Hana van der Kolk

STRANGE NATURE

Strange Nature gathers for the fifth year October 23-November 1, 2026 at the Field Center in Vermont. There are a few spots left and you can REGISTER HERE!

We will also offer a mini Strange Nature in NYC at SUPR OMEN in Brooklyn, NY November 6-8. Email pariscullen1996@gmail.com to register. Details below.

Strange Nature, Field Center

What might be revealed by touching, listening to, looking at, being deeply with a shell, a glittery garment, another’s body, a fallen log turned home for an ecosystem? How might these intimate encounters be felt and expressed through our bodies? And how might they change how we conceive of our bodies all together? What are the dances, rituals, practices, new ecosystems, tributes that emerge from here? 

In this week-long workshop anchored in collaborative ritual, engaging body, attention, and imagination-centering physical/dance practices, and passionate and uncanny encounters with objects, landscape, and costume, we will “dialogue” with ourselves, one another, and everything to ask: how and why might we become more tender, more monstrous, more clairvoyant, more fluid; recognizing/uncovering our already multiple, hybrid, contradictory, messy, monstrous selves, groupings, world in the process. Rigorously courting strangeness, we play along the fluid spectrums of quotidian/performative, minimal/extravagant, personal/political, mundane/magical. 

In 2026 we gather around Samhain/Halloween and will welcome the veil-thinning quality of this time; the night growing longer, the earth decaying and transforming towards rest, our alter egos, shadows, monsters, grief, and ancestors perhaps closer and calling to us. Dancers, artists, writers, schemers, activists, healers, and aspiring/inspiring freaks, come join us in play, risk, and world-making. 

Guided by dancers, makers, researchers, and facilitators Lea Kieffer and Hana van der Kolk, Strange Nature began at the Field Center in 2022 with the curatorial and match making vision of Field Center founder Jared Williams. We have reconvened yearly since.

Strange Nature NYC

This three-day workshop will be anchored in collaborative ritual, body, attention, and imagination-centering physical/dance practices, and technologies for uncanny encounters with objects and costume. Rigorously courting strangeness, we will become a temporary village where the mundane, magical, absurd, minimal, precise, extravagant, messy, and tender collapse into and contaminate one another in an emergent world-making process. In the veil-thinning time of early November, we will welcome the night growing longer, the earth decaying and transforming towards rest, our alter egos, shadows, monsters, grief, and ancestors perhaps closer and calling to us.

The workshop will include two full days of study and practice, as well as one day of sharing/activation/installation for the public to come witness/participate. Dancers, artists, writers, schemers, activists, healers, and aspiring/inspiring freaks, come join us in play, risk, and world-making. Guided by dancers, makers, researchers, and facilitators Lea Kieffer and Hana van der Kolk, Strange Nature will make its debut in NYC shortly after the fifth iteration of the longer workshop experience at the Field Center in Vermont.

Sliding scale and limited tiered rates are available:
Solidarity ~~ $100-150 (0 spots available)
Standard ~~ $150-200 (3 spots available)
Blessed stranger ~~ $200-300 (3 spots available)