Energy. Vitality. Euphoria. DOWN is a concentrated explosion of heightened moods and the urge to move. Just over a year ago, Swiss choreographer Mélissa Guex created this piece, which lasts just over half an hour, with drummer Clément Grin, and it hasn’t stopped touring since. And it doesn’t take much to let go: syncopated rhythms, raw movement, and the tension of sharing an everyday space while living an extraordinary experience. These are the ingredients with which Guex invites us to go on a collective journey.

As the choreographer explains, DOWN was conceived at a difficult time, right after she suffered an injury that left her unable to work for several months. That is likely why the piece feeds off an intense desire to break free, to express, and to reclaim a lost language, one that, for Guex, is unmistakably spoken through the body. Through body language, a common rhythm is articulated around the sound of the drums, giving rise to a multiplying effect that at times transports us to the fervour of a concert or a protest march.

You don’t need to be at a mega-festival to feel thousands of hearts beating in unison. At the core of this piece is a fascination with the multiplicity of the crowd, the collective, and the vast range of masks, identities and disguises it makes possible. The creative process drew heavily from this plurality, from that transformation of the body and silhouette into a kind of one-person rave where sirens, centaurs and other magical creatures of the underworld come together. If you ask Mélissa about the title of the piece, she’ll tell you that in the lowest moments, you can’t always swim upwards. Sometimes it’s just as important to let yourself sink, because even in the dark abyss, beauty can still shimmer.

When the body is exhausted, there is transformation. In this changing world, there is a beat. And despite the uncertainty, there is a fiesta.