Thursday, August 07, 2008

Enclosure 44

I wish I was going up to Edinburgh in the next week. It is a long time since I have been to the fringe, and I would like to do it again (although I prefer Glasgows Mayfest), but I would really like to see the latest exhibit at Edinburgh Zoo. Enclosure 44 - Humans has a dance troup in one of the enclosures (previously for beavers) and they are lspending approximately 7 hours a day there.

As far as I can work out there will be some set pieces, like feeding time and a set dance each day, but most of it will be ad lib, the dancers reacting to their audience.

This is potentially quite amazing. Some time spent watching and thinking could tell us so much about ourselves. There are definitely a lot of lessons about how we treat animals and what we expect of them, but I suspect it can go deeper than that. Thinking about humans in the more abstract so we can consider how we interact together, how we try to find dominance in our lives over others, what we looko for and what we consider important. Worth a trip I reckon.

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