Skip to main content Skip to main navigation Skip to page-level navigation Go to the Disability Resource Centre Website Go to the DRC Booking Accommodation Portal Go to the Inclusive Technology Lab Website
The University of British Columbia
UBC - A Place of Mind
The University of British Columbia Okanagan campus
UBC Okanagan News
  • Research
  • People
    • Student Profile
    • Faculty Profile
    • Alumni Spotlight
  • Campus Life
    • Campus News
    • Student Life
    • Teaching & Learning
  • Community Engagement
  • About the Collection
    • Stories for Media
  • UBCO Events
  • Search All Stories
Home / 2013 / April / 25 / Performance artist offers a different side to nature’s glory
Arts & Humanities

Performance artist offers a different side to nature’s glory

April 25, 2013

Natalia Hautala

Natalia Hautala

10 summers of tree planting provides ample material for Fine Arts graduate

What: Looking Sideways, performance art
Who: Bachelor of Fine Arts graduate Natalia Hautala
When:
Friday, April 26, at 5 p.m. and Saturday, April 27, at 2 p.m.
Where: Woodhaven Regional Park, 969 Raymer Road, Kelowna, BC

Natalia Hautala is about to graduate from the Bachelor of Fine Arts program at UBC’s Okanagan campus. And while her formal education is coming to a close, she is using her 10 years of experience as a tree planter as the basis for her graduate absurdist performance Looking Sideways.

A person has a lot of time to think when they are slogging up hills carrying 50 pounds of gear, working by themselves for hours at a time. And the irony of the tree planting job was not lost on Hautala—she was earning money replanting trees cut down by industry to keep up with global supply and demand.

So what does that have to do with facilitating absurdist workshops in Kelowna while she studied at UBC’s Okanagan campus? While out on the hillsides, working doggedly, she had the luxury of extended periods communing with nature. She can tell you the story about a butterfly that chose to accompany her up a steep hill one day, or talk about cold mornings, hot afternoons, and the smell of a pine forest on a sunny day. And she can attest to the power of simple focused actions in nature; to their ability to transcend the normal, the daily, and to attune our minds with our actions.

Looking Sideways is a show based on three workshops that were held in Kelowna last November. The workshops were entitled: How to Conduct the Forest; How to Behave Like a Golden Retriever; and How to Move Like a Rock. The resulting one-woman show is a play with—and for the audience—about our sometimes difficult and often absurd relationship with nature.

Hautala’s work has appeared in venues across Canada—including email inboxes. She has been a part of a number of group collaborative performances and continues to teach and facilitate workshops for all ages on a variety of topics related to yoga, theatre, and movement. Her studio work is an exercise in the embodied understandings of community through movement. She believes in the capacity of the arts to teach us about how much or how little we understand each other and the environment and in the wake of this understanding—to build healthy sustainable communities.

Looking Sideways is an outdoor presentation that takes place at Woodhaven Nature Conservancy Regional Park on Friday, April 26, at 5 p.m. and on Saturday, April 27, at 2p.m. These events are free to attend and are suitable for all ages.

Hautala is in the first cohort of graduates from the newly inaugurated Interdisciplinary Performance program at UBC’s Okanagan campus.

–30–

Media Contact

Patty Wellborn
Media Relations Strategist
University Relations

The University of British Columbia
Okanagan campus
Tel: 250 317 0293
E-mail: patty.wellborn@ubc.ca

Content type: Media Advisory
More content from: Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies

Trending Stories

  • UBC Okanagan student residence receives Passive House certification
  • Every dog can have its day, even online
  • Old DNA provides new insights for national park’s salmon ...
  • From Argentina to Milan
  • UBCO students present year-end artistic exhibit
All Stories
Contact Media Relations

About UBC Okanagan

UBC’s Okanagan campus is an innovative hub for research and learning founded in partnership with local Indigenous peoples, the Syilx Okanagan Nation, in whose traditional, ancestral and unceded territory the campus resides. The most established and influential global rankings all consistently place UBC in the top five per cent of universities in the world, and among the top three Canadian universities.

The Okanagan campus combines a globally recognized UBC education with a tight-knit and entrepreneurial community that welcomes students and faculty from around the world in British Columbia’s stunning Okanagan Valley. For more visit ok.ubc.ca.

Discover more about UBC Okanagan

Find a Program Admissions Book a Tour UBCO Facts
UBC Okanagan Campus News, University Relations

Innovation Precinct Annexation 1 (IA1)
3505 Spectrum Court
Kelowna, BC Canada V1V 2Z1

We respectfully acknowledge the Syilx Okanagan Nation and their peoples, in whose traditional, ancestral, unceded territory UBC Okanagan is situated.

 

Search all stories

Subscribe to receive news by email

Visit UBC's Vancouver news room

Global and Admin Messages

News

Okanagan Campus

UBC Okanagan News
Okanagan Campus
3333 University Way
Kelowna, BC Canada V1V 1V7
Find us on
  
Back to top
The University of British Columbia
  • Emergency Procedures |
  • Terms of Use |
  • Copyright |
  • Accessibility