Moaning Choir Final Presentation

Residency Facilitated by Raoni Saleh
Performance - Sat 30 October 2021
WORM Rotterdam
UBIK Space
Start → 20:00
End → 21:00

The neverending moaning of a polyphonic choir is a working title that marks the presentation of Raoni Muzho Saleh’s October residency at WORM. During this presentation, Raoni is staging alongside the participants their collective engagement with the research question “what happens to our feeling and sensing bodies when we are held in a collective and affective space of moaning?”

During the month of October, the participants have engaged with moaning as a polyphonic practice that shapes emotional expressions through sonority as data. Drawing inspiration from the musical technique of “call & response” in for example folk songs, gospel and working songs, Raoni uses this technique to engage alongside the fellow wailers with a listening through the skin and a calling from the gut. The precondition of the neverending moaning of this polyphonic choir is that we already are a moaning, breathing brethren and that when we gather in an endless wailing, our sounding cuts through any futurity of justice that seems unapproachable. As Anthony Heilbut puts it in “The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times”: "Words can’t begin to tell you, but maybe moaning will.”

Choreography and composition: Raoni Muzho Saleh / Advisor: Veza Maria Fernandez / Costume: Raoni Muzho Saleh / Choir: TBA