David Thomson & Samita Sinha, "giving water to the places that were lost"

Co-creation: David Thomson and Samita Sinha.
Dance: David Thomson.
Vocals: Samita Sinha.

An in-situ creation for the Nomadic Nights of the Fondation Cartier, as part of the SECONDARY exhibition by Matthew Barney.

As part of Matthew Barney’s exhibition-event SECONDARY presented at the Fondation Cartier from June 8 to September 8, 2024, the Nomadic Nights invite 4 performers from his latest video installation SECONDARY to each present in-situ creations.

Tonight, choreographer, dancer and performer David Thomson teams with artist and composer Samita Sinha to create giving water to the places that were lost, a vibrational performance that transports the audience into an ongoing continuum.

David Thomson and Samita Sinha met in 2006 through Sekou Sundiata’s powerful work the 51st (dream) state, in which David Thomson was choreographer and Samita Sinha vocalist. Mutual admirers of each other’s work, the two artists seized the opportunity offered by the Nomadic Nights to share their synergistic practices and create a journey of activation and surrender.

In her practice, Sinha unravels Indian vocal traditions through the body and mind to create an open, liberatory language of vibration. David Thomson’s history and works exist amidst the intersections of movement, text, sound, and song, in his practice of revealing self and alterity.

Encompassing shared investigations of states of being and transformation, they find portals to get lost and discover deeper conversations with the soul. giving water to the places that were lost is a practice and choreography of weaving vibrational space drawn in the moment, each performance singular and unrepeatable.

Biographies

David Thomson is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice centers on the interrogation of presence and absence in the performance of identity. He has worked with Trisha Brown (1987-93), Ralph Lemon, Marina Abramović, Alain Buffard, Yvonne Rainer, Meg Stuart, Maria Hassabi, and Matthew Barney, among many others. Thomson was honored with a New York Dance and Performance Award (“Bessie”) for Sustained Achievement (2001), and for Outstanding Production for his first evening-length work, he his own mythical beast (2018).

Artist and composer Samita Sinha creates multidisciplinary performance works that unravel Indian vocal traditions through the body to create a decolonized, multivalent language of voice and vibration. Her works have been commissioned by Asia Society, Performance Space, Danspace, Rubin Museum, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Queens Museum, Gibney Dance, and Western Front, and presented by The Kitchen, Wexner Center for the Arts, REDCAT, PICA, National Sawdust and others. She has received awards from National Endowment for the Arts, Fulbright Foundation, National Performance Network, and New York State Council on the Arts.