jana jacuka

THEORY OF DENSE AIR

Essay (work in progress) by Jana Jacuka

Written during DAS Theater Master's programme

Mentors: Konstantina Georgelou & Miguel Melgares

You are sitting in front of the screen, reading this text. Your eyes are moving from this word to the next one, from the left side to the right side of the page. Line by line. You’re reading these words, but actually skipping over letters, recognizing words as shapes, letting your brain fill in the rest. You’re not reading so much as recognizing.

Your eyes glide forward, catching familiar patterns, letting meaning assemble itself at the periphery of your brain. A kind of scanning, a kind of trusting—that the sense will arrive. Sometimes, you’ll skip reading line by line and find yourself jumping to other words that catch your attention. Just keep on going.

This page is not a text. It’s a graphic painting. Lines arranged in patterns your brain has learned to decode without asking. In this painting you don’t have to grasp every word fully. It’s enough to know how the page feels.

To access the painting relax your eyes and blur your vision.

You will see text melting into gradients. Letters dissolving into puddles. Shapes overtake meaning. Letters no longer stand still—they begin to perform. If you rotate your screen 90 degrees to the right, the sentences will fall sideways and the choreography will shift. These letters will perform differently—sliding across the page like in Damiens Jalet performance SKID.

Take the device you are reading this text on and rotate it 90 degrees to the right.

Blur your eyes, let your focus fade and stay a little longer. Witness patches of text disappear and come back while your eyes are blurred. Some words lose their balance. Others cling strongly to the tilted top of the page.

Look at the text again as a painting. Each sentence is stretched into different lengths. Notice the empty spaces: of the page, between lines, inside each letter. If your screen is still tilted, blur your eyes. Text looks like icicles on the edge of a roof—aligned on one side of the page, while the other side each has a different ending point. Rotate your screen back to normal.

I like to think about language as something that melts like ice. At first, it holds its shape, but slowly, it begins to dissolve, words soften into sounds, allowing the meaning to be understood from a transformed texture. A liquid texture you feel while reading.

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It all started, when I was contemplating what drives me as a choreographer. I began to recall works—mostly by other choreographers—that had left a lasting imprint on me. There was something very particular about the performative quality of the works, the way I as an audience member experienced what was happening in front of me. 

In some moments during these performances I suddenly started to feel the performance in its broadest sense and entered a space beyond cognitive understanding. Hard to say if I understood much of what was happening on stage, but I felt it deeply. 

When trying to explain it to a friend that did not see the work, describing the artist's actions seemed less important than sharing the moments of intense focus and attention I experienced, and how deeply I was present with what was unfolding on stage. My analytical brain quieted, and my whole body seemed to take over the task of understanding. Nothing made logical sense, yet everything felt right. It felt like their work started to vaporize to small particles into the air and unconsciously I started inhaling their work. Particles fell onto exposed skin of my body and I absorbed their work through my skin. I extremely enjoy this mode of transporting information. The performance isn’t grasped directly by the brain, it lingers in the air for you to breathe it in. 

“A concept of understanding is a violent one. It comes from a line of thought that assumes that the world can be and ridicules all the parts of it that cannot be understood”1 

Everything made sense, and at the same time—it didn’t. Not from a rational perspective, but from a place of felt understanding. 

For me, this experience relates to creating both cognitive and non-cognitive experiences and the qualities that arise between them. I see these qualities as a form of communication between the work and the audience. The ungraspable elements that exist in the space between. To explore this further, I collected six performances as case studies where I experienced dense air as an audience member and examined them by exploring and speculating about the common ingredients that possibly made the air dense. Maybe you have seen some of them? 

'Myth, the last day' Netti Nuganen 

'Butterfly Knife' Jakob Vitkowski 

'100 keyboards' Asuna 

‘CRY’ Grete Smitaite 

'Seeking Unicorns' Chiara Bersani 

‘If every rock is a whole’ Amparo Gonzales 

______________________________________

1 Maija Hirvanen & Eva Neklyaeva, Practical Performance Magic, page 128 

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page 4 #coming with the whole self

page 5 #attention and intention               

(in progress) #scale        

(in progress) #accumulation

page 8 (in progress) #cognitive and non-cognitive communication forms                     

(in progress) #imagination as something present         

(in progress) #work as a canvas

(in progress) #distillation

page 8-11 #Believing as a practice

page 8 (in progress) #collective gut feeling

page 12 #a whisper from within                                       

These are the recurring ingredients and insights I collected during the research and yet,
even if you follow the recipe, nobody can assure you that the air will thicken.

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#coming with the whole self

One of the first things I noticed in common, is that they are all made and performed by
authors themselves in solo format.
On stage, in front of you, stands the same person who has spent an immeasurable amount
of time and experience carrying the work within their body. There’s no separation between
the thinker and the doer, the maker and the transmitter. Their presence holds the residue of
process, of living with the questions, ideas and materials long before sharing them publicly.
We are witnessing someone standing with their whole system exposed, with the questions
still pulsating beneath the action. It’s as if the space has been charged—not only by the work
itself, but by the lingering weight of everything that led to it. The audience becomes part of
this field, breathing in the residue of what cannot be fully articulated. A particular kind of
tension.
I think the density does not arise from the work alone, but from the stakes of the person who
stands inside it. I’ll hashtag it for now as coming with your whole self. This whole self carries
embodied knowledge—where even the elements that are not directly addressed during the
performance are present in an ephemeral way. This form of knowledge doesn’t need to be
spoken, addressed or explained to be felt.

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#Attention an d Intention

“We can make things visible by paying attention to details.”

“We can pay attention to the backdrops or slower movements as the eye, just like our          
attention, first goes to what is fast, bright, or loud.” or to a disruption of something we
become familiar with, like the letter d in the title too far from its word.

“We can pay attention to the smallest cracks in a place.” To the empty space in the letter e or
the dot at the end of the sentence that feels oddly disproportionate.

 “We can look at things behind closed eyes.                                                                                           
But not all things are operating in the realm of visibility.
Much is happening in the invisible, in other senses, and not in reality - by - light.

Underground,              

inside,

in waves,                                

and           

   
in molecular dances.”2      

Maija Hirvanens & Eva Beklyaeva in the book ‘Practical Performance magic’ highlight the
ability of working with attention and intention as important ingredients of Performance
Magic.3

When experiencing dense air, I believe there is truly something ungraspable and
therefore performatively magical - happening. Is the clarity of artists intentions and way they
navigate audience attention a tool for achieving dense air / performative magic on stage?
Attention of the performer can become a force to invite the audience into an intimate
connection with the material. Yet, attention shifts with the individual and what one person
finds captivating, another might miss entirely. Attention is not only the process of focusing; it
is also the act of selecting what to focus on, and in that act, we reveal what we value.
Intentions do not always reveal themselves immediately. Sometimes, intention lies in the
spaces between words, in the unspoken gesture, in the slight movement of the body that
suggests more than it reveals. Intention can be intuitive, and for me, it's deeply rooted in the
experiences we carry in our bodies. It often comes first, before the mind has time to decode
it. It’s a constant swing between the past, the now and the future.

I’ve noticed that the air densifies through the performer’s commitment to the attention and
intention. I came to see Amparos Gonzales Sola work on a february evening. A bit tired and
overwhelmed by the day. I entered the space and saw that the audience seating was split,
with half of the audience across from me, and the stage unfolding between us.
In front of us was a white dance floor. A body in darker clothes came onto the stage. The
body belonged to Amparo González Sola. Moving through different shapes, they dedicating
time and awareness to each landscape their body entered. The postures were tense and
solid. I don’t know how long each shape was held, but sometimes I lingered with the word
forever. I began to notice the body’s subtle tremble—the impossibility of standing still. Like
the mountains, seemingly immobile, over millions of years they rise, fall, drift, they move with
invisible speed. Amparos commitment to intention, and the way they focused our attention,
was a quality that lured me in. It accumulated with each transformation their body made—an
ongoing attempt to direct our gaze toward what is being done, and equally, toward what
remained unspoken.

But what happens if things do not go according to the performer's plan or score? How does
the audience's attention shift then?
I love when everything falls apart. It’s the moment when the audience might shift from
passive observers to active participants. A splash of cold water in the face. Disrupt your own
proposal of time. Propose, disrupt and let that energy lead. enjoy!

______________________________________

3 Maija Hirvanen & Eva Neklyaeva, Practical Performance Magic, page 7
2 Maija Hirvanen & Eva Neklyaeva, Practical Performance Magic, page 20-21

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                                        e

                                                                                                            n

                         j

                                                                                                                                             o

                                                                                                          y

6

#Believing as a practice

ASUNA’s 100 Keyboards is quite an interesting example.

You enter the room and see 100 small synthesizers laid out on the floor in a circle, each
circle bigger than the previous. There are no chairs for us to sit on, and I notice that we all,
perhaps out of politeness, instinctively move to the perimeter of the space and lean against
the walls. A body enters the middle of the space and presses one keyboard. We hear a note.
He takes a small brown wooden stick and places it under the key for the sound to stay.
Asuna continues, one by one, until all 100 synthesizers are resonating, filling the space with
sound.

At this point, the experience feels mostly cognitive: an idea is presented and systematically
executed. The rules of the game reveal themselves — after they press the key a second
time, I can read the actions and can anticipate the outcome. The air feels thin. Not because
the action or content lacks complexity, but it performs itself clearly. Thin air doesn’t
necessarily ask to be felt—it asks to be recognized. It emerges when the experience enters
through cognition, through understanding.

Thin air can be beautiful. Precise. Clever. It’s just another way something can exist in the
room. Where dense air enters you without asking permission, thin air preserves its distance.

And I wondered: what now?

But then something shifted.
Without any verbal instructions, without gestures or even eye contact, the audience started
to move towards and around the keyboards, almost like there was a #collective gut feeling
leading us to join the experience. Soon, I found myself walking too. Suddenly, out of
nowhere, the air became dense.

The space, once defined by the methodical action of the performer, began to take on a
different quality. It was as if the work had expanded beyond its original concept, inviting a
shared experience that was no longer just about witnessing the performance, suddenly we
became part of it.

I don’t remember him using any words, gestures or looking invitingly into the audience's
eyes. And yet, somehow, we knew we could join. How did we feel that we could — or even
needed — to enter? How did Asuna invite us? What made the air dense? To answer that
question, I’ll hijack Asuna's body for a brief moment — step inside, feel, and then return back
and write it down.

#hijacking is a playful speculative proposition, where you imagine entering the body of the
performer—not to imitate or represent them, but to inhabit their presence, their rhythm, their
choices, as a way to imagine and feel the work from within. Hijacking is not about taking
over, but tuning in: borrowing their skin, their breath, their score, to understand by doing
and to feel what their body knows that ours doesn’t.

I’ve entered the body of Asuna Arashi.

I felt bones aligning with mine. The breath, once mine, merges with his, and for a moment I
believed it had always been this way.

It’s a warm body. Same height, same width. I feel strands of his strong, thick hair brushing
my face.
I look down. These are his hands — I mean, my hands. I notice the deeper lines on the
palms. I breathe: inhale, exhale. Where am I?

I stand in front of the 100 synthesizers, having just set them all to sound.
Although the audience surrounds me, I decide not to look into their eyes.
I keep my gaze angled 45 degrees toward the floor, enough to see my synthesizers.
I feel my stomach, arms, and face tingling with tiny needles — a kind of excitement mixed
with stress.

I simply exist in this moment.
I feel the audience observing me, anticipating what might happen next.
But I just decided to exist — together with the rising hum of the 100 synthesizers and the
collective anticipation of the audience.

I walk around my keyboards, feeling an intuitive impulse rising within me, I decide to follow it.
And I believe, there is a moment you decide to believe. I decide to believe that the audience
will join me. I believe they will leave the seemingly safe area of the space, the perimeter, and
come closer. They will walk around the keyboards and notice the subtle changes in sound
that occur once their position in space shifts—once they begin to circle, once they alter their
perspective.

By believing I transmit an energetic force, an invisible signal. Much like sound traveling at
1223 kilometers per hour, the signal of belief moves instantly.

I exit the body.

I think the only thing Asuna needed to do was to believe.

Believing, in performance context, becomes a non-verbal form of communication. It’s not
about explicit invitations, but about a quiet, yet powerful internal invitation that can be felt.
Invisible magnet. A field of permission and possibility. In the space of the performance, belief
is a language on its own. It’s the confidence that the audience will follow and the tensions in
the room will shift.
In performative space, belief is a motor. It gathers under the skin, resonates in the gut, and
pulls the audience into motion before they realize they have moved.

Believing is not only internal.
It is a way of composing the space, creating the invisible choreographies between bodies,
sounds, and attention. The performer becomes the initiator of a field, rather than the center
of an action. What moves the work forward is not control, but a kind of magical co-existence
with the unknown.

Believing is not a passive feeling but an active choreography.
It composes space invisibly, moving others not by command but through subtle attraction —
through attention and intention. As choreographer Meg Stuart writes in Are We Here Yet?

“You don’t direct the experience, you build conditions for something to emerge. Trusting the
invisible becomes part of the practice.”4

For the audience to follow the believed it requires preparation.
It demands a certain readiness from the audience to tune in to something unspoken, to trust
a signal before it becomes visible, to step toward without knowing exactly what you are
stepping into.

When do you invite the audience to believe? From the very first second of the work? Or
even earlier—already in the synopsis, the title, the promotional image? Or mid-performance?
Or in the final breath of the work?

It is the task of the performer to create such conditions. They shift audience perception
not by force, but by composing with belief. We don’t need to physically move in space to be
moved by what we experience.

Believing is a practice. A subtle but radical one: setting something into motion not by
controlling it, but by trusting its potential to emerge. Allowing us to communicate through
kinesthetic forces, mirror neurons, through invisible and the unknown. Belief, in these
moments, is not a feeling. Believing is an active choice.

There can also be moments when belief starts to fade. When you question the reality of
what you’re offering. When you sense the audience is not with you, or perhaps never was.
When the tension you’ve been cultivating slips through your fingers like steam
You become hyper-aware of yourself, of time, of execution.
You begin to look at yourself from the outside, as if watching a version of you continue
without you. In those moments, you don’t pretend. Forced belief is immediately recognizable.
It thins the air. Stay. Not because you’re certain, but because you choose to remain inside
the work honestly, with your exposed self.

Believing is not only the performer’s job. While the performer sets the architecture for
belief to emerge, it still is a shared responsibility. I believe density of air happens when the
author and the audience meet this invitation.

Believing needs you both. Performer alone cannot ignite the transformation without you,
the audience. Just like a chemical reaction, belief on its own will not begin to take shape; it is
only when it comes into contact with the other it can enter transformation.

Belief can be contagious, a vaporized force, leaking onto other bodies in the room.
But where does the confidence to believe — to trust that this is the right thing to do —
actually come from? What internal or external forces allow a performer to hold that belief in
front of others, even when its effects are uncertain?
Among many factors such as the artist's experience, sensitivity to context, the ability to
navigate uncertainty and thoughts I touch upon in chapter #coming with the whole self, I
believe there is also another important player involved — a whisper from within.

______________________________________

4 Meg Stuart, Are We Here Yet?, edited by Jeroen Peeters, Les Presses du Réel, 2010, p. 15

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# a whisper from within

When people talk about a "gut feeling," they’re actually referring to something very real
happening in the body. The gut has a surprisingly large number of neurons — about 100
million — and is often referred to as the second brain.
It’s like an information superhighway, carrying electrical signals at speeds of up to 96 meters
per second.
The gut doesn’t just listen to the brain — it also talks back.
In fact, around 90% of the signals go from the gut to the brain, not the other way around.
This means your gut is constantly sending updates to your brain often faster than your
conscious mind can process. A subconscious form of bodily intelligence picking up on subtle
environmental cues.
That’s why sometimes you feel something before you can explain it.
There’s no magic — it’s a different kind of knowing,
a whisper from within.

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