“Blood. Teeth. Fear. Cum. Fascia. Saliva. Wax. Tongue. Compulsion. Confusion. Confusion. Confusion.” Remaining unseen, 10 performers chant a hymn of the body—what it’s composed of, its by-products, its forces and affects. Almost instantly, every person in the room understands how we are connected in this particular ecology. As performers come into view and scale a cushioned platform into a silent, stationary tableau, so too does every member of the audience remain completely still.

Faye Driscoll’s Weathering is an exercise in stamina and trust, for the performers as much as for the audience. Beginning imperceptibly slow and mounting toward a bacchanal of props, food, plants, scents, and near-nude bodies, Driscoll has enacted a portrait of human relationships at close range, as well as a zoomed-out observation of a society grasping at survival. A work that operates through accretion and proximity, it evokes looming anxieties around belonging and alienation. To watch is to feel the strain and smell the sweat. Performers act out the slippages of desire and shame, as slow gestures to reach for elbows turn to compressed faces and bare nipples, smeared with gelatin and dirt.

In a brief conversation on opening night, I mentioned to Driscoll that contemporary performance always seems to unintentionally contain the whole history of performance art. She agreed, responding that she often uncovers “accidental influences” in her work. Weathering reads as profoundly art historical; it owes as much to Théodore Géricault, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, and the Laocoön (c. 27 BCE) as it does to Pina Bausch or Carolee Schneemann’s Meat Joy (1964). Showcasing their athleticism, performers hold each other in lifts and poses that resemble baroque representations of ancient myths—the battle of the centaurs and the Lapiths, Proserpina escaping Pluto’s grasp, Ugolino agonizing over the thought of eating his sons.

In the spirit of the baroque, romance eventually reveals its dark underbelly. The slow process of exposure accelerates to its climax of screaming, running, debauching, and holding on for dear life. The performance ends as slowly and silently as it began, but with the protracted hum of prior chaos—a “what have we done?” moment. As a rendering of a slow apocalypse, looking at the historical contexts and aesthetic inspirations behind the performance shows that crisis is cyclical. Warping the limits between sex and violence, self and other, Driscoll encapsulates the real, foaming optimism behind destruction in order to create anew.