Watch clips from Breathe, a lovely "water opera" in a pool

A few weeks ago at Appleton, Wisconsin's Lawrence University, a group of experimental musicians, dancers, and performance artists staged "Breathe," a "multidisicplinary water opera" in the college's swimming pool. (The video above is from a previous performance at Middlebury College's Natatorium). From Fox Cities Magazine:

Lawrence Universitys Margaret Sunghe Paek, professor of dance and curator of Dance Series, will work with music director Loren Dempster and director/choreographer Gabriel Forestieri to bring (the performance) to life...

I wanted to see if I could make sound underwater, Dempster says. I experimented with microphones underwater, I bought a hydrophone, I [even] played the cello underwater.

Dempster will be the only underwater musician in the entire opera as he will be in the shallow end, playing his cello while underwater microphones transmit the sounds above the surface.

Forestieri choreographed the opera, combining the practice of dance and free diving, called dancing in apnea, to create the water visuals.

[Im] taking cues from the space and the people in the space and how they relate to each other, Forestieri says. The choreography is a mix of [dancing] on deck, sometimes in the pool, partner dancing in the shallow end, and dancers floating with float belt.

(via Weird Universe)

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