How to do a downward facing dog

“The sitting bones point upward, the hands are well anchored in the floor, the fingers spread, the weight distributed on the outer edges of the hands. The head is relaxed, the toes are spread apart, the pelvic floor tense, pulled up and sucked in. The anus contracts. and now breathe. Ujayi breathe.”
Yoga is ubiquitous in the Western world. As a product of colonial entanglements, yoga is a phenomenon in which sociopolitical
from neoliberal self-optimization to cultural appropriation converge. In her first full-length piece as a white Swiss woman, dancer Johanna Heusser goes in search of her role in this web. In a lecture performance, her own body becomes the visual material of the negotiation. Repeatedly she assumes the pose of the dog looking down and places this process in ever new contexts, perhaps in the end finally executing the downward facing dog in a way that makes sense to her.

by Johanna Heusser

Cast