Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Dani Cole. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Dani, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

Since childhood, I have been particularly drawn to trees, enjoying their presence, company, and abundance of connections they support. As I grew up, my father, an infant immigrant from Japan, was frequently outside determining how he could grow Japanese maples in a very American lawn, attempting to connect directly with a culture increasingly distant from his physical experience. With these influences, alongside surprising, emergent grief when a beloved tree fell in my childhood yard during a severe summer storm, I became obsessively curious about what a tree’s (and a forest’s) lived experience could be, as well as the particular relationships trees have with climate and culture. In the early pandemic, through long walks, free NYC Parks Street Tree Care Stewardship trainings, countless books/conversations with a variety of tree adjacent people, and many “dances” underneath and within the forest canopy, I became a Street Tree Care Captain (an NYC Parks designation). I organized and continue to organize gatherings of neighbors and community members to learn how to steward city street trees that are public responsibility. Simultaneously, I was co-organizing a Social Justice Movement Lab with my long-time mentor and dance/visual artist Jill Sigman. This Lab, encouraging art as process in support of social justice rather than product, ended up being fertile ground for the development of a public + free “Tree Time” workshop. As a steward, I found general education about trees wonderful, but lacking in its ability to impart an elemental/relational connection with trees and urban ecology beyond “I take care of you” and quantifiable facts. Drawing on my history as a dancer, Licensed Creative Arts Therapist, and writer, the “Tree Time” workshop invites participants to explore trees through their senses, movement improvisation, art-making, and conversation in order to deepen participants’ embodied relationships with local ecosystems. The workshop provides a sensitive overview of colonial and indigenous cultural histories related to trees, threats trees face from city living, and environmental justice issues related to street tree planting and green space. From a space of creative exploration and processing entangled histories, participants then were invited to learn about stewardship techniques and collaboratively engage in stewardship. I continue to run this workshop annually.

Dani, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Currently, I am a Licensed Creative Arts Therapist working in public health. I am also the author of the poetry book “Between Heart and Sap” (Nothing to Say Press), a freelance dance artist, and an Urban Ecological Steward with a focus on trees. It all began with and always comes back to the body — I am thankful for the support of my parents in pursuing some dance forms (ballet, modern, jazz — whatever was available in my hometown) as a child. I went on to study Dance and Human Rights & Politics for my undergraduate degree. While in college, I became increasingly curious about the intersection of the body and politics: how bodies are shaped by ideas/politics, and how bodies shape ideas/politics. I am thankful to jill sigman/thinkdance, whom I met through her Body Politic Program, for expanding this intersection and encouraging dance artists (and beyond!) to ask questions about how we can create authentic relationships with movements and organizers to support their efforts through embodied lenses. Around this time same, I began to navigate severe chronic illness and found myself unable to sustain a dance career that many of my peers were pursuing. Amidst hurt and contemplation of how/where my body could be most supportive, I became increasingly connected to Disability Justice communities/educators who helped support my understandings of the intersections of ableism/art/politics and became increasingly curious about how movement/art could be an accessible tool to supporting the finicky and non-linear process of “healing.” In a period where I could not dance, poetry became a foundational tool for processing my embodied experience, changing relationships, and recognizing/contemplating the inseparability between myself, community, and the environment/land. I am thankful to Andrew at Nothing to Say Press for picking up on my poetry practice and supporting me in placing 6+ years of poetry and image descriptions into my first book. Amidst a slew of administrative jobs in dance/social justice organizations, questions, and a deepening relationship to ecology, I attended part-time graduate school for Dance/Movement Psychotherapy and completed internships within the public health crisis care system. During this ongoing time, I found my interest in the body, politics, and ecology increasingly intermingling and bear witness to the countless ways land and histories of land impact myself and the various people I am working with, the majority of whom are displaced and/or immigrants navigating intertwined medical and mental health challenges. Although I cannot speak directly to my continued work in public health spaces due to the importance of privacy, I can say that I am convinced that artists, when working sensitively and following the leadership of those who are most impacted, can offer perspectives in healthcare that support humanization, creative connection, and offer a reconsideration/re-minding of the purpose of art as a long-existing, essential tool for ritual, honoring, processing, healing, expressing, generating collaborative change, etc.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

Having the opportunity to invite people, like the patients I work with who may not currently have access to artistic process in their lives, to participate in creating and moving in ways that feel relevant and meaningful to them. When I first began a professional dance career, I felt overly focused on presenting and producing choreographies about topics/feelings for an audience that could appreciate it, but could not necessarily participate in it. My transition into using artistic practice as a foundational underpinning in psychotherapy has helped me better follow the lead of relationships — the tangible, physical realities people experience — rather than following an abstract vision or making art “about” something. I am so excited when artistic process offers people and communities the opportunity for pleasure, to transform a metaphor into meaning/insight/action, or gives vital, nuanced expression to our bodies’ innumerable and complex feelings.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

So many! All of Ocean Vuong’s books and interviews always speak to me – I particularly appreciate his steadfast insistence that a writer must be interested in and curious about humanity, as well as the importance of honoring stories that are frequently left untold because they do not fit into the “satisfying” arc of the hero’s journey. He intentionally and empathically guides readers into and through the complexity of bodymind experiences that often are unresolvable in a traditionally or eagerly hopeful sense. His work impacts my considerations and expansiveness as a psychotherapist, poet, and overall being in this world.

A book I deeply appreciate is Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s “The Mushroom at the End of the World.” Tsing is an anthropologist and offers an uncanny and timely analysis of the possibilities that assemblages of ecologies (including people), politics, and capitalism create, particularly in a world that tips towards ruin and crisis. This book fundamentally changed how I consider the role(s) of labor and more-than-human encounters in capitalism. It reminded me that there can be multiplicative futures — even after a forest is clearcut.

Lastly, simply learning about the histories and being with the land/sense of place has had the largest impact on all of my work. As I learn both the human and more-than-human world through name(s), my felt intuition, and spirit, I am endlessly confronted with and inspired by the reality that everything is in relationship — that those relationships often evade and humble our limited range of human perception! Being with urban ecologies, mountains, lakes, the plants of my hometown, etc., continue to offer new meaning, challenging lessons, and remind me that there can be possibility (and action) operating between a place of romanticization and destruction. Being with the land also has offered much insight regarding mortality and, of course, change. As a psychotherapist who supports people in holding unthinkable feelings and pondering/feeling potential for change, this learning has been invaluable. I am incredibly grateful to a variety of people (and other beings) who have guided me in this process — Liz Neves, Sophie Strand, Annie Novak, Camille T. Dungy, jill sigman/thinkdance + all collaborators, David George Haskell, Carey Russell, Dr. Kyle Powys Whyte, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Stephanie Kaza, Dr. Andreas Hernandez, Suzanne Simard, Mary Siisip Geniusz, Maple Street Community Garden, NYC Parks Staff, Brooklyn Botanical Garden, my dog Moog, my father, every tree I’ve encountered, my herbal companions (stinging nettle, licorice root, and beyond), the squirrels, the bees I used to be afraid of… the list can (and does) go on!

Contact Info:

• Website: ecologicalbodiesbeing.com
• Instagram: @s.danicole @ecologicalbodiesbeing
• Other: Poetry book: https://shop.nothing-to-say.org/products/between-heart-and-sap-by-dani-cole

Image Credits
Christian Li Jill Sigman (featuring a performance photo from jill sigman/thinkdance’s Re-Seeding (Encounter #3: The Commons))