Projects
By Leaves We Live. When Morris Met Geddes
By Leaves We Live. When Morris Met Geddes
This grant will enable us to research and develop methods for bringing the untold story By Leaves We Live.
Bringing When Morris Met Geddes to life for as wider audience as possible. We will experiment with mixed, augmented and extended reality technologies to explore how they can enhance the storytelling power of traditional dance choreography for screen and stage.
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£5,000
Aims of the project
Our key question? How can augmented, extended and mixed reality technologies engage contemporary audiences and reveal the hidden connections in the trailblazing story of Margaret Morris and Patrick Geddes through the medium of traditional dance? Morris and Geddes are Scotland’s evergreen environmentalists, Celtic Revivalists and pedagogical pioneers who arguably met in Scotland and France 100 years ago, yet their endearing and enduring legacy remains uncharted to date.
Only a generation apart (Morris was born in 1891, London and died in 1980, Glasgow; Geddes was born in 1854, Aberdeenshire and died in 1932, Montpellier), we believe Morris was influenced by the early environmentalism and inclusive pedagogical ideas of Geddes, not only by the philosophy of her fellow dancer and naturalist Raymond Duncan, brother of the famed dancer Isadora Duncan.
Geddes’s relationship with Morris as Scotland’s foremost proponent of natural dance movement is barely explored. Our initial archival research showed that Morris met and worked with Geddes at least once in 1932 at Chateau D’Assas, Geddes’ country house near Montpellier, beside the sea, under the intense Cote d’Azur sunshine.
Morris met Geddes perhaps more than once in Scotland, possibly through their common artists acquaintances: the power couple Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald. We also uncovered that Blackie House, reconstructed for Geddes in 1894 as a university hall in memory of Prof J S Blackie, is where Morris established her Dance Studio HQ in Edinburgh in 1935, with only the
breakout of the WWII necessitating the closure.
With 15 hours of initial footage we shot at Chateau D’Assas, we intend to experiment filming and performing on location at Blackie House. Ultimately, this is a R&D phase as we pay an innovative tribute to Scotland’s visionaries Morris and Geddes through the power of traditional dance and immersive arts 100 years on.
Meet the artists
Traditional Dance Forum of Scotland
The proposed immersive work ‘By Leaves We Live. When Morris Met Geddes’ (tentative title) is close to our hearts as it aligns with at least three of our main priorities at the Traditional Dance Forum of Scotland:
1. Our focus on the role of the unsung women pioneers of traditional and historical dance like Margaret Belford or the dance diva Margaret Morris, including through our Trad Dance Cast podcast series celebrating the often underrepresented women in traditional dance across Scotland and
beyond.
2. Our attempt to bridge the gap of traditional dance on stage and screen. Currently, screen dance and staged dance theatre are genres dominated by contemporary dance and classical/modern ballet. Most importantly, we will raise the bar by exploring traditional dance through new immersive
technologies.
3. Re-energise the early environmental ideas and Mother Earth stories from Scotland and beyond through the body language of traditional dance through our trilogy of dance films, with the latest work culminating into an innovative immersive experience for our audiences. Our trilogy began with our film ‘To Begin the Dance Once More’ (2023) rekindling the origin stories of Egypt and Scotland through the then deities of Isis, Beira and Bride, now climate refugees. It continued with our dance film ’The Bright Fabric of Life’ (2025) revealing devastating yet life-affirming tales of motherhood from Scotland and North Africa. ‘By Leaves We Live. When Morris Met Geddes’ will thus bring our environmental trilogy to a close by unearthing Mother Earth stories from Scotland and France.
Wendy Timmons
Project Researcher/Producer
Iliyana Nedkova
Project Researcher/Producer
Bill Zachs
Project Advisor/Producer
Mare Tralla
Cinematographer
Madeline Squire
Choreographer/Dancer
Tupac Martir
Immersive Arts Consultant
Olga Taxidou
Script Writer/Dramaturg
