Reina Desrouleaux

Cultures of Dance

I attended the Felt Room twice, once for the first half of the performance, and another for the latter half. Both experiences took me on a spiritual and meditative journey where a shared human experience was a path, and understanding was the destination.

The experience began as a shock, as my eyes struggled to adjust to the complete darkness of the room. I felt disoriented and uncomfortable as my eyes made up green patterns and specs to make up for the dark environment. The dancers moaned and took rapid deep breaths that made me feel outside of myself. I felt like I was in a haunted house without the theatrics and chainsaw wielding masked men. I tried to find a place in the room, I shuffled against the wall, frightened of the unknown center. My body attempted to ground itself in my senses but the lack of visual stimuli made me all the more aware of the grooves in the wall, and the rhythm of the dancers’ breaths. I sat down on the floor and allowed myself to adjust to the performance.

There were moments where I found myself wanting to join the performance. There was a removal of the traditional boundaries of audience and performer. I felt like I was a part of the performance, but also simultaneously felt like I was watching a movie by being in the film. I wanted to move, moan, breath, and touch along with the dancers but that felt like too strong of a break of a fourth wall.

Overall, I enjoyed the second part of the performance far more than the first. The first felt like spiritual hellscape, granted, I do not like and nor do I feel comfortable in the dark. I very much enjoyed the moments with the florescent lights. and the still but fluid movements of the dancers. It reminded me of a natural setting, similar to a forest . I wanted to walk into the performance and witness the movements more closely,  and to “frolic” through the human trees. I enjoyed the part near the end of the performance where the dancers became a part of the pile of clothing. I wanted to join in that movement, that appeared to be like that of a child discovering its environment. The covering of the dancers heads, and their continued intertwining felt like a poignant statement on the human condition. Perhaps we are always connected through our shared curiosity for our environment, always wanting to find more, always yearning for a meaningful connection. It felt like I was witnessing an artist at peace, trying to communicate that the curiosity had led them to a moment of understanding.

The end of the piece, with the very loud and continuous electronic-like white noise, was the most soothing experience I’ve had in a while. I felt like I had been taken to a happy place that I had always imagined but not quite been to. Perhaps it was the lighting, which made me feel like a still moment on a polaroid in your mother’s secret photo-album of her youth. I felt like I had been placed in a memory, where you first met your spouse, your favorite day out camping, watching a child’s first steps. The lighting, sound, and breeze felt like a moment of nostalgic euphoria.

“Please enter one by one.”

These were the first pieces of instructions we received before we even entered the room. I thought to myself, “Okay, this is going to be interesting.” Indeed, the felt room was all of that plus more.

Imagine, standing in a single-file line waiting for the person in front of you to go inside of a room for a performance. How am I supposed to feel? Excited of course! I had no idea what was going to happen but the fact that I was given instructions on how to enter made me question what kind of performance this was going to be. Clearly, it was not going to be like any other show.

Upon entering, I was blinded. Not by someone who covered my eyes, but by the darkness of the room. I had heard one of the performers recommend to a parent that it would be best to not enter for the first twenty minutes because of how dark it was going to be, but I did not think it was going to be completely blinding. How are performers capable of moving around in such darkness? Anyways, as I walked through the entrance, I stayed close to the wall and was suddenly stopped by another body. I backed away a little and stood for the first twenty-five minutes of the performance (this was the amount of time it took for my eyes to get a little used to the darkness).

Breathing and movement. Sounds people are not used to hearing because we have always been taught to control our breathing. The experience in the Felt Room though, is totally different. There is freedom in the way the performers breath and move. The sounds are unique because everyone is doing something different. The darkness, in my opinion added complexity to the performance. We did not know what exact movements were going on because of the fact that the audience could not really see what was going on, but we could hear everything.

The beginning was super interesting to me, but the middle of the performance took me away. It was the huge pile of clothes tangled all together. It was the fact that the performers began by laying there and one way or another they ended up being completely tangled in the clothes which was surprising to me. There was unison, but also division. The dancers moved slowly, then they separated. The huge pile of white tangled clothes, which began at the corner of the room, ended up being all around. There were pieces flying around, pieces on the floor, pieces being worn by performers and then there were some performers who were wearing one single piece at the same time! Where did the inspiration for this come from!? Who would have thought that the huge blob of clothes was going to become a prop that created the effect the performance had on me?

The last thing I will touch on is how I was touched on (haha). Nearing the end of the performance, there was a part where the performers approached some of the audience members. In my group, I was one of them. At the time, I was still sitting on the floor, and then she (the performer) came and sat next to me. I had been sitting “criss cross” style and then decided to extend my legs out. Both of my hands were on my lap. She grabbed my left hand gently and held it with her left hand while at the same time grabbing my right hand. She then dropped my left hand and began to “play” with my right hand. She began feeling all around it, slowly and gently. Analyzing it, as if it were a small piece she was looking at through a microscope. Looking at the way she stared at my hand made me become super interested in my own hand… I was touched by the felt room. This touch made me wonder about my right hand and the way it moves: the way my hand’s bones are set up, the movement and the way I feel things.

The felt room was beyond any other performance I had ever been to because it made me feel. I was aware of my senses the whole time and this sparked curiosity. I enjoyed it so much.

When I first stepped into the Felt Room, I had to become at ease with myself, which happens in the dark. I had to remember the feeling of my own body as my blindness forced my attention inward.

Then the dance began, and it was less about feeling than the anticipation of feeling. It was about what I knew, what I thought I knew, what I expected, and whether those expectations were met. I could hear the dancers’ breath, and the sounds ran up my arms and around my neck, waiting for touch. Flashes of light revealed their bodies, and the continual return to darkness, just as I was on the verge of adjusting, kept me continually sightless.

Eventually, the dancers did move toward me, rubbing against my leg and brushing my shoulder. But once the touch came, I felt more at ease. It was about this time that the light in the room came on and unveiled the dancers completely. Their movements were slow, which allowed me to adjust my own perceptions as they gathered in one line. It was not so much moving as shifting, at this point. They shifted imperceptibly, the slight movement getting passed down the line.

The beginning of the dance was all about breath and its release. The second part was about pauses and suspension. After a few minutes of this, the lights went back out, and in this return of blackness, I slipped out.

Feelings in The Felt Room

Part One

When describing my initial experience in The Felt Room, “daunting” is a understatement. I did not know what to expect when walking into the foyer of the performance. My journey started by removing my snow boots, heart pounding in anticipation. Notebook in hand and ready for action, I waited patiently to discover the art hidden behind black curtains. After a short while a woman suddenly addressed the crowd waiting alongside me. She offered us our first glimpse of the details of The Felt Room performance as she explained how to carefully open and close the double curtained entrance as to not disturb the ambiance of the performance.  She gestures to the paper sitting aside and invites us to materialize the sensations of our individual experiences within The Felt Room.

And then we entered.

Consciously we entered embarked on the entrance. Opening one curtain, a group stepped into a space between the two, closing it around them and opening the second into the exhibit. The process of entering alone was enough to spike my excitement. It was as if the curators were hiding a rare treasure and we were the select few who where able to see it.But what worried me most was that when the curtain opened-

I saw nothing.

*Spoiler Alert*

We were shrouded in darkness which was the last thing I expected to see-or not see in this case. Everyone slowly shuffled into the interior, dispersing from my line of site. I hesitantly moved through the dark space as well. I felt out the floor with my feet sweeping through the darkness as strange noises arose around me. People huffing, chortling to my sides, then bellow,near, then far,  amplified the eerie atmosphere of the room. I felt vulnerable and confused as if I were the outsider of some strange joke and the lights would reveal the four corners of the room and all the people in it any at any minute. Never in my life had I realized how much my security depended on being able to have visual knowledge of my surroundings.  Of course the idea had always been in the back of my mind as my greatest fear in life is sudden blindness, but I  had tucked it away as an irrationality.

In that moment I was living my greatest fear.

My feet continued to slide through the space as if the floor would fall from beneath them with the wrong step. The voices seemed to get louder as my heart beat erratically. I tried to steady my self and shuffled to the right where I thought there might have been be a wall; I have never desired a wall so much in my life. I did not find one.

Perhaps it was my accelerated heart beat, the noises, my vulnerability that pushed the words from my mouth.

“This is f*cking scary,” I vomited out. The chuckles I received in response where comforting.  They reminded me that I was not alone and that there were humans in the room and not just noises. However, the tension did not break for a while. I continued to slide as the noise rose again but when I realized that the light would not be coming on anytime soon, I was riveted in place. The joking was over; my fear of the unknown got the best of me and tapped out. I whispered once again, but this time it was a plea. “Could some one help me leave please?”

And they did.

A faceless hand touched my arm and guided me a few steps to the right where there was a second exit on the far side of the room. My hand was placed on a curtain and slid out quickly before voicing my gratitude and receiving a quaint whisper in response.

“You’re welcome.”

I find it interesting how the someone who contributed to the object of my fear instantly became a savior. When I opened the second curtain I was encased in light once again. It was then that I realized that I clutched an unused notebook in my hand. I was so focused on the knowledge that I did not have that I forgot myself and my entire purpose for being there in the first place. So I sat and I wrote what I felt in The Felt Room.

The Felt Room 01/19/17

• Scared
• Confused
• Uncomfortable
• Alone
• Embarrassed

Part Two

It has been well over a month. After mulling over the physical and mental impacts of my experience in The Felt Room I decided to attend the performance again.

I arrived in the foyer of the 02/23/17 performance with determination tattooed across my face. Going through the motions of sliding my snow boots off and unplugging my earbuds like a pro-athlete.

My body was ready.

Everything went much faster. I arrived right at the start of the performance and was grateful to find comfort in Judith before a woman began to address the crowd. Interestingly enough, this time she addressed the additional exit and instructed everyone to enter one by one. By the time it was my turn to pass through the curtains and thrust myself into darkness once again, I was ready. I opened one black veil, carefully shut it, then opened the second unto my fate before closing my self into it.

The room was alive.

Noises at various elevations and distances sprung around me once again. They were no less scary than the last time I heard them, but this time I planned to listen. Shuffling more confidently than before, I move to the left of the room, take a deep breath to center myself in the moment, and lower to the ground.

And there in that moment, I listen to the darkness. There are groans from afar, and rough puffs of air, queer sounds of wiggling bodies below as sound come to visit for a moment the dissipate into the darkness once again. Some time it would linger so close to me that it was all I could hear before it move on to a different part of the room. After listening to the sounds coming from the performers play in the darkness for what may have been five minutes I felt an arm on my leg. It slid innocently by one of my crossed legs taking the sound away with it. Then I felt a back against my own as a body slithered around my position on the floor with the shuffling of friction caused by our cloths as they made contact. As this repeated I began to feel a strange calm. The unidentifiable noises and brisk touches lulled me into a state where I did not feel the need to know or do anything but acknowledge what was going on around me.

It was a beautiful thing.

Suddenly light broke in the room and told a new story. My eyes met with faces from the crowd I entered with around the room; most were against the wall. The performers were also illuminated, each individual in a distinct white garb. They continue to make various indistinguishable noises as the move their bodies in abstract position. They bended, twisted, slithered and swayed aimlessly around the audience as if we were no different from them. In a way we were all performers in The Felt Room.

Little did I know, my performance would not end there. The bodies adorned in white withdrew from the audience to tangle with one another physically and vocally before the dark ascended again. The floor around me began to writhe as the clothes bodies brushed past me in the darkness. Their destination was a pile of white cloths that were positioned behind me. Sometime earlier in the performance I reached out to grab a strand near me in hopes of identifying it. I turn around to see the white bodies moving languidly in the pile of cloths. Their faces were hidden and all could be seen was a pile of limbs clutching one another as they tangled through the cloth. I drew my legs up to my chest intrigued at the sight of bodies figuratively detached from the part of us that make us most human. I was so entranced that I did not realize that a mass of limbs began to inch in my direction.

I watched as a hand appeared from the mass and braced on my knee. Then an arm pushed down on my shoulder for support and another draped cloth over my face. Before I knew it I became apart of the piece in an unexpected way; and I felt honored to support something so inexplicably beautiful.

Thank the stars no one smelled.

The piece ended in a series of electronic sounds that emphasized the post modern movements of the performers. I watched as they played with the hands of audience members, walked the length of the room, and laid statically on the floor in a chaotic yet appealing choreography. Finally one by one, with out transition, each performer turned and left from the curtains we entered through as if leaving a show we put on for them.

What began in darkness ended in light as the spectacle became spectators and fright became might. I truly enjoyed this experience and if asked to go again, I would not put up a fight.

Feelings in The Felt Room

Akiko Williams

Madeline Hagar, Cultures of Dance

Apprehension consumed me before I entered the Felt Room. The reality that I had no idea what was coming was nearly suffocating, yet exciting at the same time. While my mind and body wrestled with how to interpret my current situation, I told myself to focus on two things: my breathing and putting one foot in front of the other. I resigned myself to the unknown and walked through the curtains, separating myself from familiarity and comfort.

Rapid spurts of breathing echoed off the walls when I entered the space. As I slide my hands across the wall to guide myself throughout the space, I tried to discern the sounds that seemed to be coming from everywhere. It was very disorienting. For the time being, I had lost my ability to see. I had to trust my other senses. I relied on touch and sound for a majority of the time I was in the Felt Room. The gasps coming from the dancers combined with the darkness was very overwhelming at the beginning. So, I followed the wall until I found a corner in which I could sit down and feel supported by the walls against my back. I focused on my breathing and tried to take in my new surroundings. Eventually, the darkness became comfortable and I enjoyed the invisibility it gave me. I ventured out from the corner and began to walk around the space, trying to observe the dancers move within the space.

Just when I finally adjusted to the darkness, the lights flashed for a moment. It was so sudden that I barely had any time to even register its existence. i wondered if it was my imagination playing a trick on me. The light also snapped me out of the darkness, for the burst of light reminded me of the power that accompanies sight. When I was once again thrust into darkness, I found it much easier to ignore the loss of sight and hone in on my other senses. At this point, I was moving about the space in a confident manner, using my senses to guide me throughout the space. I no longer worried about bumping into anyone and simply tried to take everything in.

My mind began to wander. I lost track of time. More flashes followed, but I focused less on them and more on the shapes that emerged throughout the piece. I imagined that the dancers had been asleep, writhing and loudly breathing in their sleep. Then, as time progressed, they woke up and began their day. They spoke in phrases, phrases in a foreign language written and performed by the body but with no universal meaning. I felt free to make my own associations and explore the space as I pleased, without any worry about what others would think of me. This release from judgment was the most powerful part of this experience. When I left, I felt renewed and again reminded myself to breathe and put one foot in front of the other as I re-entered the “real world.”

Normally when attending a dance performance, people expect to see the dance. In the Felt Room this wasn’t always the case. The felt room was about more than just the visual experience. The choreographer enlisted many other senses along with sight deprivation in order to create a unique experience.

Throughout the piece the lighting was dynamic, changing brightness, color, and point of origin. The majority of the piece that was lit seemed to be lit by an overhead light with color changing bulbs. As the light shifted to colors closer in shade to white light, it increased in brightness. There were times when the entire room was visible, but others where you couldn’t see anything. Two sets of curtains at the doorways blocked light from entering the room, so when the lights went out the room truly was pitch black. I can only liken that experience of vision deprivation to a time when I was in a cavern and the lights were turned off so those of us visiting could experience total darkness. The felt room didn’t reach the point of total darkness, but it was dark enough for my eyes to play tricks on me. I would think I saw one movement happen in the dark, but then a flashlight in the corner would flash on and I would realize that wasn’t the case.

The flashlight that was used to break through the pitch black was piercing with its brightness, creating a visual shock. For a moment the room was illuminated. I looked around to get a good idea of what was happening in the room, but as soon as I got the general sense of the room- with dancers crawling on top of each other, nearly climbing up the walls, the light went out. We were back in the dark listening to the events unfold, waiting for another flash of light to see the room once more.

The lack of light gave the audience the ability to notice things that normally are covered up. There was no sound except the noises made by the dancers and the audience. The breathing of the dancers was audible for many different parts of the dance, and sometimes the dance seemed to be focused around the breathing. The dancers breathed loudly, moving with their breaths, slowly synchronizing their breathing in movements until they were all breathing and moving at the same pace and time, all together in a circle. This aspect of dance that is normally ignored or purposefully subdued was made a focus of the piece.

The lack of seating and instructions to place yourself anywhere in the room allowed the audience members to become more a part of the art. The audience members could be touched by the dancers. Often, in the darkness or with their faces covered, the dancers could not see where the audience members were so they could be bumped by accident or interacted with to a greater extent.

In the felt room, the audience didn’t just see a dance. They heard it and felt it.

The Felt Room initially filled me with a profound sense of discomfort and confusion. There was, of course, the uneasiness of a piece communicated primarily through touch and sound in the absence of natural lighting, but perhaps what put me more on edge was the confusion over where I stood as an audience member in relationship to the performers. Immediately upon entering the gallery, I was faced with the conscious task of placing myself in the performance space itself – where would I position myself in the room? Would I stand, sit, or lie down? I knew I had to move away from the entrance to allow other audience members in without bumping into me, so I began by moving towards what I thought was the center of the room where I stood for a while.

Throughout this orientation, I heard the breath-based soundtrack of the performers, seemingly at ease and knowledgeable on the pitch-black room. They began to move across the floor with ease, fearlessly brushing against the audience members. My ankle was caressed as a woman laid at my feet – I saw her only when the lights flashed – which plunged my slowly-adjusting eyes back into darkness. I had absolutely no idea how much time past, and when the lights slowly turned on and the dancers leaned against each other I savored it as a familiar sight in the type of performances I am conditioned towards.

As soon as I was made comfortable by the choreography, the dancers in light, the light went off again. I moved towards sitting against the wall to prepare for the next chapter of the performance, which came much later than I was expecting to. The bodies clad in white fabric, writhing against each other in the corner, could only be described as disturbing. A lack of faces and words throughout this performance disconnected me with the dance vocabulary I know – body parts – and replaced it with unknown forms.

Soon, the dancers began pushing the boundaries further. One dancer grabbed my hand, playing with the joints and muscles in it. I closed my eyes to experience this as feeling, rather than make eye contact. This touch began to crescendo into a frantic movement by all the dancers, seemingly more active than they had been all night. As the room fully lit up at the end, I felt an unpleasant return to reality, but also a sense of community as all audience members looked around the room and at each other to acknowledge our shared experience in the space.

In all, The Felt Room was an incredible perversion of the typical performance experience, challenging audience members to embrace new forms of movement and sensation.

It was an experience I’ve never had.

I entered a room which was totally dark. Perhaps it was the loss of sight that emphasized the sound I heard. Some heavy breathes hovered around the room. I could also hear the sound of fists beating on bodies and the sound of feet stepping on the ground. I knew there were some “creatures” moving in the dark. The feeling reminded me of a quote of Genesis, which I just read. “And the earth then was welter and waste and darkness over the deep and God’s breath hovering over the waters.” It was at that moment that I understood how much I relied on seeing to perceive the world. When I was deprived of sight, it felt like the world shut down in front of me. The information I got from other senses did not ease my upset but actually strengthened it. It seemed to me that without images the only thing left was just chaos.

I was afraid. I had no choice but to keep walking into deeper space of the room. Suddenly I bumped into something that was shaking and making some “ahhh” sound. It did not adjust its place or even react to my touch. I sat down on the ground, adhering to the wall and waiting for what would happen. At that moment, I had no idea about how the story would extend.

Then, as the light turned up, some silhouettes appeared. Gradually they became clear and the dancers appeared. They were all in white and moved in the same way. I couldn’t understand what they were expressing. The only thing left for me to do was to watch. The background music was special. I wouldn’t actually call it music. For me, it was more like the sound of nature. It sounded like the wind and the rain were actually happening out there. The light went off again. The sound of breathing rose again. I felt my breath accorded with theirs, and then I fell asleep.

When I opened my eyes again, the light was on and the dancers were tangling with a whole bunch of white clothes at the corner of the room. For one second I doubted if I was in a dream. The scene in front of me was surreal but tempting. I sat near them. As the dancers were trying to disentangle from the clothes, a leg stretched into the air in front of me. The concept of “un-naming things” I’ve just read in class struck me at once. For me, the leg no longer appeared as a leg, but something independent, something that was stretching with its own will. It was a new perspective. The dance has always been providing me with perspectives that helped me break away from my previous assumptions.

Although I still don’t quite get what the dance wanted to express, I enjoyed it by experiencing it with different perspectives or in different ways. I breathed to the same rhythm with the dancers. I mimicked their movements. I slept during the dance. It was more like a two-hour dream. In the very beginning of the dance, I asked myself “can a dance be a dance when it cannot be seen?” In the following two hours, the dance kept stripping away my assumptions about what a dance should be. By not providing any context or clues, the dance inspired me to come up with my own understanding.

My experience with The Felt Room can be best described with two dimensions: The first dimension comes from a walkthrough of the physical senses, tangibility, and feel of the place. The second dimension can best be compared to a lucid dream. As I first walked into the room, my heart sank with fear.

The First Dimension: As I walked into the room, my heart sank with fear. Darkness in an empty space can my mind fill it with horrors. What really frightened me was the sense of the life in the darkness that came from the breathing and movement I could hear. I clutched onto the wall that passively became the thread that kept me from falling into my fears. Pacing around the room gave me a menacing thrill akin to perhaps walking a tightrope. The air was cold and filled with the whispers of the performers. After several run-ins with the performers and the eventual adjustment of my pupils, I felt confident and almost desired to leave the wall. By this point, I’d reached a good level of comfort. My attention shifted to the sounds of the breathing. I used it to guide me to avoid running into other attendees/performers. The sounds were jumbled and unstructured but as I began to listen to the sound as a whole for a while, it brought with it a sense of calming unison. From this point on, my state of mind kept going deeper down the same path.

The Second Dimension: My mind was jumbled with mostly negative thoughts at first: fear, anxiety, and helplessness. These thoughts only escalated initially. I was far too cautious about my physical surroundings. As I started to calm down, however, my mind became clearer. And once my mind adjusted completely–once I’d found comfort in my physical surroundings– all my focus shifted to the sounds of The Felt Room. I closed my eyes and took a seat against the wall. My mind began to drift with the sounds of what felt like occasionally-disturbed sounds of the wind. I found myself in a grass field. The horizon was on all sides but one: Far in the distance stood a tree so enormous it could touch the steps of heaven and would take a day to go around. It looked close simply due to its size. Its billions of leaves shimmered a silver that reflected the green of the grass and the purplish blue of the sky. From where I stood it, it looked daunting. I approached it and found a borough large enough for me to fit in. I stepped in to find an old wooden spiral staircase that headed straight up the bark of the tree. The image of a natural tree was frequently disturbed by the expertly crafted window-like-holes in the bark. The wind still howled through the field and resonated within the tree. As I climbed up the staircase I found animals of all kinds living within the nooks of the branches. I stopped climbing once I happened upon a large enough opening onto a branch. I stepped out and felt the wind hit me with a magnified strength. The branch was the width of a sidewalk and on the other end of it was a bench looking out at the view 150 feet above the ground. I took a seat on it, uncharacteristically unafraid of the height. I could still only see grass but I felt comforted by it.

The Felt Room was an experience. It gave me an opportunity to have my physical senses induce a thought or impulse that I could express without the fear of an audience. I’d recommend this to anyone who feels like their imagination is powerful but held captive to their own mental restraints.

Kyra Wilson, The Body as a Choreographer

The Felt Room was a lesson in sensation and deprivation. What happens when you cannot see, what happens when you cannot hear… what happens when you have no sense.

I noticed the sensory deprivation. I noticed the moments when there was sound but not light and light but not sound. It was interesting to me that it was far more difficult to eliminate sound than light. I thought that it would have been the opposite–people are so reliant on their vision that I thought it would’ve been near impossible to create an environment where no one would be able to use the sense with which they are perhaps the most comfortable. I don’t know if the intention was to eliminate particular senses, but that is what I felt like, and so it interesting how there was still sound present in quiet moments. Breath, swishing of clothes, feet on the floor, sighs… it is much harder to be quiet than invisible.

I did not expect the performers to interact with the audience in the way they did. There was a moment when a dancer came up to me and played with my arm and I didn’t find that surprising. In a performance about sensation and feeling it should not be unexpected that the performers would try to feel the audience or force the audience to feel something. What did surprise me was when the performers would “interact” with the audience but impersonally. At one point, the performers kind of just moved around and on top of one of the audience members. They put their feet in his face, crawled across his lap, etc. It was unexpected because there was such blatant disregard for the typical rules of interaction. They moved around him like he wasn’t a person but just like an uneven part of the floor or some other obstacle to explore/move around.

During most of it I was incredibly uncomfortable. I did not like not being able to see what was happening or consciously trying to be quiet and not disturb the atmosphere. The more I slowed down and experienced The Felt Room, the more uncomfortable I was. There was a short portion where I was relaxed–there was dim lighting and gentle sounds, but that did not last long. Attending this performance showed me how much I am not used to/do not like when it is dark, and quiet, and I am not alone.

I think one of the reasons I was uncomfortable was because of my unfamiliarity with the situation. After all, how many times do you get to be in room with 20 other people, in the dark, in silence, and just pay attention to your sensations? Probably not very often. The Felt Room allowed me to experience conditions that I have never experience and likely will never experience again.