soak//bathtub opera
created + led by alexa dexa
“Healing, simplistic, haunting, mesmerizing.
The voice of whatever you hold sacred.”
soak is a crip ritual for nourishing our sick + mad + disabled bodyminds, for sinking into ease and effortlessness, for soaking until the ache dissipates into lull.
a small journey in a small space where the expanse is within you, the story is yours. a bath journey that moves beyond cure to ask what would feel healing for you, for right now?
the premiere of soak was presented by Experiments in Opera and took place live online over zoom. there were 3 free performances over the summer of 2024:
saturday, july 13 at 7pm eastern time
sunday, july 21 at 3pm eastern time
friday, august 2 at 7pm eastern time
rsvp.
with boundless gratitude for our crip kinship, i invite you to join me to soak over zoom from the comfort of your own soaking space at the time of your choosing. together, we’ll transmute our grief, exhaustion, and pain to melt into an expectationless expanse of ease, if only for now, a reprieve.
access artistry for soak includes american sign language and song-signing, open creative captioning, open audio description, open sound description, and access artists.
you’re welcome to use the chat freely, to share how you’re showing up to soak, to keep your video on or off as you like, to come and go as you need. it is so sacred to me when you honor your bodymindspirit and your agency. this ritual is ours to shape together, for ourselves and for each other.
a recording and transcript of soak will be shared with crip ritual participants only as a form of asynchronous access for those of us operating on crip time.
for any questions and/or any access requests for soak, please contact alexa dexa at [email protected].
the sound world of soak is shaped by alexa dexa soaking in a bathtub filling, filled with, and drained of water and epsom salts; their vocals; live electronic processing in alexa dexa’s dream patch in MaxMSP; pre-programmed electronic sequences crafted by alexa dexa in Reason; and the glacially timeshifted sounds of alexa dexa’s toychestra (toy piano, toy chimes, toy harp, alto xylophone, toy glockenspiel, desk bells, kalimba) in collaboration with the sounds of you and your body of water, soaking.
00:00:00 – 00:15:00: welcomes and cozyings
00:15:00 – 01:15:00: crip ritual soak
01:15:00 – 01:45:00: intermission
01:45:00 – 02:15:00: closing songspell (with participatory sound-making)
02:15:00 – 03:00:00: afterparty and goodbyes
total duration: 3 hours
soak engages sickness, madness, and disability as sites for expanding into expectationless expanses of ease, questioning/bypassing the medical industrial complex and ableist/eugenicist conceptions of cure to simply be here together as we are, sinking into effortlessness.
there are two main interdependent components to soak:
the first is a live performance by alexa dexa soaking in a bathtub, leading the audience through a bath ritual that alexa centers their days around for weathering a flare of their chronic illness. this includes singing a libretto that serves as an incantation to shift through grief, exhaustion, and pain to melt into an expectationless expanse of ease, if only for now, a reprieve. the live performance takes place over zoom. spotlighted in zoom is a live video of alexa in the bath, a video of rainbow-reflection waters rippling in the sunlight with creative captioning, and a live video of asl interpretation.
the second is a score for the audience, who actively shape the sound world of soak through their own experience of soaking, right along with alexa. (these sounds are local to each audience member and are not shared with the group.) the score shares basic ritual instructions for drawing a bath (or otherwise locating yourself in relation to water however that may be accessible for you), submerging, soaking, re-emerging, and draining the ache away. participant agency and trust that you know what’s best for your body are central to the score.
for candlelight.
the gorgeous warm glow of beeswax candles by artisan candlemaker Alysia Mazzella will be lighting my bath. her ethos and her candles are so magical and intentional. i’m so honored to know her hands have shaped the wax that shapes the fire that will tend our ritual space.
