Gatherings, Ecopsychology Journal
Reviewed by Amy Lenzo

RETURNING HOME is a triumph, and a delightful surprise for anyone unfamiliar with Anna Halprin’s work. This short, stunningly photographed film, is an elegant treatise on death; not death as we humans have come to know it, but death as it is in nature - dynamic, and inextricably inter-woven with life.

Using an interview format that morphs comfortably into performance, this stirring production paints the screen with vibrant strokes of emotion. Together, Director and Cinematographer Andy Abrahams Wilson, along with Halprin and Artistic Director Eeo Stubblefield, have created a palpable on-screen sense of joy and communion. In performance, Halprin’s expansive gestures invite us to join the sacred ceremonies she is enacting before us; to bring our eyes and ears and hearts & share in her interactive dance with the natural world.

Whether wrapped in thin cotton membrane, clothed in a thick layer of moss and earth, or naked beneath sky-blue paint streaked with river clay, Halprin’s amazing 80 year old body somehow perfectly reflects the ancient memories and immortal youth embedded within the earth’s own aged, eternal form. The lines of her face conjure some elemental indigenous race, pierced with dark eyes bright as stars, and evoke a sense of unaffected reverence, for both her and the natural world that so permeates her work.

The film subtly reinstates us in our true relationship to nature, holding humanity and our lives within the context of the natural world’s vulnerability, its delicacy and violence. And yet, for all its thoughtfulness, RETURNING HOME is not a somber film. Eeo describes having been attracted to working with Anna because of her “childlike nature” and the “freedom of her imagination”, and both these attributes are apparent in this occasionally whimsical and playful tribute to a great artist and her work.

At one point Halprin says that these performances are like “rehearsals” for her own “passing over” into death, and that she always returns from them “reborn in some way.” After watching this film, I too felt renewed; in my appreciation for nature, and the power of art to bring us close to her, and in the potency and beauty of my own female body as a microcosm of the earth’s. This remarkable film, like Anna’s work, offers something rare in our modern culture, something that our species truly longs for - a vision of the way back home.

Find a way to see it!


Booklist
Reviewed by Nancy McCray

An early pioneer of post-modern dance, Anna Halprin uses her creative dance movements to connect with nature: earth, water, wind and fire. As observers of her dance, we vicariously experience the peace, joy, distress, liberation and questioning that she describes. The octogenarian's "costumes," a diaphanous body wrap, a nest of twigs crowning her head, and blue paint on her body, complete her transformation. Death is inevitable, and Halprin's reference to her bout with cancer helps her (and us) realize the aging process and the finality of life. Beautifully filmed and choreographed in some of nature's most scenic locales, this thought-provoking presentation, though not for everyone, demonstrates the importance of honoring the human body and the earth body. Dancers, cancer survivors, and nature lovers especially will respect the message.


Library Journal
Reviewed by Amy Cantu

RETURNING HOME celebrates the post-modern style of 80-year old dance pioneer Anna Halprin. Halprin, an influential dance artist and recent recipient of the American Dance Festival's Lifetime Achievement Award in Modern Dance, treats the viewer to several performances, behind-the-scenes preparations, and interviews concerning her unique artistic expression. Halprin doesn't conform to the conventional definition of a dancer; her creative process is more along the lines of a holistic fusion of dance, ecology, anthropology, and spirituality, through which she aims to connect us as individuals to the wider world of humanism. Using her immediate environment as both studio and costume, her dances involve a quasi-surrendering to the forces of nature. In one performance, for example, Halprin is covered in blue paint with a nest of twigs in her hair, sitting beside a pond in a forest as she slowly paints herself with pond mud. In this reviewer's favorite sequence, Halprin is plastered from head to toe in a forest floor's duff while lying in the hollow of a large rotting log. In this stunning time-lapse segment, she disappears slowly beneath an accumulation of crushed leaves. Artistic Director Eeo Stubblefield deserves some recognition for her vivid costumes and choreography; the haunting minimalist score and lush cinematography in turn enhance these features of the documentary. For all dance collections and larger performance arts collections.

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