Here we continue to write about it. Actually, we have two interesting stories to share. One story is about pinguins that dance to survive and the other one is about ballerina dancing to save swans.

Living in the Antarctic can be extremely chilly, so Emperor penguins perform a mass dance to stay warm in such a harsh climate. The penguins huddle together; their behavior is obviously an instinctual action in order to survive in such harsh climates.

These unique birds that do not fly huddle together to keep not only themselves warm during the coldest temperatures, but also their eggs and young. If one lead Emperor penguin makes the slightest movement in any direction, the whole mass ensues in a wave of black and white feathered bodies in order to keep the warmth.

A physicist named Daniel Zitterbart, at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany, studied the Emperor Penguin flocks. He found that they started to huddle closer together when temperatures start dropped below zero. The birds use each others body heat and mass to avoid the wind and chilling temps.

This is really a great example of how dance connects and also enables this cute birds to survive.

Just as I found this article about pinguins that dance the news came out that a Russian ballerina from the world-renowned Mariinsky Theatre dressed in full costume performs scenes from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake… not on stage though, but on the frozen Gulf of Finland. This is Ilmira Bagrautinova’s way of objecting against the construction of a port in Batareinaya Bay, a popular beach about 100 km west of St. Petersburg, Russia’s second largest city. Bagrautinova danced in -15C and posted her videos online. She hopes her performance will save real swans which nest in the bay.

This is how dance is used in ecological activism.

That beautiful dance at -15C you can watch here.

Sources:

https://guardianlv.com/2013/12/emperor-penguins-perform-mass-dance-to-stay-warm/

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/ballerina-dancing-ice-real-swan-202019680.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-56300514

Članak Dance and nature – part two se pojavljuje prvo na Ples & Grad.

That morning, not far from my house, in front of a beautiful villa, there was this leaf dancing.

I paused to look. And to make a video.

This leaf danced calmly, happily and carefree.

I couldn’t see what was holding it in the air, the dance was simply magical!

That gave me the idea to find out more about dance and nature; what dances in nature and how.

Of course, animals are dancers! I first found that on the BBC website. Some of them are good dancers, some are not. In addition to the video on this site where you will see animals dancing, there is a list of 10 exceptional dancers from the animal world. Among them is one spider, then one whale and many others.

Some of them perform the most beautiful synchronized dances, some use dance to prepare for mating, some of them prepare stage where they will dance in a special way, some dance no less and no more than a waltz, slowly and gracefully.

And how do trees and flowers dance? For example, when the wind blows, they have no choice but to bend, to dance and be flexible in order to survive. Forest bending to the wind protect us from it, so trees dancing have a very important defensive role.

The Dancing Forest (Russian: Танцующий лес) is a pine forest in Russia noted for its unusually twisted trees. Unlike drunken forests, the trees in the Dancing Forest are twisted into several patterns, such as rings, hearts and convoluted spirals bending to the ground. The exact cause of the trees’ distortion is unknown. According to one version, the distortion is caused by the activity of the caterpillar of Rhyacionia buoliana. In the folk version, the Dancing Forest follows the movement of the sands. So it dances with a sand.

Then I started looking for flowers that dance. Again as for trees, flowers certainly dance in the wind. And flowers and plants, they love music, it has been proven that music as well as beautiful words have a good effect on flowers.

The Lonicera plant, known as Honeysuckle, has flowers that look like they are dancing together, similar to kolo.

Internet search also took me to many courses of dancing in nature, dancing in the woods with trees, dancing for flowers, etc. (just type Dance in Nature in browser, and you will see).

So, next time when you are in the forest or in the meadow, or with your pet, pay attention, there is for sure somebody dancing! 😉

Sources:

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150626-animal-dancers-that-dazzle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_Forest

https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/kolo-traditional-folk-dance-01270

Photo: https://pixels.com/featured/dancing-leaves-lora-lee-chapman.html

Članak Dance and nature se pojavljuje prvo na Ples & Grad.