Directed and Choreographed by Iván Espinosa

“There is indeed a music in the streams,” writes Wendell Berry, "but it is not for the hurried. It has to be loitered by and imagined. Or imagined toward, for it is hardly for men at all."

For centuries, poets and mystics spanning world cultures -- such as the Nahua communities of central Mexico -- have regarded Earthly bodies such as cacti and mushrooms as "DIVINE MESSENGERS" glistening with with songs of other-worldly knowledge. Biologists have also discovered that trees actively collaborate with underground mushroom networks, called Mycelium, to communicate extensively and share resources. These fungal networks are highly sentient -- capable of perceiving everything from physical touch to sound -- and just as responsive as our own complex neural networks.

But the songs and intelligences of the Mycelium and her mushrooms are incredibly subtle. They can hear us, but what will it take for us to hear them? In a Post-Fordist society that privileges speed and efficiency, what will it take to slow down and feel the vibrant matter that lies so close at hand?

In this durational performance, human bodies will attempt to commune with Mushroom bodies: emissaries of the massive mycelium networks underground, a subterranean civilization older than time. Dancers begin by attempting to dissolve the body as we experience it in our everyday lives, to allow for metamorphosis and transformation. In this altered experience of the body, normal perceptions of space and time cease to exist, and we can, perhaps, become more attuned to the infinite rhythms of the Ecosphere. In this space, our bodies, like the mushroom bodies, are part of a larger, atmospheric body... a communal, immersive space in which humans are invited to exchange possibilities with every cap and stem, with each textured surface and vibrating entity that emanate songs from the worlds of soil and stone.