My name is Gregory Lorenzutti, I’m a dancer / photographer / urban farmer based in Naarm (Melbourne) Australia.

I grew up in the country, on the southeast coast of Brazil. My grandparents were farmers and taxidermists. As a kid, I loved filling their little truck with goods from the farm and taking them to the local farmers’ market.

I moved to Rio de Janeiro to study theatre and dance - everything from classical ballet to Brazilian folk rhythms. I travelled the world performing with many dance companies. I found myself experiencing the enormous potential of our bodies to express how we feel and think. I’ve learnt from different masters of movement how to harness our inner powers to make art.

My curiosity in this world led me to photography. While performing, I wanted to document and register all the mysteries I was witnessing. So I returned to school to study the art of photography in Rio and in New York City. This experience opened up a new world of image-making and cross-disciplinary artistic practices.

I specialised in art documentation: specifically, live performance. I wanted to photograph the impossible – movement. This curiosity saw me take on assignments in everything from magazine editorials to portraiture and conceptual art. It offered me a rich opportunity to collaborate with seminal artists of all fields in Brazil and in Australia. The dancer’s eyes is always present in my work, searching for the things we can’t typically see.

Farming (or gardening if you prefer) came into this process after I moved to Australia and had the chance to immerse myself in the regeneration of a neglected plot. Again, I went back to school to learn more, listen more and observe - this time to the art of movement happening underneath our feat. Memories of my childhood in the fields in Brazil emerged and reminded me of my deepest roots and love for soil and plants. I started farming in different places around Naarm/Melbourne. My hands got stained with natural dyes from plants and soil; a new map was being drawn in my body.

This experience has offered me a fertile ground to explore concepts and choreographic scores involving body intelligence from a cellular level to our most intimate connections and co-dependencies with plant life forms. It initiated a dialogue between the dancer and the farmer.

My works are a reflection of observation and empiric experimentations in movement. But as a farmer I am also compelled to acknowledge the enormous diversity of intelligences and agencies from other-than-human persons: plants. My work on the fields and intimate relationship with plants from seeds to the end of their life cycle has propelled me to re-think my own understanding of movement in nature. It has shifted how I place myself in an environment where a myriad of creatures need care and space to live.

Today, I work in this fertile ground – with photography, dance and farming as my tools for creativity – listening to what the planet needs in order to survive and thrive.