The Air Between Us

Abstract

A phenomenology of atmospheric experience is often performed in dance tasking, but how might scientific understandings of meteorological change catalyse new dramaturgies of relation between breath and atmosphere drawing attention to our changing climate? In this writing, I discuss the dramaturgy for LungSong, a performance research project that draws together the labour of atmospheric science, place-responsive dance, videography and sound. The meteorological turn in art raises critical questions about the relation between performance and science, particularly in how we address changing architectures of air. Whilst methods and practices of choreography may provide opportunities for freeing the breath, global research into atmospheric change evidences planetary breathing that is in peril. Ground truthing in weather and atmospheric science calibrates the findings of remote instruments such as satellites, with land-based testing such as weather balloons. Specialising in measuring CFCs, Ozone, UV light levels and greenhouse gases, NIWA’s atmospheric research station in Lauder is well known for its ground truth data. In collaboration with scientists at the station, LungSong developed choreographic thinking for reconfiguring relations between ground and sky, human and non-human breathing, corporeal and cosmological systems of breath, in an atmosphere that is shared. Situating the research praxis through intercultural and interdisciplinary research, through partnership with indigenous artists, professional dancers, and scientists, the emergent dramaturgy culminated in an audiowalk, public talk, video installation and rooftop performance.