Underwater Dance & Freediving — projectLIMB
About Gabriel Forestieri and Meredith Sallee
Gabriel Forestieri and Meredith Sallee are partners in life as well as projectLIMB, their dance company that explores the relationship between humans and water. Their dances are performed while freediving, meaning they move underwater relying on the air contained in their lungs. The couple discuss how they came to dance underwater and the work involved in creating these mesmerizing performances.
The Science and Art of Underwater Dance with projectLIMB
The couple discuss how they came to dance underwater and the work involved in creating these mesmerizing performances. They discuss that it’s not really about holding one’s breath but about equalizing, using as little air as possible. It’s a different outlook. And, Gabriel admits that he’s addicted to the water. Gabriel says that the purpose of the work is “about showing a relationship with water in a different way, so it's not just about beautiful dancing. In my perspective, it's also about how humans are part of the water. We have a shared identity really. And so that's my practice of working. And to me that's really what I want. I want people to see is that it's not separate. It's not a trash can. It's not outside. It is literally part of us.”
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00:00:00 Pamela Ferris-Olson Today on the Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast on womenmindthewater.com, I'm speaking with Gabriel Forestieri (Forest ee aerie) and Meredith Sallee (SAULEE) who are partners in life as well as projectLIMB. Their dance company contributes to the development of Underwater Dance. And just as the name implies, the dance is performed while freediving. The couples’ work is an expression of joy entwined with the beauty of the human body and nature.
00:00:32 Pam Ferris-Olson The Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast on womenmindthewater.com engages artists in conversation about their work and explores their connection with the ocean. Through their stories Wo(men) Mind the Water hopes to inspire and encourage action to protect the ocean and her creatures.
00:00:43 Pam Ferris-Olson On this podcast I have the pleasure to speak with the creative and talented couple Gabriel Forestieri and Meredith Sallee. In 2004, Gabriel set out on a mission to make dance that spoke to our relationship with the world. His work puts him through landscapes, as varied as beaches, rooftops and subway stations. Along the way he developed a passion for free diving. Free diving is done without mechanical devices or more simply stated with only the air contained in the lungs.
00:01:25 Pam Ferris-Olson Meredith is also an accomplished dancer and much more recently discovered free diving and underwater dance. The couple live in Sicily along with their toddler. The family travels to places around the globe, places like Thailand and the Caribbean island of Curacao expressing their vision and making connections to underwater movement. I'm grateful to them for making time and their busy schedule to chat with me on the Wo(men) Mind the Water Artist Series podcast. The couple has amazing credentials. Gabriel, for example, has taught dance to prestigious places like Juilliard and the Joffrey Ballet. Meredith has worked as a professional dancer, dance educator, and studio manager. They are opening up new worlds where their underwater dance.
00:02:15 Pam Ferris-Olson Well, let me begin by asking Gabriel, when did you begin to explore the world through dance?
00:02:21 Gabriel Forestieri My practice is with my body and with nature really began when I was much younger. When I was about 10 or 11 and going through some intense emotional pain with separation of parents and my father moving away and a lot of changing of schools and finding really the only safe space for me was outdoors. It was a space without words. It was a space where I was with my body and I was with the world in a very simple way. Direct contact. It didn't require a lot of language and there was something that I think; that seed was really planted there for the work that really came later.
00:03:15 Pam Ferris-Olson Alright, thank you. So after you graduated with an MFA from New York University, you became a choreographer and a director of Project Limb. What was the impetus for you to form your own dance company?
00:03:29 Gabriel Forestieri Well, you know, it sounds like a bigger deal than it is. It's more just like, OK, I would like to choreograph. And when you start choreographing, people ask you what name you're choreographing under. And I didn't like having it be my name because I didn't feel like it was about me. It was about all of us working together, and so the idea of limbs came to mind. Many limbs. And then this idea of the project, both the research but also the projection of the limb into space. Those were sort of the themes and then, you know, it really was just a way to explore my own creative ideas through movement. I'd say with others.
00:04:16 Pam Ferris-Olson So when did you discover free diving? And why was the allure so strong that you were driven to become a certified AIDA free dive instructor? And by the way, what does it mean to be an AIDA free dive instructor?
00:04:32 Gabriel Forestieri AIDA is an association of APNEA, it's just an anacronym. You know its initials basically for a French original organization that hosts competitions and manages training protocols and sort of certification levels up to instructor and even instructor trainer people who train instructors. So you know, it's just an agency that works to maintain the level of free diving and support the education and promotion of it. Basically.
00:05:06 Pam Ferris-Olson So how do you go from dance to free diving?
00:05:10 Gabriel Forestieri Well, actually I had always been in love with the water. I've, you know, been a swimmer and swim instructor and a scuba diver. And I even liked to swim down and snorkel by myself already. But I would say the first time I was really introduced to dancing underwater was because of some friends of mine that I had in New York. Chisa Hidaka, who runs something called the Dolphin Dance Project, who maybe another person you would like to interview in your podcast, actually.
00:05:38 Pam Ferris-Olson Lovely.
00:05:39 Gabriel Forestieri Yeah, she is an amazing artist and she works with wild dolphins doing dance with other humans. Kind of mixing the dolphin and human movement and she invited me to come with her to Hawaii and just check out their practice. And that was in 2011. And I went out there and it was, you know, amazing but also really intense having never had any experience like that before. And that was the first time I went free diving and the first time I went free diving. Actually, I didn't understand what was going on really. You know, there were a bunch of people hanging out on noodles, pool noodles relaxing. And one guy just did a terrible model of what you should do in free diving. [He] didn't warm up and shot down to the bottom and came up and immediately had a terrible loss of motor control and blackout.
00:06:30 Pam Ferris-Olson Ohh my.
00:06:31 Gabriel Forestieri And his friend literally saved his life. And then he just left. But it was very shocking to see that first in your face about free diving.
00:06:43 Gabriel Forestieri And I'll never forget, because the rope and, I've never seen this again, I don't know where they got this rope, but it literally had like, a ruler. Every millimeter on the line, it was visible. So as you go down, you can literally see each millimeter. It's just daunting, you know, to see when your first diving to see each, you know, 10, 20 centimeters, 30 centimeters, 40 centimeters. 50 centimeters. You know like that. That was kind of intense and intimidating. And I can 01be honest, it kind of turned me off. And it wasn't until 2014 that I made a film. And I did more work without fins, without a snorkel, without a mask, just a nose clip, and seeing images from that I was: “Oh ok, there's something really important here for me to do and to discover.” That's when I was really: “Ok. I need to become a better free diver. And I want to share this with people. So if I want to teach, I need to become a free dive instructor. Because those are the basic tools you need to share with people first. So I did all those things and practiced and did projects and met people.
00:07:49 Pam Ferris-Olson Meredith, while you began dancing at an early age, when did you decide to seriously commit to dancing?
00:07:57 Meredith Sallee Yeah, I yeah, I started dancing when I was three, and then just regular studio life and tap jazz and ballet kind of things, and annual performances. And so then when I was in high school thinking about college and thinking about where I wanted to move my life.
Yeah, I said : “I think I just want to keep moving. I just want to move my body.” So I also, I'm from a small town in Georgia and I wanted to move away from that small town in Georgia. And so, yeah then I went to university and Maine, and I had a wonderful dance program. And once I was in that, I was just hooked. There was also new movement style that I was exposed to, and I said: “Yeah I'm, I'm never going to stop dancing.” So yeah, high school and then just college. And after graduation, I popped around through some dance companies and whatnot.
00:08:58 Pam Ferris-Olson So when did your journey intersect with that of Gabriel’s and what was your first introduction to underwater dancing?
00:09:07 Meredith Sallee Yeah, we met in January 2019 and he came to Seattle. We were working, making a piece. projectLIMB was coming and the company that I was in at that time, he was working with us. So that's when we met and yeah, there's no way you meet Gabriel. There's no way to escape. Also meeting underwater dance. Although I have always loved the ocean and water and wanting to be in it and be near it, I just have a different experience. I had some water trauma when I was younger. And so I've always been, kind of, at the surface, so to speak. And then of course, yeah, when I met Gabe and then figured out, like, the extent of his underwater dancing: “I said OK. Well let's just keep finding out what that means. And now I know. [laughter] Now I know.
00:10:07 Pam Ferris-Olson So I love the Pacific Northwest and I just moved to Colorado from Maine. So I'm familiar with the water there. And those are two very cold water environments. So I don't know that, well there are people who spend time in the water in Maine, but I think you have to be very strong character to spend any length of time in there.
00:10:34 Meredith Sallee Yeah, I was not in the water in Maine or in the Pacific Northwest, really. So this is why we live in Sicily. [laughter] We're not diving in those areas.
00:10:45 Pam Ferris-Olson So I know that you host underwater dance workshops in Sicily. And I will definitely post information about the workshops on the womenmindthewater.com site as well as the link to the projectLIMB site. But I'd like you to offer listeners some insight on how to control your breath underwater.
00:11:05 Gabriel Forestieri I would frame it differently. So it’s not about controlling your breath. It's about controlling your state. Because what you want is to calm yourself. Lower your heart rate. Relax and then the water will be able to meet you in the same way. What often happens is because of lots of reasons, it's feels uncomfortable or you feel nervous or there's panic and then you're holding your breath and all of a sudden you're: “OK. I mean I have to breathe.” And you actually don't. You still have plenty of oxygen. Your body's fine. But mentally alarms are going off because of other reasons. And then you can't hold your breath any longer. I really believe that everyone could hold their breath for two minutes with very little training like almost immediately. As long as they can relax. I don't say that like it's a simple thing because it's not. It's a complicated thing to relax and to lower your state if you don't have practice with it, and if you're not familiar. That being said, water does give you feedback that can help you with that.
00:12:31 Meredith Sallee When I first started dipping my toe into the water once we were in, once we moved to Italy. I didn't understand any of the mechanics of how to go and actually dive, and there's equalization things that are happening. And as Gabe was mentioning, calming yourself and whatnot. But before I went through any sort of training or anything, we were just out and swimming and casually, I wasn't even trying to train. And we actually went over to a buoy, I think, or something, a mooring. And it was this huge, you know, just BLOB in the water. and then you look down and there's the chain and it's all the way down to the bottom. And I'm, you know, snorkel, mask all the things and it's my first kind of first time and Gabe's like: “OK, well, let's try this how you equalize and think about that and think about that.” And I just tried it. I pulled down and I just went and sat on the chain and I could just look out and see the vastness. And that was one of my first experiences of being underwater, staying, not moving and just and just being. And then I also had the mask on so I could see and that was where I said: “OK, let's keep doing that.”
00:13:53 Pam Ferris-Olson So how has the underwater dancing affected your thoughts about the ocean and your body?
00:13:59 Gabriel Forestieri The aspect of free diving that's really fascinating is having to hold but at the same time surrender and free yourself. Even though there's a hold because you're underwater you're not breathing, and you have to. You know, there is a: “Can you hold your breath mechanism.” You’re closing that glottis. You know, and so there's a kind of hold there and there's a kind of tension that you need to maintain. You can't just [imitates letting air out]. That's not going to work. That's not, it's not the practice. But at the same time, you don't have, you know [imitates forcibly holding air in], that's not going to help you at all either so you have to hold the tiniest and then the rest you free. And that's what was an interesting, you know, kind of practice. And also, you know, you become very aware of this area [he holds his neck and throat]. That's from equalizing though which maybe you haven't even asked about. Equalizing truly is the art of free diving. It is actually, equalizing is really the art.
00:15:16 Gabriel Forestieri Holding your breath part is, yes that's something. But that's not really a challenge in some ways. Eventually, at some level of course, but in the beginning and in the middle, even in advanced levels often, it's not it. It's really the equalizing that art form of using as little air as possible to send it into your eustachian tubes and you have to be very specific. So all of that kind of information and what you're doing with your rib cage and diaphragm, that's been a transformational process for sure, different outlook.
00:15:51 Pam Ferris-Olson I can see that you're not only becoming one with the water but becoming inside yourself and aware. And relax. Like you said: “holding and releasing at the same time.”
00:16:04 You know you're addicted. You become addicted to the water. And you just need, I need to be in the water at some point. I can feel if it's been too long and I haven't been able to have been, you know, underwater and in the water with the water.
00:16:19 Meredith Sallee And yeah, our house gets really weird if we're awake. There needs to be water time. We need to be out there. We need to do that. We need to get in the ocean.
00:16:32 Pam Ferris-Olson So Gabriel since you've been going free diving have the water conditions in the places that you dance changed at all? Do you see any change or feel any change?
00:16:45 Gabriel Forestieri Yeah, I mean. I can just speak in terms of water temp. You know in Sicily, and I'll speak in Sicily because I have the most long-term experience there, let's say, because I'm in that water all the time and I have been for six years or 5-1/2 years and it's the water is maybe 2 or 3° warmer. So that's pretty extreme.
00:17:12 Pam Ferris-Olson Yes it is. So as you've developed a relationship with the ocean, have you also developed a sense of responsibility to address some of the impacts that are affecting the water?
00:17:27 Gabriel Forestieri Really the purpose of the work is about showing a relationship with water in a different way, so it's not just about beautiful dancing. In my perspective, it's also about how humans are part of the water. We have a shared identity really. And so that's my practice of working. And to me that's really what I want. I want people to see is that it's not separate. It's not a trash can. It's not outside. It is literally part of us.
00:18:05 Pam Ferris-Olson OK, so I usually close by asking guests to tell listeners what they can do to help preserve our ocean as a place of wonder and as a valuable ecosystem. What thoughts might you contribute to this conversation?
00:18:22 Meredith Sallee Yeah, for just every time you're at the beach or in the water bring something out of it, as in the litter that you see You know, leave the wildlife, don't harass it. Respect the things that are there in its home. And we're always hauling things out and putting it in the buoy. You know we have our garbage that we bring out of the water.
00:18:48 Gabriel Forestieri Yeah, I mean. I would say. It's really you know, most of our impact is as consumers. So being really mindful of the kind of fish you're eating, and the kind of products you're buying, and how it relates to the ocean and the furthering of its destruction.
You know, of course you know, it's a sort of hypocritical game. We live in a society that is as it is and I'm not going to be able to transform the climate policy for the United States. And you know, the level of your advocacy is going to vary but that's something everyone can do. You can take a look at what you're consuming and the choices you're making, and that has a big impact on the ocean for sure.
00:19:33 Pamela Ferris-Olson Well thank you. I'd like to remind my listeners that I've been speaking with Gabriel Forestieri and Meredith Sallee. This creative couple shares the beauty of dance and the ocean through their underwater multidimensional productions.
00:19:49 Pamela Ferris-Olson Gabriel and Meredith are the latest guests on the Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast. The series can be viewed on womenmindthewater.com, Museum on Main Street and YouTube. An audio-only version of this podcast is available on womenmindthewater.com, on iTunes, and Spotify. Wo(men) Mind the Water is grateful to Jaine Rice for the use of her song Women of Water. All rights for the Wo(men) Mind the Water name and logo belong to Pam Ferris-Olson. This is Pam Ferris-Olson.
