Showcase: Hammam

Hammam offers us the chance for a collective purge, inspired by the traditional saunas used in different countries and cultures for centuries. In an immersive environment, the play explores steam and sound as environmental and tactile entities, as well as bathing as a healing practice somewhere between something intimate and public.

'Hammam' is an Arabic word that means ‘spreader of heat’ and is used in relation to public baths that use steam to cleanse both body and soul. This performance involves an experience that envelopes us in an atmosphere full of steam, inviting us into a thermal transition between heat and cold, with an ionizing mist made up of sound that both breathes life into and invigorates us.

Hammam is a research and transdisciplinary creation project that creates a crossover between dance, sound art, performance, and writing, developing pieces in different formats such as sound capsules, an editorial piece, a dance performance, practices using the body, and steamy concerts.

In each function of Hammam, around 50 liters of water are used, equivalent to the amount of water in a human body. This water is collected and poured back onto the earth after each performance.

“In all of these practices, the aim is to cleanse, using heat to cause sweating and an artificial fever. This leads bodies to expand and transition between states, eliminating toxins and water in the body through circulation and movement, both inside and out, in a cycle of different states, from liquid and evaporation. These are all public experiences, social gatherings, touching on what is both intimate and collective”, explains Javiera Peón-Veiga, director of Hammam.