SPANDA




Performance | 60min| Fivizzano27 | Rome | Italy


Spanda—from Sanskrit, meaning vibration, flutter, or divine pulse—is a collaborative performance rooted in somatic inquiry, acoustic intimacy, and material tension. Conceived by Anna Kushnerova and Sofia Kovarich, and shaped by an international collective of dancer-beings, the work emerged from ten days of shared practice at Fivizzano27, Rome.

Performed twice to live audiences, Spanda rejected conventional rehearsal in favor of immediacy, allowing dancers to enter each encounter raw—with bodies receptive to unknown sensation and transitory form.

The performance explored improvised movement in relation to sculptural “body extensions” designed by Jack Davey—strap-on metallic forms shaped by minimalist gestures of cut and bend. Dancers chose their metallic counterparts before each performance, responding to the moment. These prosthetic forms constrained, extended, and reframed their moving bodies—turning limbs into surfaces for resonance and resistance.

Microphones embedded throughout the space captured the friction between skin, breath, and metal. The result was a living soundscape: a tangle of scratching, tapping, vibrating collisions, where acoustic residue became the language of affect.

Spanda invoked an unknowable ecology—a space in which flesh meets prosthesis, sensation becomes sonic, and bodies become sites of becoming.


Direction & Performance: Anna Kushnerova, Sofia Kovarich, Valentina Compagnucci, Claudia Toto, Pierre Antoine Vettorello, Eleonora Salvato

Set Design & Objects: Anna Kushnerova and Jack Davey

Sound Design: Álvaro Labao

Sound Recording: Anastasia Freygang

Video: Rodrigo Mella