This was Cynthia Imogen Hammond's piece, conceived for two street corners during morning rush hour, a quiet intervention into a moment most people move through without looking up. I was one of four performers, alongside Hammond, Jeff Golf, and Kaem Huska, each of us dressed in white, wing-like sleeves trailing from our arms, standing motionless beside a low ladder at our assigned corner.

Throughout the piece itself, I gave myself over entirely to Hammond's vision, holding my position, my stillness, my raised arms, with whatever discipline and dedication the role asked of me. Standing there in the morning light, I wanted nothing more than to honor what she had imagined, to let her concept move through me as faithfully as I knew how.

Violinist Rhaya Fridman carried the piece's architecture, walking a slow, complete circle from corner to corner, her improvised composition rising and falling around us. As she passed each performer, we climbed our ladder, raised our arms toward the sky. Printed across our clothing, in English and French, an ancient word for breath — ruah, nefesh, psuche, pneuma — each one reaching toward some older understanding of breath, air, wind, life, all bound together. When Fridman's circle closed, we lowered our arms, descended, let the piece end as quietly as it began.

Breathe/Animer

Cynthia Imogen Hammond

What stays with me most, though, happened just after. Flooded with whatever joy and spontaneity the performance had stirred loose in us, I found myself unwilling to simply let the mood end when the piece did. Together we carried that same spirit into the churchyard of St Andrew and St Paul, improvising a dance as Fridman shifted into a jig. Still wrapped in my costume, I felt myself slipping into a different identity altogether, imagining myself as an angel who had never fallen, simply found herself here, on the earth, dancing anyway. Looking back, I think this is one sign of a truly good collaboration: when a piece gives its performers enough trust, enough spaciousness, that the creative energy it releases can keep moving beyond the frame originally set for it, finding its own unplanned extension.

breathe/animer was conceived by Cynthia Imogen Hammond, performed alongside Hammond, Jeff Golf, and Kaem Huska, with violinist Rhaya Fridman. Photos are by Grayson Cooke. More of Hammond's work can be found at www.cynthiahammond.org.