In the near future, the ratio of humans to trees has reached a tipping point due to deforestation. Human lungs turn gray as the Earth’s breathable air supply steadily depletes. “We are just dialing up what’s already happening in our world,” says Raphael Sacks, co-founder of Loom Ensemble and lead producer and performer in “Tell Me How You Breathe,” a dance-theater production. “The story centers on the lungs as the organ of grief and interconnectedness, and air as the last public commons,” they explain. “In recent years we’ve seen how climate catastrophe and social justice meet in the breath.”
“Tell Me How You Breathe” will be staged at three locations in the Hudson Valley between August 10 through 19, at the end of its seven-week tour through a dozen cities in Vermont, Massachusetts, and New York.
“Art is a key place where culture shifts happen,” explains Neva Cockrell, director of “Tell Me How You Breathe” and co-founder of Loom. “For us this means shifting towards a culture that has more freedom, safety, and connection with the Earth. All of our pieces have been aimed at different aspects of this, and this piece is centered on climate change.”
The couple met at Oberlin College, where their love of dance and performance art was ignited. After graduation, Sacks and Cockrell moved to New York City to pursue dance. “Oftentimes as a performer you are hired to come in after the creative bit has already happened,” explains Cockrell. “Many times, you don’t have a voice in the content of the piece.” This is what the pair discovered during their work in New York City, and with a desire for more creative autonomy, they founded Loom Ensemble in 2010. Since then, the company has performed around the world, including seasons based in Italy and Dubai.
After years of traveling, Loom Ensemble is returning to New York with a new home in the Hudson Valley. Wildheart, an artist collective and retreat center in Wallkill, has been one of Cockrell and Sacks’s recent projects. “It feels like such a celebratory homecoming to relocate to the Hudson Valley,” says Sacks. “We want to use Wildheart as a launchpad for these culture-shift projects, performance tours, and community building.” The creative process for “Tell Me How You Breathe” took place at Wildheart, where the team of artists and performers lived as they collaboratively developed the piece. Wildheart will host a performance on August 12, with other shows at Kingston Point Park on August 10 and 11, and Stone Ridge Orchard on the 18th and 19th.
“The original mission statement of the Loom ensemble started as weaving together equal parts dance, music, and theater,” explains Sacks. “That is very alive in this performance in particular. It is a live music performance, it is full of contemporary dance, and is also a straightforward, character-based narrative.”
While the show forces audiences to confront the threat of our climate crisis through the varying responses of five characters to the catastrophe, “Tell Me How You Breathe” has proved to be accessible and enjoyable to its range of audience members. “The shows take place outdoors in beautiful settings where audiences can bring their own picnics and their dogs, and little kids can dance along to the music,” describes Sacks.
By moving to the Hudson Valley, Loom has had the opportunity to reconnect with one of its founders, Sasha Bogdanowitsch, on the musical score for this show. “His music-making is a core part of the storytelling and the audience experience,” describes Sacks. “There are maybe a dozen different live instruments. He weaves this together with electronics and live voice to create layered musical underscores for the dancing and storytelling.”
The contemporary dance in “Tell Me How You Breathe” has varied throughout the show’s tour, featuring an ensemble of six new dancers in each state. Like the touring cast, these performers were given the opportunity to workshop their own choreography and personally contribute to the show.
“We really cared that this was a racially diverse ensemble of performers,” says Sacks. “We also cared that all of the performances have a special ‘pay-what-you-want’ ticket option. We wanted to remove any financial barrier to entry for people to see live art in the Hudson Valley with racially diverse representation on stage.”
