ambers” performance. Photo credit: Julie Lemberger.
Image courtesy of Jody Oberfelder.
according to the way light is absorbed or reflected by the finger flesh. Next, a dancer docent led us into a bathroom with
several different stations for learning about the heart from a
scientific standpoint—blood flow through the heart, the story
of a heart attack, the heart-brain relationship explained by
neuroscientists, and a smartphone app that measures heart
rate, and other features of cardiac health, by scanning your
face with the phone’s camera. It started to seem as if there
was no part of the body where the heart’s influence couldn’t
be detected. These stations were very creatively designed, yet
this chamber was less engaging than the others because it was
devoid of anticipation. It seemed clear that we would stay in
that room silently watching videos or taking our pulses until
the time was up. I didn’t wonder if someone might grab me
and ask me to dance.
From the “Artery of Knowledge,” we filed into a group
shower and sat down in a row of chairs opposite individual
video monitors. A man’s face appeared larger than life on a
screen below the shower faucets: an interrogator. The interrogator-psychologist asked the big questions, and when he
addressed an individual, that person’s picture appeared next
to his. How much of your time are you doing what you want
to do? When do you feel most alive? Is the heart a good metaphor for love?
“4Chambers” addressed many aspects of the heart. The one
that was underemphasized was romance. The only hint of it
was the fact that we interacted physically with our dancer
docents. We felt their pulses. The connection was not sexual,
but it was physical.
During the interrogation, I piped up to assert that love exists not in the heart but in the brain. I later questioned my
answer. During sexual intercourse, the heart rate quickens.
The sexual organs become engorged with blood. Both the
central and autonomic nervous systems are involved, but everyone knows that arousal can happen without—and in spite
of—control by the brain. Recalling the pulsing bodies in the
first video—in and out, push and pull, contract and release—
the throbbing of the heart formed an analogy to another kind
of pulsing there just beneath the skin.
The fourth chamber had red, corrugated walls. There, we
felt our pulses: wrist, neck, ankle, knee, groin. The docents
danced vigorously, jumping up against the walls between us.
People smiled nervously after each startling moment. The
docents formed a pulsing mass in the center of the room.
When my dancer docent returned to me, she placed my right
hand on her chest, as she had done several times throughout
the evening. Her pulse was fast. She stared into my eyes, her
mouth slightly open in a friendly position, nearly a smile. To
touch someone in this state of uncontrollable excitation, this
state of exposure, felt very intimate. It was also just part of
the structure of the performance.
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