Inhale, Exhale, Hold Your Breath to Dance and Live with Seas and Oceans

Abstract

This article aims to examine to what extent dancing in contact with seas and oceans encourages us to rethink the paradigms of our terrestrial lives. With this in mind, I will study the porous relationships that this non-verbal art weaves with the environment. To this end, I will develop an analysis of breathing variations and human perceptions. First, I'll demonstrate how the experience of different breath rhythms on the shores has driven the dance and thoughts of pioneering choreographer Isadora Duncan (Perrin) and her successors. I will then focus on two dance-videos, Amy Greenfield's Tides (created in response to Duncan's “The Dancer of the Future”) and Babette Mangolte's Water Motor, in order to measure how aquatic experiences, and in particular that of a non-human temporality, move our perceptions. This phenomenon is revealed through the use of the camera, which provides a print of these intimate and fleeting sensations. Finally, after studying breath variations, I'll draw on Laurence Louppe's work on “non-breathing” and analyze the piece and the short documentary by apneist dancer Marine Chesnais, both entitled Habiter le seuil. Here, I'll examine the practice of breath-holding in aquatic environments “which works on the gravitational tissue of the spectator, produces transfers of perception and state” (Louppe) and enables us to meet marine mammals. In conclusion, I will support the idea that these breathless marine encounters change our perception of the terrestrial world, invite us to “inhabit the threshold,” to explore this space of transformation, and offer us the opportunity of “becoming other” (Abram).