private land ownership, even though there's public access, apparently. But I was working with her book then and trying to organize these walks and explore sensory perceptions of place. And I really noticed the shift in people's ability, or attitude towards engaging with sensory work, as soon as I started to introduce her text. Basically, her text allowed an invitation. Because she's from Aberdeenshire, and she's very local in that way, and everyone knew her writing and knows of her. It was almost like, because Nan Shepherd was inviting the invitation, it was okay. Whereas a dancer coming, I was living in London at the time, coming and asking us to work with our eyes closed, seems too strange. But somehow Nan Shepherd was a way in, to working with people and leading walks as well. So, she provided a lot of, yeah, different ways to support me. It's not just through her text, but through the attitude that people have towards her. And the sort of warmth that people in Scotland receive her with.

Transition Sound: Choral composition from Simone Kenyon.

SIMONE

Just thinking about the heights of mountains. And the outside. And then the inside of mountains. And I don't know where your cave was, but I'm curious to know how that experience of working on the inside, if we want to talk about these binaries of inside/outside even, how that was? And how Nan's text related to that. Just curious to know what that felt like?

HELLE

These series of works within The Mountain Body, is always made in collaboration with different artists and researchers. Both local and someone always that's… For example, I tend to always work with two dancers called Pernille Holden and Marianne Kjærsund. And we sort of build-up vocabulary of, both an approach to working or…sensing! Trying to sense these different mountains. But we also always work in meeting with local artists. And if the works are set in vertical cliffs, which some of the works are, then we also work with climbers or local experts. Sometimes they are engineers, but they climb a lot in their spare time. In the cave, we were eager to explore also, more of the wandering scents.

And I think what was also interesting, is that approaching the cave, when we chose the cave, I had also been to this specific cave maybe three years back. So, I knew it was really an amazing site. And this is where the time element comes in. That when you lie down and look up in a cave, you see the, what I would say, the nature archive of the mountain. Almost like a diary that you can read. The time is both horizontal and vertical at the same time. So, I think the cave is a space that offers this realization. That our sort of, or the Western way of thinking time as linear, is quite unorganic.

Helle laughs.

HELLE

Also, when it came to sound, one of the people that was part of this project is a curator called Hilde Methi. We ended up doing a sort of, midnight walk with the audience. So it was in darkness, they have head torches. And also choosing some quotes from Nan Shepherd's book. It was a lot about silence.

SIMONE

Mhmm,

HELLE

But, what is interesting with the cave is, that Hilde Methi, this creator, brought our attention to, that the cave was almost like the ear. The ear. I get very wary about my pronunciation now! The ear of the mountain. Because we heard the sounds outside of the cave, much louder inside the cave.

SIMONE

What in terms of like the vibration or the reverberating?

HELLE

So, it was almost like membrane.

SIMONE

Mmm.

HELLE

So, this was also part of the sort of listening. Or it added the layer, many layers, to the listening practice. That actually, we were inside a part of the mountain body that had this capacity. And coming back to your work with the choir, we were thinking a lot on this type of sounds and responses and resonances. It's the sounds of the mountains with the valleys, with the echo. And here also, this listening quality of the mountains that we did explore further in this work in the cave.

Transition sound: SEA OF ROCKS [Premiere] – Dolomites, 2024

SIMONE

I think, yeah, there was part of the process of working with voice, and with the sound with In The Mountain, the special moment in that sort of way of working. Nan Shepherd talks about silence not really existing in the mountain, just like John Cage talks about that as well. But yeah, all this kind of vocal work. And then when they stop actually singing, that's when you hear the place. And in a way that all the work was, as a way of focusing on the place, essentially still coming back to that. And I think even, it's also making me think about the way that Nan Shepherd writes about how water is present everywhere in the mountains. But also like, these resonances sometimes that you feel through the ground. Even if you can't see elements, you can still feel them or hear them, if you're in that sort of, deep listening space. So, it's like happening underneath, and above us, and all around us. It’s kind of, encapsulating sound element to the work.

But I think with the voice as well, or I don't know, working with place or with an environment, the decision to put things in the space always feels quite precarious or dangerous. Somehow like, the sensitivity that comes with working in these places, and then even just putting a sound of 15 voices feels huge. And I’m always grappling with this. These questions around when you start to bring people to a place to witness things, and what are we choosing to show, and how are we choosing to do it? And sometimes when I think about the more-than-human a bit more, it's like the work just becomes more and more quiet. And yeah, to the point where maybe I won't make any performances again, to be witnessed by a group. But yeah, it's the question for me about how we respond or work with these places sensitively. When you talk about, in mountain leadership, about leaving no trace, and the same in making performance work. But I think it's a real challenge when you have people walking on paths together, and the ground is degraded or… But I was quite curious, as well, about the visual aspects of your work in that sense. Like I know you're working with these pigments, which I really want to know more about.

I'm just thinking about these materials re-emerging quite visually on the mountainsides. And yeah, how you sort of, got to that way of working? It's not necessarily a question, but I'm just thinking oh yeah, the thing of working with Leave No Trace in Scotland is quite big. But also, you are leaving a trace, and there's this visual trace of the mountain shape, but also where the climbers have been. And yeah. Which I think brings up an interesting tension for me around that Leave No Trace. Because actually, the trace that you're leaving, is the thing that's really valuable in that moment of the work. And I know it degrades and disappears. But I wondered how, yeah, how the process that you got to, to make that work? I'm really curious about the pigments that you used.

HELLE

Yeah, I got into a lot of trouble because of those earthen pigments!

They laugh together.

SIMONE

Oh, did you? Oh no! Why? What happened?

HELLE

Yeah, because of that tradition that you are describing from Scotland. It's very strong also in Norway, with the spoorless traces, or Leave No Trace. And I wasn't aware at this point that this, maybe also, is about a sense of aesthetics. And the politics of aesthetics. But what I initially wanted to do, it's earth pigment. So, it's I mean, you can eat it, it's not violent for the nature at all. And it is, in fact, maybe that's stretching it a bit far, but you could say it is a mountain in a mini mini form.

And I worked with a nature pigment, or earth pigment expert in Norway. That is actually from the west coast of Ålesund, called Bent Erik Myrvoll. And he has this amazing collection of pigments that he picks out from the ground himself, and then burns it in these clay ovens into different colours. And the use of the earth pigment, it was in 2021, we were working on a sort of smaller mountain just outside Oslo. And this is a very prominent location for, both the initiation of mountaineering or sports climbing actually in Norway. You had Arne Næss, for example, that is very much a founding father, both of climbing and mountaineering in Norway, but also behind the deep ecology movement. And someone who used his time in the mountain to get these realisations. He explicitly talked about that, in in this term self-realisation. And this he has from Spinoza. But, self-realisation is when the little person, the human, realises… or the little self, realises that you are part of the grander self. And the grander self here being nature and free nature. So, he climbed there. It's very famous for this particular rock called Rombeporfyr, which has this very reddish, orangey, fiery colour.

I was doing this work in co-production with the theatre in Oslo, and it was later going to be part of the opening of the Munch Museum. And this mountain also, is said to be the backdrop, the horizontal backdrop of Munch's painting The Scream.

SIMONE

Mhmm.

HELLE

And then he stood at the other side of Oslo, it's a hill called Ekebergparken, and he had one of his many anxiety attacks. And then later in Paris, he painted this imaginary where Kolsås, this particular place, is in the backdrop. And the colours of that is a sort of reddish, orange, yellow. And so, I found it interesting that this colour of then Aker, which Bent Erik pointed me to, is also a part of the same mountain range, let's say. Like where he gets his pigment, where he digs it out of the ground, it’s still part of the same mountain range, let's say. And it, Aker, is the first pigment that we started to use in cave paintings. So, it had all these connotations back to the sort of anthropocentric story. And this pigment that he's found, was roughly around like 10,000 years old. Which is also the first times that you have the sort of, human trace. And also the first human settlements is then.

So, with all those links, I thought like, wow, amazing!

SIMONE

Mmm, that’s lovely!

HELLE

Let's use the earth pigment to enhance the mountain structure. And I think I was a little bit naive in understanding how? Because climbers that had a very strong relation to this mountain, and I think that they felt that it was theirs! They very much disagreed with this use of earth pigments because of the leaving the trace. It didn't help that I said, ‘well, it will disappear! Isn't it beautiful? It will rain away. It's the cyclical.’ They were…they didn't find it so beautiful.

They laugh together.

SIMONE

Like they weren't interested in the poetics of connections.

HELLE

Yeah! So, it might also be due to the fact that in this work, in this choreographic work, we are not ascending mountains. The performers are resting. Trying to rest into different positions in the mountains. That, and this is also the intention with the earth pigment, to enhance the movement of what is already there, the mountain structure, the mountain body itself. So, I did that in two works in Oslo, and then in a mountain area called Norangsdalen. But I have not done that anymore, actually, after this experience, because I don't think I want to get into that many conflicts.

SIMONE

That's interesting to hear. Thanks for sharing that! Because I think yeah… Also making performance in the Cairngorms is also quite tricky with some people. When they're looking from the outside, I guess, would say, ‘oh, you're just using the mountains as a backdrop for a performance’. And it's, yeah. When we're talking about this, trying to actually collaborate with place and environments, the work is a lot more sensitive than that, I suppose. But it's difficult, isn't it?

That mountain you're talking about, and the way you were describing the history of it, just made me think, yeah, the mountains are often held with these huge importance, culturally in different places. And there's sometimes the human relationship, and the sort of cultural geography of mountains, can be quite a heavy weight for these places. I think it places a lot of, how we either choose to engage with them, or like just some of the histories and… And I think I also found that like, coming into the process of trying to make work with the Cairngorms, and how I might respond to that as an intention. I just felt like the human perception, and the politics of place will always be really prominent in that.

If we want to talk about certain naiveties, right, we kind of talk about somatic work and going into places, and leading walks. And I think sometimes, it can come across as quite romantic and we can get pulled into that. But also, the reality of trying to make work, certainly in the Scottish context, there's always a deeply human element driving decision making. And who owns land? And the Cairngorms Mountain is like a huge plateau, hundreds of miles squared. And it's owned and managed by, I think, 5 or 6 different landowners.

HELLE

Wow.

SIMONE

So, the actual summit itself is almost divided. And it's also a scientific, a special site for scientific interest. But then you have all these commercial things. And rewilding projects happening. So, it's a really complex context, in which to, try and work in. And I think, this is where I think sometimes the work can look…come across as like, quite easy to make maybe. Or you just sort of, head out there, and you do this thing. But actually, the thing of working through the complexities of the cultural geography of a place, felt like that became the biggest work, in some ways. And then the space to go in, and actually try and work with the place, almost becomes like the second stage if you like.

It feels to me, like in Scotland, that politics of place is really prominent. In terms of trying to make work in mountains. And I just wondered if it was similar? If you'd met any sort of that bureaucracy that comes with trying to work outside?

HELLE

Yeah!

SIMONE

And it doesn't often get spoken about. The logistics of trying to make these works. And they're really based on very human relationships, down to whether one land manager says yes or no. It's not about my relationship with a mountain at all. It's about whether that land manager thinks I'm a nice person, and that the project is okay. So, there's like this huge scale of interaction.

HELLE

I'm so glad you're bringing this up because yes, totally relate. I think when I started my PhD, I felt like maybe I should just do a PhD on applications.

They laugh together.

SIMONE

Absolutely!

HELLE

But I mean, this is also interesting, exactly what you say that, for example, in this work where I got into trouble, I had permissions from nature reservoir. So, they found no problems with it. They saw that it is, this is not leaving a trace. That is, this is probably the best trace that could be there. So, it was an emotional reaction.

SIMONE

Mm hmm.

HELLE

And I think this is exactly what you say. It's very interesting when you come into this understanding of, what type of nature is valuable?Or considered valuable. And for whom?And how the legislation about nature reserves, to me, it feels very arbitrary. that you should have. This also goes for Norway. We have some areas that are national parks, some areas that are nature reserves. But still you are able to build, you can put your cabins. It feels very much like the people with the money wins.

SIMONE

Yes, absolutely!

They laugh together.

HELLE

Yeah. And also, when it comes to extraction. We know that this is also, and this is of course a very naive way or like a too blunt way to say it, but cash is king.

SIMONE

Mhmm, yeah! Interestingly, the way the performance took place for Into the Mountain, we'd spent like a year trying to speak to another landowner or land manager on the other side. But trying to convince them was really difficult. And to the point, interestingly, where they were sort of almost part of the dramaturgical process of like, ‘You can stand here, but you can't stand there. And the audience could stand here and then you would need to move here, but you can't stand on that particular bit. And then there's ground nesting birds in this area.’ So, it really became like this. Oh, that could have been quite an interesting process, but it actually became quite limiting.

HELLE

And I think that this is also, as an artist working with nature, that one side of the trajectory, and the politics side of it, is like we shouldn't be there at all. We should leave it. There shouldn't be any walking in like… And at the same time, you can say that it's important to understand also to be a witness to what is happening with nature now, because it is so drastically changing.

SIMONE

Yes.

HELLE

And I think it's interesting what you say about, like the people that want you to stand here and not over there because of the birds. Because you have to sort of, make a choreography within adjusting to asking permissions from a lot of different bodies, within the ecosystem.

SIMONE

Mhmm.

HELLE

And this I find really interesting with this type of work in the mountains. At the same time, that I also struggle with the fact that like, ooh, should we really be doing this? Or in what way, can we speak about the unprecedented nature and climate crisis without leaving dangerous traces?

SIMONE

Mm hmm. I think it's always going to be that tension, isn't it? If you're trying to work in that way. And yeah, definitely have waves of that feeling of like, just stop taking people there or stop working there. But it's also the learning that comes from being and listening to, or with these places, feels really important. If it's not taking masses of people at the same time. But just thinking, how do we frame space for people to explore developing their own kinaesthetic empathy towards the more-than-human? If people can access it? I think access is also a huge question around mountains. But yeah, if people can access it, then to experience the smell of the air, or the sound of these places, definitely changes you physiologically. And I think maybe, that's me giving myself an answer or a reason to do it there, or a justification. But at the same time, I think you're right, in terms of, how do we frame ways of seeing and engaging with these places, to understand also what's happening to these places? In terms of the climate as well. And it does feel quite urgent as well, in that sense.

HELLE

No, it does. And I think my entry, in a way, to thinking that mountains is this material that we all share, that is both a protagonist and also an antagonist. In the sense it's both producing realities around, and also affected by diverse realities.

Transition sound: SEA OF ROCKS [Premiere] – Dolomites, 2024

HELLE

I was working for 10 years in the Middle East, in Lebanon, Jordan, and in Palestine. It was based on long term collaborations with different dancers, choreographers, theatre-makers, also film. And I was doing this work a lot, with a Norwegian choreographer called Sara Christophersen. We also worked a lot with site specific. And of course, landscape is always political everywhere. I think, you know, what we said is like, it's very nature politics. So, I think that this was the mountain matter became a space for me that, this is something that we, disputably, we all share.

This is also my interest in it, that you see within Lebanon, for example, appears as Mount Lebanon, one of the, you know? And then later, through a European colonial, well, French interference, it also separates from having its focus around the mountains, to also include the ports.

SIMONE

Mhmm.

HELLE

And so, there's a way in which you can very clearly understand the European colonial history in the immediate landscape in the Middle East, also by looking at these mountains. So, I thought that this is the interconnected layer. This witness of time became the mountain material for me. And also, I find a lot of, sort of resonance in that kind of thinking, into these works of forensic architecture, for example. And this book called Investigating Aesthetics, that talks about sensing bodies, that it's not human bodies, it's multiple bodies.

SIMONE

Yeah.

HELLE

And this is maybe also connecting to your kaleidoscope . Because it's not all bodies, they claim, that can participate actively in making sense. But they're all part of the register of sensing. And this, I think like, when you speak about how you interpret Nan Shepherd's work, and how you use her as a companion, I feel a lot of resonance with this merely like, forensic point of departure also. But they're speaking about the matter and the material, and what is in the ground.

SIMONE

Sounds fantastic! Yeah, it's also making me think, this idea of multiplicity and moving away from individualism, especially when you're working with sensory work, and embodied work, within the context of dance or performance. But Nan Shepherd has been the companion to this work. But I guess a strong practice through the work. And coming back to what you were saying about building vocabularies in the mountains, I've been practicing Body Weather dance training for many years. I guess like yeah, the politics of that dance work is what brought me to it. Because Min Tanaka, who developed the work with lots of other European dancers, who were my teachers as well in Japan in the eighties, talked a lot about de-hierarchical ways of working. And they lived together, and they grew beans and rice, and basically ran a farm, and then trained together. So, there's this sense, or approach in Body Weather practice, to think about trying to move with multiplicity. So, you might have an image moving. If it's not necessarily just placing images through different parts of your body, for instance, but this is where this body, and working with place, meets. And this idea that the porosity and the multiplicity of working socially, and living together and eating together, was sort of the foundation of some of that practice. It's bringing me back to like actually the training, the dance training. The politics of that training is really coming back to this thing of sensing bodies, and collective and multiplicities, of ways of being in place. Or with place. And what that kind of vocabulary brings, or even an attitude towards that.

And I guess that does relate, also, to this thing of coming back to the mountaineering history and colonial… The way that our Western colonial ideas of mountaineering have developed over hundreds of years. It's partly one of the motivations of making the project, I think. Because I was never quite comfortable in my skin, trying to mountaineer, in the way that the culture is telling you to do it. It's also that kind of, how can dance sort of somehow, like, support a transformation of understanding, that you don't have to follow these very deeply rooted colonial attitudes towards ascending mountains. And the way that we think about them. The way that we approach them. And this is where, you know, in terms of art practices, we have an ability then to reframe how people think they can go into these places. And they don't have to necessarily just be…

There's a big thing in Scotland called Munro-bagging, where people climb, and try and climb all these hills over 600 meters, I think it is. So, it's, yeah, and they tick them off. And there's like, 260-something. So, there's this kind of summit-centric attitude towards mountaineering, that I never felt quite comfortable with, or it didn't feel familiar to me. But there's something about coming back to this sensing body, and multiplicity, which also connects then to stravaiging , and this idea of wandering. And not necessarily heading for the summit. And Nan Shepherd talks about that a lot.

HELLE

That resonates very well with a problem, with deeply problematic parts with the mountains. I think it’s this idea of purity. That can very easily be connected to a much more fascist way of thinking, and has been also used as such. And I think this is also within Norwegian ecosophy. That the idea of the mountain as pure. And the nature as pure. It is even used in our oil industry. That amazingly, Norwegian oil is pure and clean!

They scoff.

SIMONE

Wow...

HELLE

Yeah, yeah! It's extremely problematic in all aspects.

And what I really like about what you're saying is, what your practice invites forward this multiplicity offerings. An opposition to that purity thinking, you know? It's more messy, you know? Maybe it's like, even pointless.

They laugh together.

HELLE

And I really like this way of, it's almost activist without…

SIMONE

Yeah! There's a quiet activism there, right?

And I think Nan Shepherd's work is also doing a very similar thing, in that sense. And also with yours as well. Yeah, just questioning these ideas that still are very embedded in our understanding of mountains. Or certainly within mountaineering culture. And I do see it shifting a little bit. Even over the process of the past eight years or so. But even coming back to those gendered experiences, which also the project focused on, in some ways. Binary gender discussions. So much more expanded in other parts of our lives, but it was in mountaineering, it feels like you're kind of stepping back quite a few steps to even discuss the accessibility of women's experiences in that. Never mind the breadth of the spectrum, of what we understand as, in terms of, performing gender across those two binaries.

So, it does feel like, yeah, it's an interesting, but also frustrating space to try and have conversations. Even just about foregrounding women's experiences in that world was very controversial in 2019. And somehow like, I annoyed quite a lot of people through foregrounding that. And, but thinking about like, how do we live the work? Or how does the work sit as a feminist practice, for instance, within that context? And just how challenging that can be even today. But yeah, I feel like I need to come back to some of those feminist geographers like Doreen Massey, who are just really amazing at grounding me, in the sort of motivations for working in mountains, for that reason. And actually, Doreen Massey talks about place as process. And I really like that. This thing of it constantly evolving. And it's not fixed, you know? You having to learn, and shift, and adapt. And yeah, to keep coming back to those sort of, those people who have like, a very good ways of talking about it.

HELLE

It made me think about, when you said about the movements, the process of movements. And this is also something that I find really inspiring, in terms of composition. Because of, in the summer, we did this work in the Dolomites. And it was beautiful, I mean, amazing! But looking at the Dolomites now, and then understanding that this origin is sea, it's corals, it starts to be…it's quite overwhelming. And this Italian geologist Luigi Piccardi, he's also written a lot on geomythology in Delphi, which was another work that I did. But he also explained me very well, this like huge choreographic , in my opinion, endeavour, of the African continental plate. When it literally dived down under the Asian European plate, and then lifted. It sort of, dived down in a way that it also like, cut almost like a razor, and lifted the whole plate, the mountain formations that now makes the Dolomites, up. And initiated this upward moment. This buoyancy that is still ongoing. I read about it before, but he described it in a very visual way also. And I think like, Oh my God.

SIMONE

I know! Geologists have such a skill of being able to do that, right?

HELLE

Yeah, they do!

SIMONE

Yeah! They can animate, and the way that they describe the movement is really clear. And I think I always struggle to somehow imagine it. They are thinking about the choreography of this, the scale of that movement and the pressures and the dynamics of it. And even though I try to embody that a lot, when going out and looking, it's like, I think that specialism and that knowledge is really amazing.

HELLE

It's also this way of explaining. You also understand that how our nation states are being situated. It's a very new construct. It's a very human way of trying to organize.

SIMONE

Yes.

HELLE

While the continental plates have a very different way of organizing and composing worlds.

SIMONE

Yeah.

HELLE

And it's ongoing. So, when you say like, okay, you can definitely understand the mountain as a process, an ongoing process of movements. Even though it sometimes feels like it is fixed or static. And I think that this is also with the, of course, now with the, very dramatic awareness and sensations of the climate and nature. We understand this in the moment of crisis. But it has always been the case also. But now it's, of course, very rapid. But I think in a positive way, it invites for an alternative approach to systems that is fixed, that it is in fact not. It's always a different way to, it can be a solution!

SIMONE

Yes, that's so interesting. I just can't remember geological facts very well. But I can sort of embody it somehow when people describe it. But yeah, just the sort of magic of mountains, in that way that we can't fully know like, what the pressure of, or the… Trying to think of the weight of mountains, and the kind of density of them. And just their material energy and agency is so immense. Like water breaking rocks over many years or just, it always surprises me. And amazes me. And I think, yeah, that's where I can fall into a little bit of the awe of mountains. But for good reason, right? It's not necessarily the visual awe of something, when I'm thinking about it as a landscape. But it's more the things I can't see but know that it's happening. And there's a couple of lines in Shepherd's text where she talks about it just being itself, and the mountains are just always just continuing. But I think now, with the climate crisis, it's not quite the same anymore. I think they're not existing without us. We are having a huge effect on them and on that sort of global scale.

Transition Sound: SEARCHING FOR THE ORACLE – Corycian Cave, Delphi.

HELLE

I wanted to ask you, because I think it's so nice that you have been working for eight years did you say, with Nan Shepherd's text, and also in the same locations?

SIMONE

Yeah, I mean, it's been longer than eight years, it's probably been closer to 10. But I think there was something about the feeling of making work with a place, that feels really big. In terms of its geography. And also wanting to understand different details of it. Thinking about the production of art, and sometimes we're commissioned to make things, and we have to make them quite quickly. Or what does it mean to really get to know a place? I think that was my question when I met the Cairngorms for the first time, after reading Nan Shepherd's book. So yeah, so I haven't actually explored many other places. I think I really need to go and focus on, spend some time in the West Mountains in Scotland. I'm kind of feeling like, oh, I should probably go somewhere else. But it has been, yeah, a very humbling journey to sort of feel like you try to spend 10 years getting to know a place. And I still feel like I hardly know it, of course. And I did live in the Highlands for a while and tried to move there. But it's quite difficult to live there as an artist, maybe.

But yeah, I think this thing of returning. Almost like a form of repetition. I love the feeling of returning to some places in the Cairngorms. As Shepherd talks about coming to know a place as you are going to visit, as you would a friend. And I really try to take that on. I know you were talking about Deep Time , but also that sort of thinking about, maybe I'll never make a piece of work that's funded ever again. My interest is to get to know this place, and maybe some work will come from that and maybe some funding will come, and I'll make something. But ultimately the drive was to really understand the place in a particular way, that felt quite quiet. I think just questioning that sort of production model of making, working for dance and theatre companies and touring. And I've never quite been able to make tourable work. It always ends up outside or it always ends up durational in some ways. And then it just, the duration just gets longer and longer. And here I am years later, still wanting to make work in the mountains.

So, yeah, I think when I saw your work about The Mountain Body, and thinking about these things as a body of work as well. I don't see Into The Mountain as a kind of project that's finished. It's just going to be a lifelong learning in a way, whether that's visible to other people or not is another thing, right? And I always feel like dance, it's always a little bit like, maybe seeing that as another form of exploring environmental thought.

And I think dance is actually a lot of the work that we do. And how our work can relate to mountain leader processes and stuff. There's a lot of similarities these days. And I just think that we're sort of, operating in these different contexts, and not actually talking to one another.

HELLE

I was thinking also, I wanted to speak a bit about this position that the mountain has. And how it sort of shapes politics and the cultural history. And now I feel really bad, because I feel like I'm really impressed with, and I love the fact that 10 years going to the same place. And how you then become a witness of that place as well. And the seasonality of it. And how you're becoming that, you know? It's so interesting. I think how I have gone about it is that I really wanted to make these connections between locations and calling it a mountain range. Like the project that builds up over time. To try to understand how these different visits to these different locations can build up a discourse, over time, that points to different hearts, or let's say, ways of togetherness.

I was very lucky to be invited to Delphi to produce a new work with an organization called PCAI. And for me, coming from then Norway, where we have this idea that the Norwegian mountains are very important for how we understand ourselves, our self-image. And then trying to approach Delphi, I was like invited into this world of literature, this world of observations. And it was really amazing! Because I was like, Oh my God, here people have, for thousands of years, written down whatever rituals that were practiced in the mountains. I saw it!

And then this curator I worked with then too, Poka Yio and Kika. But Kika pointed me to Delphi's geomythological archive. And I felt like this was a real eye opener, because it was a way to understand the processes of the mountains, and how they have produced myths that, in a way, is how we explained and developed Western modernization for the good and bad.

SIMONE

Yes! Oh, there's a really great book about this, like all the different imaginings. Robert McFarlane's written this Mountains of the Mind book, which touches on some of that. There's another author and I've forgotten her name, but she tracks some of the sort of cultural understandings of mountains across the globe, and I've forgotten the name. I can find it and put the reference on the list maybe. But how much humans have constructed mountains, and what they stand in for, is huge, right? It's, they are existential in so many ways and yeah. It's sort of fascinatingly endless, that myth making.

HELLE

And I think also, in how they are part of explaining our reality. Because I think that, in a way, you can understand the initial myths coming from Delphi as being movements in, or this is what the geologists would point to, like this is in fact, the movements of the nature itself. They talk about the myth with Apollo's oracle, that she inhales fumes from the ground, and this enables her future vision.

SIMONE

Ah amazing!

HELLE

This was immediately what I was extremely attracted to. And then geologists are disagreeing on what type of gas, and whether it was a gas, and did it happen once, or did it… Because of course, Apollo's oracle performed this ritual nine months a year, every one Monday a month, or I can't remember. But so, maybe it is not the case that these gases came at the point when the guests came.

SIMONE

Ah okay.

HELLE

But still, it's this understanding that it is somehow the seismic ruptures underground, in which the humans try to interpret these powers in nature that became one of the most famous myths. And that were existing over, the Apollo’s oracle were performing for a thousand years. That's endurance! Ten years is nothing! Try A thousand!

SIMONE

Yes, exactly. Exactly!

They laugh together.

SIMONE

It's a kind of, yeah, indigenous storytelling , right? And myths and legends and it's making me think again, like coming back to these experiences of time. A non-linear time. To sort of embrace embodying, or feeling, these different types of time. Rather than trying to make everything really neat in our sort of linear western ways of making everything so neat and tidy.

MARTIN

Thank you, Helle and Simone for this exciting exchange. For the transcript of this episode and resources mentioned in the conversation, go to rosechoreographicschool.com. The link for this page will also be in the podcast episode description, wherever you're listening right now. This podcast is a Rose Choreographic School production. It's produced and edited by Hester Cant and co-curated by Emma McCormick-Goodheart and MARTIN Hargreaves, with additional concept and direction by Izzy Galbraith. Thanks for listening. Goodbye.

Bibliography:

Helle and Simone's Works mentioned:

Body Weather: mapping, touch, dance, histories. – Simone Kenyon

Into The Mountain - Simone Kenyon

The Mountain Body – Helle Siljeholm

Mountains and Rocks:

Cairngorms - Wikipedia

Dolomites - Wikipedia

Kolsås - Wikipedia

Mount Lebanon - Wikipedia

Norangsdalen

Rombeporfyr – Wikipedia

Books:

Fuller, M. and Weizman, E. (2021). Investigative Aesthetics. Verso Books.

‌Kenyon, S., 2025. Walking Out of Our Bodies and Into the Mountain: Dancing, Mountaineering and Embodied Interconnections through Place-Relational Performance. In The Routledge Companion to Site-Specific Performance (pp. 347-360). Routledge.

Kwon, M., 2004. One place after another: Site-specific art and locational identity. MIT press.

Macfarlane, R. (2004). Mountains of the mind : adventures in reaching the summit. New York: Vintage.

‌Pitches, J., 2020. Performing Mountains. Palgrave Macmillan.

Schuppli, S. (2020). MATERIAL WITNESS. MIT Press.

‌Shepherd, N., 2011. The living mountain: a celebration of the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. Canongate Books.

Thomson, A., 2018. A Scots dictionary of nature. Saraband.

People:

Annette Wolfsberger

Arne Næss - Wikipedia

Baruch Spinoza - Wikipedia

Bent Erik Myrvoll

Doreen Massey - Wikipedia