As I’ve noted before, the Wetlands’ site is a working reservoir as well as being a nature reserve and, of course, now, a dance ‘studio’.  For all my talk of the necessity of quietness in my choreographic relationship with the site, it’s also apparent that there are moments of noisy, energetic intervention.  This video sketch shows that it’s not only the non-human wildlife that influences how I can move around:  this footpath is closed because of Thames Water work on one of the reservoirs.  Though you can’t here the drilling in so loudly, you can catch a glimpse of the loud orange-uniformed workers through the fencing, as well as the ducks getting on with their bobbing in the adjacent water.

The next week, I saw a group of school children singing loudly and enthusiastically on the same footpath.  I don’t know for sure but they look like children from a school in Stamford Hill’s Orthodox Jewish community on the other side of the canal from the Wetlands but easily accessible across the Hackney Marshes.  There’s something very beautiful about the young voices singing to the expanse of water.  The birds can be just as noisy and it confirms again that quietness isn’t the only possible response to the Wetlands.

I was working outdoors on the Lockwood Reservoir when instead of the usual bird-life passing over, I noticed a big black helicopter buzzing from the horizon.   Flanked by other smaller helicopters, it was ominously heavy in the sky and I decided to try my dance in relation to it.  I later discovered that the helicopter was carrying Trump from Stansted to central London.

Here’s a short video where the autofocus of my camera gives priority to the fly that happens to be buzzing in front of the lens rather than to the human who happens to be dancing in the background.  My relatively smart camera has the technology to detect faces but here the framing doesn’t give it a face to find and so blades of grass, insects and humans passing are equally worth of digital attention.

It’s easy to focus on the wildlife in the Wetlands but there is a built infrastructure of varying vintages that has made the Wetlands the place it is and continues to shape how human and non-human, organic and inorganic meets in this environment.

The River Lea has long been a water-way for transportation and a source of power for the various industries that were situated along its banks.  The human intervention was increased when London’s need for clean water in the 19th Century brought the creation of reservoirs that transformed the landscape.  For a more detailed account of the Wetlands’ history see here

What I notice is the combination of somehow naturalized man-made elements and interventions that are more recent and contrasting.  In the former category are reservoirs themselves, the picturesque pump structures (first picture above) and the weathered and patinated pieces of iron that appear here and there (and whose function I don’t yet know).

In the latter category are the temporary fencing and hazard taping that signal work in progress, the cranes on the skyline that aren’t strictly part of the Wetlands but that dominate many of its vistas.  And also perhaps the unwelcome detritus, like this shopping trolley that a coot has nonetheless commandeered as a nesting site and which can’t be cleared until she’s done.

There is an admirable adaptability in this avian ability to cohabit with the human-made, but can we offer a similar willingness to adapt to the needs of the natural environment.  The way some users of the site ignore requests not to cycle in sensitive areas, not to drop litter etc. suggests there’s a way to go.

Meanwhile, here’s a small dance with geese.