Choreographing Dirt: Movement, Performance, and Ecology in the Anthropocene. Angenette Spalink. Studies in Theatre, Ecology, and Performance Series, no. 3. New York: Routledge, 2024; Pp. 116.

Choreographing Dirt provides an explorative space where performance art intertwines with ecology, specifically highlighting the importance of dirt in performances. This text is to date one of five in the Routledge Studies in Theatre, Ecology, and Performance Series (STEP). Angenette Spalink’s inclusion in this series perfectly aligns with the larger goals of STEP by exploring global intersections of theatre, ecology, and performance studies. In four chapters, each examining a different case study, Spalink provides diverse examples of choreographic elements through performance and how those address the myriad of ecological materials that display biogeocultography, a term coined by the author to describe the movement of dirt in biological, geographical, and cultural ways. This text is a true academic dive into ecocritical research, movement, and dirt. 

The introduction is invaluable in providing a framework for understanding the fields of biogeocultography and performative taphonomy, or how the movement of ecological matter creates “biological, geographic, and cultural meaning” and how the existence of “ecological matter on stage and page—e.g., dirt—‘does’ something" (16). Spalink sets up the text’s overarching goal to display how interactions of performative taphonomy with humans ultimately show that “the performer is not always human” (4). Thus, the entire text centers on each case study and expands upon how human interaction and ecological matter in each performance challenges traditional frameworks of theatrical production and ecological divisions.

Starting with Suzan-Lori Parks’ The America Play, Chapter 1 provides a solid beginning of the exploration of dirt in a literal sense. This chapter primarily focuses on the movement of Parks’ characterization of Abraham Lincoln and how the repeated act of digging holes creates a ritual that reflects the power dynamics of America’s racial and classist past (28). Spalink’s examination of this 1994 production provides historical context to dirt, highlighting the connections of dirt to America’s past racialized practices of linking those who work with dirt as lower class, immoral, and uncivilized, thus justifying the treatment of those populations as “an expendable commodity and contaminant” (31). 

Chapter 2 focuses on dance in Pina Bausch's 1975 staging of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. This study offers a detailed dive into the peat moss that covered the stage in this production, including context for the global ecological importance of peat. Spalink notes that this particular piece has no record of where the peat came from, nor what happened to it after the production (52). As I listened to the music while reading the chapter, it set the tone for the historiography, helping me envision the original performance from the descriptions, while also highlighting the importance of productions to consider the full cycle of production work and materials from page to stage to post-production.   

Chapters 3 and 4 display a culmination and enhancement of Spalink’s text. These final chapters are overall stronger in their content due to the inclusion of production shots and primary research. Spalink had previously presented the information in Chapter 3 at Earth Matters on Stage in 2012 with the Stage Manager of the production who provided their personal experience and interviews with the company, and the information in Chapter 4 includes observations from her personally attending the production and conducting interviews with the Director. 

In Chapter 3, Spalink explores the 2010 performance of Eveoke Dance Theatre's Las Mariposas, “an imaginative adaptation of Alvarez’s novel, which tells the story of the Mirabal sisters, who led an underground resistance – known as the Fourteenth of June Movement – in the 1950s, against Dominican dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo” (59). This piece involved boxes of dirt symbolizing the graves in which the sisters die and are buried. The use of dirt not only enhances the performance and meanings of the production but also adds to the post-show process, both in terms of time and impact to the cast. The cast felt the connection to the dirt beyond that of a prop or scenic piece, unable to feel finished with the night’s performance until the dirt was restored to their bins (60). Spalink’s study reiterates that working with dirt through intimate taphonomy, or the relationship of the performer with the lifecycle of the dirt, changes the perceptions and relationships performers have with dirt. Thus, the dancers become dirt, and, therefore, we must question whether the dirt can become human (66). Chapter 3 brings up the practical issue of what can be done with the dirt after a production concludes, allowing us, the reader, to again consider the full cycle of materials utilized in performance. 

The last chapter, Chapter 4, culminates with an examination of Iván-Daniel Espinosa’s Messengers Divinos, a Butoh performance in 2018 that utilized dirt with fungi, which prompted dancers to attune how their actions impacted—and, in turn, reacted to—the mycelium present. The mycelium transcended past the original concept of “dirt,” elevated on day one of rehearsal as a vital performer and even consumed by the performers to fully realize the life cycle needed to encompass the dancers in the full food web of the fungi. Spalink uses this study to “consider how performance practices might incorporate (speculative) ecological ethics” (78). Spalink notes that some of the ecomaterials were sourced from a lab while others from the forest, but all were returned to their original homes after, thus keeping the production honest to their “eco-ethical obligation” (92).

By the end of Choreographing Dirt, I found myself linking many of Spalink’s thoughts to ecoscenography principles—a call to performance creators to consider the impact of our materials and the full cycle of how those materials are sourced, used, and reused. Spalink calls on readers to question if the impact and use of these ecological materials on stage hold more value than the use of these materials which simply leaves them in their natural state. The text also allows us to question dirt beyond the basics of the technical challenges: yes, dirt onstage can create physical challenges for theatrical spaces, equipment, and audiences. But having real dirt asks us to consider our relationship with dirt, how dirt “becomes” part of us, and what makes up that dirt (all the way to a microscopic level); real dirt also challenges us to view dirt itself as a performer. Other texts in the Routledge series also ask readers to consider their impact and intersection with natural elements, and so Spalink’s text is in the right place for this research and interdisciplinary approach to movement, dance, and performance.