Call of the Wild: How Avimancy Connects Art, Nature and Conservation

Monika Bowman and Christopher Coles were glamping at Valley Overlook in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park when they heard a distinct birdsong early in the morning in June 2024.

“It has a really nice, beautiful call,” says Coles, a jazz saxophonist and professor of practice for The University of Akron’s Jazz Studies program. “It can sing multiple pitches at one time. I was fascinated by it.”

A birder and multidisciplinary artist, Bowman identified the brown bird with a speckled chest as the wood thrush, which has a harmonic, ethereal call.

The encounter prompted the couple to create Avimancy, a performative project inspired by birdsongs and movements in collaboration with musicians and dancers. The National Center for Choreography-Akron connected them with percussive dancers, who use foot and body movements as a source of rhythmic sound. Awarded an Arts Now grant this summer, the project is beginning with the couple identifying diverse birds to feature.

“We’re on the cusp of the Mississippi Flyway and the Atlantic Flyway. Over 400 bird species come through Ohio every year,” says Bowman, who has previously done poetry and performance art. “Not every place in the U.S. or world is so rich in the diversity of species.”

Coles is transcribing birdsongs, including that of the wood thrush, into music he can play.

“I’m taking what the birds would do, and I’m making it work on the saxophone,” he says.

He is collaborating with Northeast Ohio percussive musicians Patrick Graney and Jamey Haddad and visiting dancers Ashwini Ramaswamy— a Minneapolis-based Bharatanatyam choreographer who explores embodied poetry — and New York City-based Soles of Duende, a female trio of a Kathak, a flamenco and a tap dancer.

“In Southeast Asian forms like Kathak and Bharatanatyam, there are many layers of sound and movement. Sometimes they wear bells around their ankles, so when they are dancing, the foot fall makes one sound, and the bells contribute another sound,” says Christy Bolingbroke, the executive/ artistic director of NCCAkron. “Then there may also be a vocal component or carnatic singing as well.”

The birds can also inspire choreography.

“They do a lot of creative displays when they’re mating or trying to protect them or their young,” Bowman says. “There’s all sorts of different movements that birds provide as a cool blueprint for a neat, new dance experience, mimicking nature.”

Jam sessions between the dancers and musicians are being planned to help them workshop and build toward a larger piece. They are tentatively scheduled for November — hopefully outdoors — when Soles of Duende arrive, and for February, when Ramaswamy visits. In April, Avimancy is set to be a part of a nature-themed Dancing Conversation, which is a free event that fosters discussion between artists surrounding dance and other topics.

“Artists process the world that we live in,” Bolingbroke says. “This is an ongoing dialogue.”

Bowman hopes the project inspires more people to invest in the conservation of birds.

“Birds pollinate. Birds make beautiful music. They mix nutrients. They spread nutrients,” Bowman says. “They are really important to everything.”

In Avimancy, artists display ways in which they connect with nature on a deeper level, so all of us can do the same.

“Nature has always been a way for me to reckon with different things going on in our world,” Bowman says. “People are starting to realize how important it is to get back out there into nature so that we can save ourselves.” //KP

nccakron.org