NEW selection of footage teaser !
01.05.23.
01.05.23.
Shorter Pre vis Teaser feature film DANCES WITH WHALES
Launched on the 08.06.2022 - WORLD OCEAN DAY!!!!
"WHY I DANCE WITH WHALES"
By Chloé Pisco
TREATMENT
GENRE : An Eco Arts Documentary short film, made together WITH wildlife
THEMES: Interspecies connection, communication, learning and our urgent climate crisis.
FORMAT: A non linear narrative documentary short film
LOGLINE:
"An Irish aerial acrobat and dancer dives into the Pacific Ocean and finds herself locked in the gaze of a wild humpback whale.
When Chloé loses herself in exaltation, dancing to express her gratitude, with the full attention and care of the whale and apparently the universe; this whale responds by very clearly dancing back at her, and everything ... changes."
Team so far:
Dancers - (Both coincidentally also featured heavily in the Netflix dist. film Firestarter)
Expert Discussions:
How to Connect Whales Sustainably and with Extraordinary Results
Pisco learned unique ways to behave that entice the whales to come meet you, engaging consensually on their own terms and not only get them to come engage for long periods of sustained connection, but even have them sleep around the boat in full bioluminescence. She will use all these lessons on the shoot.
Drafting Access statements:
A full mental health risk assessment and physical accessibility policy will be researched and published for these projects. The core creative team already includes neurodivergent people, artists with chronic illness, LGBTQIA+ folks, people with disabilities and multiple other wondrous humans. We will consult experts and the people involved, inviting them to ask for the ideal conditions for them to their job well. Optimising this space for the people we want involved, representing the broad gamut of humanity.
Director's statement, footage of whales dancing and further project details below ...What is Oxytocin?
Short Synopsis
August 2017: Lifelong performer and oxytocin researcher Chloé Pisco met her first wild whale underwater. The two shared a dance duet which changed her life.
Pisco spent eight weeks underwater in Tonga / Hervey Bay Australia, eye-to-eye with these individuals and their unique personalities, alongside indigenous dancers whose own ancestors had defining relationships with these very whales. Footage of these dances show moments of deep connection, entangled in transformative lessons.
She speaks on land with Aboriginal Australian Elders, marine biologists and neuroendocrinologists about science, empathy and the language of love.
A story told in a non linear way, for whales.
Creative statement
“Why I Dance With Whales” is “My Octopus Teacher” meets “Arrival” and is ultimately about sharing the transformative feeling that’s possible when you connect with the most empathic creature on earth.
In 1970 the LP “Songs of the Humpback Whale” changed the course of our planet forever, igniting the entire conservation movement from “Save the whales” t-shirts, to COP 26, and Greta. Why? Because their songs evoked a clear emotional response in us we felt how they felt and were mobilised to act!
I’ve had lucid dreams about flying with whales since I was a child and even now, I think my ADHD brain might be part whale, or at least nonlinear––more like a mind map of interlinked ideas and feelings; I barely experience time in a line and know whales don’t. To me, my ADHD is a superpower making me see and feel time all at once, nonlinear, much like my storytelling.
I am a 42 year old queer, neurodivergent, circus / dance performer / director. For 22 years I worked in this field until I injured my spine and bruised my brain, losing mobility and balance, all during the pandemic and my first time having depression. It was phenomenal, overwhelming. I needed to heal myself and start living like I was part of the world again.
I had been studying oxytocin for ten years by the time I met my first whale, but it was only when I had this encounter that my understanding finally fell into place. Struck by the shared bonds between all living things, I saw the fight against time for humans to finally start living as whales do; with empathy, compassion and with love. That's what fuelled me to invest in my own healing and what drives me now to make this film.
Director's Statement expanded
There are some moments in your life that you feel you may have manifested into being. Even dreamt about for years before they ever happened. And then they do, for real.
No one will believe this. I filmed it though. Phew.
I’ve even met, now, 4 whales, in full glowing bioluminescence at night. The last glowing whale this last October 2022, I finally had witnesses with me to share ist with.
There are no simple ways to say this except:
Whales love us just like we love: Oxytocin, my research obsession for the last 10 years.
They make huge efforts to communicate to us, whole body flips, elaborate songs, direct eye gazing, playfulness and even DANCE.
Why?
To connect.
To reach us.
We owe them so much already. They have been communicating with us for millennia. Which is why I will centralise First nation’s people who have had continuing relationships with them since people began. I filmed in Australia. A place with the oldest living culture on earth. Something we were NEVER taught in Europe.
Where I danced with whales. As well as in the never invaded Kingdom Tonga. Where I have encountered dozens more whale individuals with their very adorable and playful new borns.
Why would they bother to take such a keen interest in us?
In me?
Such selfish awful creatures we are.
They rescue other species regularly, it's widely documented and even research papers have been written on the subject of why that is. But not many. Marine biologists, and scientists are terrified to be seen as soft, or heart lead. And honestly that's just bad science.
Fearing to appear heart lead is the reason humanity only proved all humans even make an empathy hormone all day long...in 2013!!!! We are so closed off by the patriarchal structures that continue to limit our knowledge, thought and evolution.
Whales may even be the most empathic creatures on earth, making oxytocin by the kiloton with their enormous hypothalamuses, larger than any other species relative to size.
At the heart of this is: Oxytocin - produced by all mammals including us. The more you make it, the more empathic you are and whales make it by the kiloton. To have a 25 metre creature take a keen interest in you, invest in connecting and caring about you is the most incredible feeling on earth.
Whales actually invest in us, reaching us and connecting, we have got to do better.
As through these connections, we are taught to experience life and reality as they do - NON LINEARLY.
Every other way but straight. Ha!
(Don’t get me started on the many many reasons it could be easily concluded that all humpback whales are gay.)
There is spectacular deconstruction that has happened to me since my first underwater whale connection with that first fateful female. Now hundreds of whale connections later, a further 8 weeks spent underwater with so many of these unique individual beings, and many more revelations and much more unravelling of the arbitrary human constructs like: time, linearity, quantification itself, gender, sex, sexuality, neurotypicality, species, supremacy, anthropocentrism, even the value judgements of positive and negative, and so much more. I have learnt so much from whales.
All gifts given by the acts of deep listening, receptivity and understanding that only art can transmit: How words alone are so limiting they only need 2% of our brain activity to engage, yet the other 98 % of activity is in fact un-verbaliseable … a much larger, immeasurable and complex data packet is transmitted through art. That's the point of it. Expressing what there are no words for.
So the lessons are dense. And like any good post Ayahuasca shamanic trip integration, every encounter reveals its lessons to you, slowly over time.
This DIRECTOR'S brain
My brain works differently.
My brain works fast.
My brain can think of all of the things all at once, always. Even when I 'sleep'. Well,I don’t "sleep" sleep. I am lucid through all my dreams and can even subconsciously direct them.
The shape of my thoughts is a net, a matrix like network of infinite stuff that lights up in patterns of connection. Links made by everything affecting everything.
I'm pretty sure that's how human brains worked before verbal language and the constructed invention of the concept of time.
I'm pretty sure that animals and ancient indigenous cultures also don't know or experience time so linearly.
That's absurd. It's very too quantitative, simplistic and mono-dimensional. Nothing in life is like that.
The shape of my life and thoughts - is more of a rhizome. In fact it's the shape of everything in the universe.
SEE here:
By Chloé Pisco
TREATMENT
GENRE : An Eco Arts Documentary short film, made together WITH wildlife
THEMES: Interspecies connection, communication, learning and our urgent climate crisis.
FORMAT: A non linear narrative documentary short film
LOGLINE:
"An Irish aerial acrobat and dancer dives into the Pacific Ocean and finds herself locked in the gaze of a wild humpback whale.
When Chloé loses herself in exaltation, dancing to express her gratitude, with the full attention and care of the whale and apparently the universe; this whale responds by very clearly dancing back at her, and everything ... changes."
Team so far:
Dancers - (Both coincidentally also featured heavily in the Netflix dist. film Firestarter)
- Tyrel Dulvarie - confirmed: Ex Bangarra Dancer and proudly from Gimuy, he is a descendant of the Yirrganydji, Djirrabul, Kalkadoon and Umpila peoples.
- Yolanda Lowatta - confirmed Ex Bangarra Dancer and a proud Giedi woman born on Thursday Island. She is a descendant of Yam Island in the Torres Strait and is also of Papua New Guinean and Fijian heritage.
- Co-writer/ mentor Katie McNeice - confirmed (Lambing, Who we love)
- Underwater DoP Julie Gautier - approached (Ama, One breath around the world)
- Documentary film mentor - Kim Bartley - confirmed (Pure Grit and Herstory Ireland’s Epic women)
- Editor/ mentor confirmed - Kersti Grunditz-Brennan (Blöd, Marie's Attitude)
- First AD / production co-ordinator / underwater 3rd Cam confirmed- my sister Amelia de Buyl-Pisco, (Bring them down, Callans Kicks, Float like a Butterfly)
- In conversation with potential Producer - Zlata Filipovic (the Farthest, When Women Won)
Expert Discussions:
- Alexis Pauline Gumbs - Confirmed : Author of Undrowned: BLACK FEMINIST LESSONS from MARINE MAMMALS.
- Dr Nan Hauser - Confirmed: President & Director of the Center for Cetacean Research & Conservation Marine biologist in the Cook islands, whose life was saved by a humpback whale.
- Tyson Yunkapota - Approached: Author of SAND TALK: How indigenous thinking can save the world.
- Meleika Gesa-Fatafehi - Confirmed: a Torres Strait Islander and Tongan storyteller whose writing work focuses on poetry and climate change.
- Vanessa Woods and Brian Hare - Approached: Authors of Survival of the Friendliest.
- Paul Watson - Confirmed: Co - Founder of Greenpeace and founder of Sea Shepherd who's entire life was changed by the altruism of a whale.
- Katie Payne - Approached: First to recognise the whale sounds were actual song/ music and co producer of Songs of the Humpback Whale 1970.
- Tentative and delicate research is ongoing to establish exactly what sharing of which knowledge, from a long list of indigenous elders recognised, is appropriate, (from Australia, Tonga and some from North America.)
A Statement on Indigenous Cultural Heritage Protection within this project:
Cultural knowledge such a this, is protected, should and will be approached with endless care and respect and even guidance from the communities it originates from.
Guidelines dealing with the correct management of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) Creative Intellectual property, like the ones written by the Australia Council for the Arts for example, will be considered and improved upon. As well as any other relevant and helpful sources.
First nations advisers will be consulted every step of the way and when budgets are larger, or where the feature film is concerned, multiple paid roles for First nations artists and advisers will be centralised to the filmmaking, the creative processes, leadership and structures in places within these, including constant review and improvements, to ensure safety for all ATSI participants as they work and create.
How to Connect Whales Sustainably and with Extraordinary Results
Pisco learned unique ways to behave that entice the whales to come meet you, engaging consensually on their own terms and not only get them to come engage for long periods of sustained connection, but even have them sleep around the boat in full bioluminescence. She will use all these lessons on the shoot.
Drafting Access statements:
A full mental health risk assessment and physical accessibility policy will be researched and published for these projects. The core creative team already includes neurodivergent people, artists with chronic illness, LGBTQIA+ folks, people with disabilities and multiple other wondrous humans. We will consult experts and the people involved, inviting them to ask for the ideal conditions for them to their job well. Optimising this space for the people we want involved, representing the broad gamut of humanity.
Director's statement, footage of whales dancing and further project details below ...What is Oxytocin?
Short Synopsis
August 2017: Lifelong performer and oxytocin researcher Chloé Pisco met her first wild whale underwater. The two shared a dance duet which changed her life.
Pisco spent eight weeks underwater in Tonga / Hervey Bay Australia, eye-to-eye with these individuals and their unique personalities, alongside indigenous dancers whose own ancestors had defining relationships with these very whales. Footage of these dances show moments of deep connection, entangled in transformative lessons.
She speaks on land with Aboriginal Australian Elders, marine biologists and neuroendocrinologists about science, empathy and the language of love.
A story told in a non linear way, for whales.
Creative statement
“Why I Dance With Whales” is “My Octopus Teacher” meets “Arrival” and is ultimately about sharing the transformative feeling that’s possible when you connect with the most empathic creature on earth.
In 1970 the LP “Songs of the Humpback Whale” changed the course of our planet forever, igniting the entire conservation movement from “Save the whales” t-shirts, to COP 26, and Greta. Why? Because their songs evoked a clear emotional response in us we felt how they felt and were mobilised to act!
I’ve had lucid dreams about flying with whales since I was a child and even now, I think my ADHD brain might be part whale, or at least nonlinear––more like a mind map of interlinked ideas and feelings; I barely experience time in a line and know whales don’t. To me, my ADHD is a superpower making me see and feel time all at once, nonlinear, much like my storytelling.
I am a 42 year old queer, neurodivergent, circus / dance performer / director. For 22 years I worked in this field until I injured my spine and bruised my brain, losing mobility and balance, all during the pandemic and my first time having depression. It was phenomenal, overwhelming. I needed to heal myself and start living like I was part of the world again.
I had been studying oxytocin for ten years by the time I met my first whale, but it was only when I had this encounter that my understanding finally fell into place. Struck by the shared bonds between all living things, I saw the fight against time for humans to finally start living as whales do; with empathy, compassion and with love. That's what fuelled me to invest in my own healing and what drives me now to make this film.
Director's Statement expanded
There are some moments in your life that you feel you may have manifested into being. Even dreamt about for years before they ever happened. And then they do, for real.
No one will believe this. I filmed it though. Phew.
I’ve even met, now, 4 whales, in full glowing bioluminescence at night. The last glowing whale this last October 2022, I finally had witnesses with me to share ist with.
There are no simple ways to say this except:
Whales love us just like we love: Oxytocin, my research obsession for the last 10 years.
They make huge efforts to communicate to us, whole body flips, elaborate songs, direct eye gazing, playfulness and even DANCE.
Why?
To connect.
To reach us.
We owe them so much already. They have been communicating with us for millennia. Which is why I will centralise First nation’s people who have had continuing relationships with them since people began. I filmed in Australia. A place with the oldest living culture on earth. Something we were NEVER taught in Europe.
Where I danced with whales. As well as in the never invaded Kingdom Tonga. Where I have encountered dozens more whale individuals with their very adorable and playful new borns.
Why would they bother to take such a keen interest in us?
In me?
Such selfish awful creatures we are.
They rescue other species regularly, it's widely documented and even research papers have been written on the subject of why that is. But not many. Marine biologists, and scientists are terrified to be seen as soft, or heart lead. And honestly that's just bad science.
Fearing to appear heart lead is the reason humanity only proved all humans even make an empathy hormone all day long...in 2013!!!! We are so closed off by the patriarchal structures that continue to limit our knowledge, thought and evolution.
Whales may even be the most empathic creatures on earth, making oxytocin by the kiloton with their enormous hypothalamuses, larger than any other species relative to size.
At the heart of this is: Oxytocin - produced by all mammals including us. The more you make it, the more empathic you are and whales make it by the kiloton. To have a 25 metre creature take a keen interest in you, invest in connecting and caring about you is the most incredible feeling on earth.
Whales actually invest in us, reaching us and connecting, we have got to do better.
As through these connections, we are taught to experience life and reality as they do - NON LINEARLY.
Every other way but straight. Ha!
(Don’t get me started on the many many reasons it could be easily concluded that all humpback whales are gay.)
There is spectacular deconstruction that has happened to me since my first underwater whale connection with that first fateful female. Now hundreds of whale connections later, a further 8 weeks spent underwater with so many of these unique individual beings, and many more revelations and much more unravelling of the arbitrary human constructs like: time, linearity, quantification itself, gender, sex, sexuality, neurotypicality, species, supremacy, anthropocentrism, even the value judgements of positive and negative, and so much more. I have learnt so much from whales.
All gifts given by the acts of deep listening, receptivity and understanding that only art can transmit: How words alone are so limiting they only need 2% of our brain activity to engage, yet the other 98 % of activity is in fact un-verbaliseable … a much larger, immeasurable and complex data packet is transmitted through art. That's the point of it. Expressing what there are no words for.
So the lessons are dense. And like any good post Ayahuasca shamanic trip integration, every encounter reveals its lessons to you, slowly over time.
This DIRECTOR'S brain
My brain works differently.
My brain works fast.
My brain can think of all of the things all at once, always. Even when I 'sleep'. Well,I don’t "sleep" sleep. I am lucid through all my dreams and can even subconsciously direct them.
The shape of my thoughts is a net, a matrix like network of infinite stuff that lights up in patterns of connection. Links made by everything affecting everything.
I'm pretty sure that's how human brains worked before verbal language and the constructed invention of the concept of time.
I'm pretty sure that animals and ancient indigenous cultures also don't know or experience time so linearly.
That's absurd. It's very too quantitative, simplistic and mono-dimensional. Nothing in life is like that.
The shape of my life and thoughts - is more of a rhizome. In fact it's the shape of everything in the universe.
SEE here:
This is a central section of the simulation showing the exact shape and patterns of our entire known universe, computerised, drawn and calculated by the scientists at the Max-Planck institute for Astrophysics.
Look bang in the middle, that's you.
Well our home super cluster - Laniakea meaning immeasurable heaven.
That's the central yellow dot.
This grand shape remind you of anything?
Well ... everything.
A shape that returns over and over in nature.
It is everything, everywhere...
(More on those beautiful nerds and this great project here: https://wwwmpa.mpa-garching.mpg.de/galform/virgo/millennium/)
Back to my brain - Like so many, I have survived events like rape, sexual assault, countless physical violent attacks and a slew of other momentously shit moments.
But in truth, thanks to lessons from whales and their care and investment to connect with me paired with my own oxytocin research, commitment to empathy, toward all, myself, somatic healing practices and a deep listening to my own nature, within my nervous system:
I can say I am not only healed physically, more grounded than ever, thanks to these bonds to nature I am self regulating my nervous system, psychologically and am an all round healthy, blissed out and grateful human.
I am excited to bring all the healing, the deconstruction of arbitrary concepts and transformational love given to me by whales, and share it with you all.
And as dancers can translate movement language, we are the ideal experts.
And nonlinear, ADHD rhythmed thinkers and hyper empaths ... even more so.
We feel all the things, all at the same time.
Noticing all the details of everyone else’s experiences all the time, can be exhausting.
But it’s also very engaging and exilarating.
We are feeling it all.
Below is a sample of the RAW UNEDITED FOOTAGE from TONGA and Australia -
PLEASE WATCH in HD, with headphones, in the dark and read the video description of the magical contexts at the same time. It really makes it.
ENJOY!!!
PLEASE WATCH in HD, with headphones, in the dark and read the video description of the magical contexts at the same time. It really makes it.
ENJOY!!!
THE FEATURE FILM DANCES WITH WHALES:
Ove the last year I have been building the skills, and a huge team for this feature film.
It is way too big a team for the short.
In the feature: I will not centralise myself.
But the massive team of first nations dancers and singers I will bring to the whales over a 5 month shoot. But that is a much larger parent project. For further down the line.
Encountering wild whales underwater for life changing danced duets for 6 years.
This short will allow me to cut my teeth on film making with an incredible team of continued mentors and creatives that I want to keep growing with.
My whaley family.
I want to share the transformative power of connection with a whale with the whole world.
The why: Because it's urgent, only 6 years left till the point of no return on ocean temperatures. I want to allow the freeing embodied realisation I learned from whales:
That we are nature.
We are the same as them.
It’s time to do better, right f***ing now.
DANCES WITH WHALES
FEATURE
SYNOPSIS AND FURTHER DETAILS
SYNOPSIS:
We dive into a blue world, loud with emotive songs of longing, following a team that holds it’s breath in the South Pacific ocean, lead by Irish director and performer of dance / circus, CHLOÉ PISCO.
We bring 12 DANCERS to the Kingdom of Tonga, free diving, to meet wild humpback WHALES for the first time. Our team is made up exclusively of super talents who happen to belong to marginalised groups. I.e.: Women, First Nations’s peoples, LGBTQIA+ people. First nations people's of Australia and of the South Pacific Islands have some of the oldest living cultures on earth, (some 100,000 years old so far), and many of which involve profound links to the sea and even whales.
They are all incredibly passionate about powerful communication through art and dance; working on affecting that very phenomenon for this film, but this time, interspecies: We will communicate non verbally/ non acoustically through a dance and body language exchange…with wild humpback whales.
The director spent 8 weeks underwater doing this successfully in Tonga and Australia. Now it’s time to go back with our extraordinary team to explore our questions and get the shots we need to share our ideas on these.
Pisco has been researching oxytocin since 2013 and in her recent Masters' thesis research, she proved that this empathy hormone is increased when we engage in live arts.
These whales build real bonds with us. They not only make oxytocin, the very same empathy and bonding hormone that 95 % of humans make, they rescue other species.
Most humpback whales also express themselves through dance and song.
Is that Art? Let’s start with what is art?
Our favourite definition: Art is an individual’s particular perspective expressed creatively. So whales are singing and dancing about their perspective on their own rich and complex worlds.
There is communicative language in that.
Pisco wants to decode it.
She wants to understand them.
Build a database of movement language.
After all, dance is an expressive format that delivers much larger and broader date packets than mere verbal sentences.
Communicating non verbally through dance interspecies is significant.
Creating movement to communicate is art...
Art itself is creative expression.
Expression is a form of communication.
Communication involves connection.
Connection is at the heart of the internal oxytocin neurochemical tides of all mammals.
We are connecting to them and building bonds through this interchange of communicated ideas / feelings / data.
So when we dance these duets, we are not only sharing feelings through communication, not only are we building bonds, we are learning from them about how it is to be a whale. And understanding them on a much deeper level than words, on an empathic and creative expression level.
Eco tourism is capitalising on bullying these whales, and at the same time capitalising on the human desire for connection - oxytocin. As well as on the whale tendencies to care for and connect to humans and engage in underwater dance duets.
Pisco is seeking a more authentic connection, that includes their consent, with and from these 25 metre beings with complex sentience, empathy, nuanced social bonds, altruism towards other species, (documented multiple times across the globe), huge hearts and giant brains that produce enormous amounts of oxytocin.
This happens in their habitat, all while avoiding scaring them, or crossing their “unspoken” boundaries.
During her 8 weeks underwater, the whales taught her how to understand them and their consensual boundaries. Tonga, specifically is a birthing ground where Pisco encountered dozens of mother calf pairs.
She will show how this happens well, and when it doesn’t work.
Pisco learned unique ways to behave that entice the whales to come meet you, engaging consensually on their own terms and not only get them to come engage for long periods of sustained connection, but even have them sleep around the boat in full bioluminescence. She will use all these lessons on the shoot.
The Climax, as planned so far, is to have shots of whales and dancers in the same frame having a DANCED DUET conversations.
Playing a game of memory, where one does a move and the other responds with the same and then adds a move. Pisco did this in Tonga and it worked over and over again. Especially with the baby whale calves. We may even get to witness / document one of the many times that whales act altruistically, rescuing other species for example.
We know that once we are shooting, in situ with wild animals, other gifts and opportunities for themes will become apparent. Further Resolutions will become clear after the fact, during the edit.
Our goal as we lure people in with the dancing and singing whales… is to bond them to our subjects and then hit them with the hard truths.
I want everyone to feel what it's like to feel connection and care from a 25 metre oxytocin producing mammal!
You are transformed and are able to embody the truth:
We are not alone. Ever.
We are loved and a part of a inter-affective web of interspecies co-investment, dependence and care.
We are not just part of nature,
WE ARE NATURE
It is TIME TO FECKING ACT LIKE IT
Ove the last year I have been building the skills, and a huge team for this feature film.
It is way too big a team for the short.
In the feature: I will not centralise myself.
But the massive team of first nations dancers and singers I will bring to the whales over a 5 month shoot. But that is a much larger parent project. For further down the line.
Encountering wild whales underwater for life changing danced duets for 6 years.
This short will allow me to cut my teeth on film making with an incredible team of continued mentors and creatives that I want to keep growing with.
My whaley family.
I want to share the transformative power of connection with a whale with the whole world.
The why: Because it's urgent, only 6 years left till the point of no return on ocean temperatures. I want to allow the freeing embodied realisation I learned from whales:
That we are nature.
We are the same as them.
It’s time to do better, right f***ing now.
DANCES WITH WHALES
FEATURE
SYNOPSIS AND FURTHER DETAILS
SYNOPSIS:
We dive into a blue world, loud with emotive songs of longing, following a team that holds it’s breath in the South Pacific ocean, lead by Irish director and performer of dance / circus, CHLOÉ PISCO.
We bring 12 DANCERS to the Kingdom of Tonga, free diving, to meet wild humpback WHALES for the first time. Our team is made up exclusively of super talents who happen to belong to marginalised groups. I.e.: Women, First Nations’s peoples, LGBTQIA+ people. First nations people's of Australia and of the South Pacific Islands have some of the oldest living cultures on earth, (some 100,000 years old so far), and many of which involve profound links to the sea and even whales.
They are all incredibly passionate about powerful communication through art and dance; working on affecting that very phenomenon for this film, but this time, interspecies: We will communicate non verbally/ non acoustically through a dance and body language exchange…with wild humpback whales.
The director spent 8 weeks underwater doing this successfully in Tonga and Australia. Now it’s time to go back with our extraordinary team to explore our questions and get the shots we need to share our ideas on these.
Pisco has been researching oxytocin since 2013 and in her recent Masters' thesis research, she proved that this empathy hormone is increased when we engage in live arts.
These whales build real bonds with us. They not only make oxytocin, the very same empathy and bonding hormone that 95 % of humans make, they rescue other species.
Most humpback whales also express themselves through dance and song.
Is that Art? Let’s start with what is art?
Our favourite definition: Art is an individual’s particular perspective expressed creatively. So whales are singing and dancing about their perspective on their own rich and complex worlds.
There is communicative language in that.
Pisco wants to decode it.
She wants to understand them.
Build a database of movement language.
After all, dance is an expressive format that delivers much larger and broader date packets than mere verbal sentences.
Communicating non verbally through dance interspecies is significant.
Creating movement to communicate is art...
Art itself is creative expression.
Expression is a form of communication.
Communication involves connection.
Connection is at the heart of the internal oxytocin neurochemical tides of all mammals.
We are connecting to them and building bonds through this interchange of communicated ideas / feelings / data.
So when we dance these duets, we are not only sharing feelings through communication, not only are we building bonds, we are learning from them about how it is to be a whale. And understanding them on a much deeper level than words, on an empathic and creative expression level.
Eco tourism is capitalising on bullying these whales, and at the same time capitalising on the human desire for connection - oxytocin. As well as on the whale tendencies to care for and connect to humans and engage in underwater dance duets.
Pisco is seeking a more authentic connection, that includes their consent, with and from these 25 metre beings with complex sentience, empathy, nuanced social bonds, altruism towards other species, (documented multiple times across the globe), huge hearts and giant brains that produce enormous amounts of oxytocin.
This happens in their habitat, all while avoiding scaring them, or crossing their “unspoken” boundaries.
During her 8 weeks underwater, the whales taught her how to understand them and their consensual boundaries. Tonga, specifically is a birthing ground where Pisco encountered dozens of mother calf pairs.
She will show how this happens well, and when it doesn’t work.
Pisco learned unique ways to behave that entice the whales to come meet you, engaging consensually on their own terms and not only get them to come engage for long periods of sustained connection, but even have them sleep around the boat in full bioluminescence. She will use all these lessons on the shoot.
The Climax, as planned so far, is to have shots of whales and dancers in the same frame having a DANCED DUET conversations.
Playing a game of memory, where one does a move and the other responds with the same and then adds a move. Pisco did this in Tonga and it worked over and over again. Especially with the baby whale calves. We may even get to witness / document one of the many times that whales act altruistically, rescuing other species for example.
We know that once we are shooting, in situ with wild animals, other gifts and opportunities for themes will become apparent. Further Resolutions will become clear after the fact, during the edit.
Our goal as we lure people in with the dancing and singing whales… is to bond them to our subjects and then hit them with the hard truths.
I want everyone to feel what it's like to feel connection and care from a 25 metre oxytocin producing mammal!
You are transformed and are able to embody the truth:
We are not alone. Ever.
We are loved and a part of a inter-affective web of interspecies co-investment, dependence and care.
We are not just part of nature,
WE ARE NATURE
It is TIME TO FECKING ACT LIKE IT
We wish to acknowledge the Butchulla people, the Yugambeh people, the clans that make up the Bundjalung Nations, the Turrbal and Yaggera people, as original custodians of the lands and seas where we often work.
Places where stories, culture and art have been made and shared for millennia. Recognising their ancestors, as well as past, current and future elders; whose sovereign country was never ceded.
Australia always was, and always will be, aboriginal land.