While he was artist-in-residence at Middlebury College in 2017, choreographer Gabriel Forestieri created “Breathe”, a highly meditative, graceful multi-disciplinary aquatic installation. The performance featured amongst a great many things, a musician playing an unusual but elegant rectangular cello as he floated upon and under the water. Composer Loren Kyoshi Dempster provided the haunting soundtrack.
The project is a multi-disciplinary water opera that combines song, movement, light, dance, water, music, and text. A live feed both underwater and on the deck displays to the board above the pool. A traveling choir mixes with a soundscape composed directly from the space itself, using contact microphones both out of and in the pool.
Forestieri reprised this performance at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin on March 30 and 31st, 2019.