#4725 is licking my elbow – I am trying to keep him from licking the lens.  I stopped along a curving upstate New York road to admire at these cows and a huge flock of birds in a field.  The minute I stepped out of the car, they began to approach.  Curious cows.  First one, then two more, then a group.  I love cows, love their eyes, their softness, their nature.  For the last three years I have visited the cows at the Putney School in Vermont, and that is where I discovered the delights of cows.  How they love to have the bump on their head scratched, and how they investigate you with their long rough tongues, how herdish they are. Cows usually approach in bunches, gangs, bevies.

I had wanted to create a dance for cows and the dance students at Putney, but we could never quite pull it together.  My friend Ann Carlson did make a dance with cows.  Dancing with another species is a way to listen; to let go of telling and speaking, and shift into feeling and moving.  It is a significantly different  from petting, grooming, walking, milking, riding.  The questions are different, and the answers always changing.  By dancing I don’t mean formal balletic movement, but improvising, playing, investigating.  A great example of inter-species dancing:  playing ultimate frisbee with a dog!

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