André Uerba
@andreuerba

On Planting Trees

I am a choreographer and bodyworker. My work has always lived in the space of creating encounters between bodies — through care, slowness, training the muscle of empathy, vulnerability and mindful touch. I believe in that work. Yet lately I've felt the need to extend it — to turn the same attention I bring to bodies toward land, toward soil, toward regeneration. So I started planting trees. Not as a symbol. Not as an Instagram post. As a direct act — on a piece of land I steward with my partner in the south of Portugal, where the soil has been drying and abandoned for a long time. Summers here are getting hotter, fires more frequent, and the land emptier of the trees that once held water, shade, and life in the ground. It's a regeneration project, slow and unglamorous, built one root system at a time. The focus is on the micro — a gesture toward the future, made with care. Every donation here goes entirely toward the land — toward trees, toward soil, toward the quiet future they're building underground before anything shows above it. Not everything meaningful shows itself right away. Sometimes it just needs to be planted.

Thank you for your donation!

André Uerba www.shorthope.org