La Petite Mort

We often think of the duration of life as an asset, something to covet and even exploit. Something to extend and preserve. But to exist is to be temporal, so what happens when we embrace this temporality instead of resist? What happens when we anchor life in the now with a perpetual presence of death as a method of framing personal identity?

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La Petite Mort explores Heideggarian Philosophy through performance and the 5Rhythms movement technique.

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Dance is the fastest, most direct route to the truth - not some big truth that belongs to everybody, but the get down and personal kind, the what's-happening-in-me-right-now kind of truth. - Gabrielle Roth

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5Rhythms is a meditation practice created by Gabrielle Roth based on movement and dance. The practice works towards an embodiment of five different rhythms; Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical & Stillness.

The project looks into the application of the phrase: sum moribundus (I am in dying), searching for a phenomenological truth born out of the confrontation between life & death. Inevitably the ice will melt, the curtain will fall and the moment will end. The natural world is unfolding itself continuously through its connection with creation and destruction, whether we attend to it or not. All we can do in response is to continue dancing, until we stop.

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This creative project has been heavily influenced and supported by the Centre for Performance Philosophy at GSA.