Swiss choreographer Lea Moro’s new work is an acoustic-performative meditation that turns the mundane process of breathing into a choral and choreographic medium while inviting the audience to oscillate with their own breaths.
Six bodies move through the stage while lying, sitting, standing, stomping. Their distance from each other is measured by the range of their breaths. The bodies shake, clap and vibrate. A polyphonic blending of parallel breaths takes hold of the space. A sigh as a prelude to singing. One - two - three – seven breaths in the rhythm of a voice.
In times of face masks, air filters and aerosol measurements, air-sharing is evident as a biopolitical issue. Although bodies have always breathed, different human, social, and economic dynamics have been shaping their capacity to do so as a fundamental determinant of life itself.
Omnipresent breathing is the object of biopolitical power and control, of devotion and sexuality, of spirituality and cosmic connectedness. The rhythm and tone, the (dis)tension and vibration of each breath is our own and at the same time the instrument of our surroundings. As such exploring and releasing the breath is physical, and therefore as painful, as it is sensual, pleasurable and emotional. To engage with one's own breathing is another form of taking responsibility, self-care, awareness of oneself and our interdependence.
