“Suspended between past and future, the garden offers an embodied, lingering present—almost eternal—a time outside of time.”
{ Marco Martella, Revue Jardins / Éditions Le Temps }

This poetic and performative project, In the garden, unfolds as a sensorial and ecological exploration into how humans can reconnect with their environments through embodied presence, attentive listening, and artistic expression. The performers—Myriam Pruvot, Lisanne Goodhue, and Laura Kirshenbaum—transform each botanical garden into a living environment for encounter, where fiction and reality, sound and movement, coexist and intermingle.

At its core, the work proposes that gardens—often overlooked as static displays—are in fact vibrant, layered ecosystems. Through the format of a choreographed dérive, the performers invite the audience into a shared rhythm with the living environment. This slow, immersive approach encourages a shedding of habitual perception in favor of deeper attunement. Interconnection unfolds not through spectacle, but through intimacy: by listening closely, by moving with the terrain, and by acknowledging the multiplicity of life forms and histories embedded in each garden.

The project’s nomadic nature reflects this approach. By migrating through different gardens—from Montpellier and Zagreb to Versailles and Dijon—it resists a fixed identity, instead adapting to each place’s ecological, cultural, and historical specificity. Each iteration becomes a portrait—drawn not in lines or facts, but in ephemeral gestures, echoes, and interactions.

The question, “How does the search for interconnection with the environment unfold into new ways of co-existing?” is answered not with a singular solution, but with a method: to dwell, to listen, to move, to be porous. In doing so, In the garden suggests that co-existence is not an ideal to be achieved, but a practice to be lived—one rooted in attention, reciprocity, and continuous transformation.

Credits

By Laura Kirshenbaum In collaboration with dancer Lisanne Goodhue and sound artist Myriam Pruvot
Dramaturgical support Talia De Vries
Clothes and propos Anat Bosak, Laura Kirshenbaum

Production  Golden Hands- Lucille Belland
Coproduction  ICI – The National Centre for Choreography -Occitanie/ Pyrénées Méditerranée/ Direction Christian Rizzo – In the. frame of Life Long Burning, supported by the European commission (Montpellier, FR); Antisezona Festival – KIK MELONE (Zagreb, HR), Nos Lieux Communs Network – Nomad program for site specific projects; l’Atelline – Centre for Art and Public Space (Montpellier, FR).
Residencies  CCN de Roubaix/ Ballet du Nord; Kunstencentrum BUDA (Kortrijk, BE)
With the financial support of DRAC – Occitanie Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs; The city of Montpellier; Montpellier botanical garden/ the faculty of Medicine; Occitanie en Scène; SPEDIDAM – BO chorégraphique.
Workshops The University of Montpellier, Avril 2022; Jean Monnet high school, Mars 2023; Atelline- Centre for Art and Public Space, April 2023; Dance and landscape( le dancing CNDC, Dijon) May 2023;
 Body, Movement, Landscape, May 2024 (Plastique Danse Flore Festival in collaboration with National School of Landscape Architecture, Versailles).