Dancers perform with trees at Dance the Redwoods in Mendocino

MENDOCINO CO., 9/23/24 — Walk through a redwood grove and stop to watch dancers perform on — and with — the trees. That’s what happens at the Mendocino Dance Project (MDP)’s unique Dance the Redwoods show, along with live music at each of four “stages” over a half-mile walk. 

The show features eight dances by a troupe of women with some serious climbing skills. They dance on young growth redwoods in a private grove five minutes from the town of Mendocino. Mendocino’s logging past is ever-present, as stumps of older trees are just off the path. In one dance, the performer emerges from a fairy ring of newer trees surrounding the charred stump, as if birthed from the old tree itself. 

It’s hard not to be whimsical when trying to spot the dancers already positioned up in the trees before each segment. At times they seem to appear out of nowhere from behind a tree. In one performance, called Passage, three dancers came together in a precisely timed sculpture between the trees, all with an ease and grace that belies the strength and creative choreography required to put on this show.  

In a dance called Revolve, soloist Mackenzie Rain seemed almost to seduce the tree. In Breeze, dancers Kara Starkweather and Emily Anthony performed a light-hearted duet on an iron structure set up between two giants.  

Local musicians Gwyneth Moreland and Skyler Hinkle were among those accompanying the performances, ending their set with the appropriately named Girl in the Gulch. Mitchell Holman played an instrument of his own making, an electric bass violin that somehow seemed exactly right for a forest performance. 

MDP describes its mission as “helping art thrive in rural communities” and “bringing the power of dance to theaters and outside spaces, on and off the ground.” The dancers in Dance the Redwoods were way off the ground, almost taking flight, and bringing the audience with them.  

More information and tickets to the final performances of Dance the Redwoods, on Sunday, September 29 at 1 and 4 pm, are available at https://mendocinodanceproject.ticketspice.com/dance-the-redwoods-2024.