PUST/EXHALE

When I was asked by Liv Hanne Haugen and Lawrence Malstaf to create music and participate in the performance of this project, I immediately got excited to embark on a new experience.

We developed the performance together prior to the premiere at DanceFestival Barents in Hammerfest, and later toured with it in Europe and China.

From the project description:

The first and the last thing we do is breathing. We breathe around 10.000 litres of air every day, but how much do we know about this little life-depending movement? Electronic music, installation art, dance, voice and text meets and creates poetry in which new knowledge and awareness unfold.

Three performers walk on huge grey materials that slowly rise under them. When fully inflated the audience are invited inside the 12x18m. big bubble and sees a body in ever-shifting colours floating like a cocoon over their heads. This is the start of the performance EXHALE that aims to bring attention to the breath as an interactive element connecting us all. Dance and electronic sounds communicate abstractly and open, text fragments bring attention to the constant cosmic and rhythmic relation between micro and macro cosmos, while the installation – the actual performance space, is physically being manipulating – pulled and re-shaped making a dance of its own, that also makes the audience move. Finally, the audience themselves have the chance to monitor their own breath standing side by side on a line while dropping pebbles in a paper cup leaving us wondering how many more breaths there is to go.