Navashwaasam (Sanskrit), or nuevas respiraciones (Spanish), means ‘new breaths’. The experiment-performance navashwaasam derives its name and spirit from the Argentinean poem Nuevas Respiraciones. Nava ‘new’ also means ‘nine’ in Sanskrit. In Spanish, nuevo ‘new’ is similar to nueve ‘nine’. As a wink to this simultaneous meaning, navashwaasam is a 42-minute performance structured in nine sections, or nine ‘breaths’, that weave across the boundaries of performance space, performer, and audience, creating a single fabric of interaction that for a brief moment begins to feel like a community.
The first two breaths are simple readings. The third is a breath of unity in peace and blessing. The fourth breath enters the complexity of the experiment, taking steps from Bharatanatyam and morphing them through gypsy Flamenco into a new vocabulary of contemporary dance. The next breath adds the element of mime and weaves the new result through the spoken words of poetry to arrive at what we may tentatively call dance-theatre, and confidently call an exciting new medium to play and work with.
The nine breaths taken together are an invitation to ponder one’s own silent complicity in the phenomenon of human violence; to contemplate one’s place and path in the collective consciousness that is formed across generations; to consider that path as unwritten, and to allow the powerful pull of one’s breath to open into utterly new ways of living and being.
The performance project was filmed in a studio for a DVD. Â To order a copy, click here.