![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/fredhatt.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/fredhatt-Inner-Heat-00014810.jpg\" "\\"fredhatt-Inner-Heat-00014810\\"")
<\/a>Still from "Inner Heat", video by Fred Hatt with Corinna Brown<\/p><\/div>\n
If you emerge from a hot tub or shower into the cold night, you may see rivulets of steam rising from your skin.\u00a0 If the environment is dark and a light source illuminates the steam from behind, you can see it clearly.\u00a0 A runner on a chilly morning may also generate steam from the body, but it\u2019s usually difficult to see in daylight.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Still from "Inner Heat", video by Fred Hatt with Corinna Brown<\/p><\/div>\n
My longtime friend and collaborator, Corinna Hiller Brown<\/a>, a butoh dancer and movement therapist, had the idea of trying to capture this effect on video, combined with trancelike butoh dance.\u00a0 On a snowy winter night in 2005, in my studio in Brooklyn, we turned off the heat, opened all the windows and doors, and pulled a box fan out of off-season storage, trying to get the room as cold as possible.\u00a0 Corinna repeatedly got in and out of a hot shower, so when she entered the chilly studio her skin would steam for a couple of minutes \u2013 just enough to get a quick take.\u00a0 Later that same night, I filmed the snowflakes eddying under the street lamps outside.<\/p>\n There was no way to assemble the fragments of dance into a connected choreography, but the slow downward drift of the snow through shifting currents of air worked well as a transitional element, echoing in reverse the movement of the glowing steam curling up from the warm skin.\u00a0 The first, simple edit of this material was used as a projection element with \u201cMy Love Bleeds Fire\u201d, a choreographed piece that Corinna premiered at the Cool New York Dance Festival at White Wave<\/a>.<\/p>\n Still from "Inner Heat", video by Fred Hatt with Corinna Brown<\/p><\/div>\n Seven years later, I\u2019ve finally completed a version of the video that I feel stands alone as a piece of poetic cinema.\u00a0 For the soundtrack, multi-instrumentalist Gregory Reynolds<\/a> created a jangly droning sound with swelling bass notes, which I mixed with recordings I\u2019d made of ocean surf and rain.<\/p>\n Still from "Inner Heat", video by Fred Hatt with Corinna Brown<\/p><\/div>\n For me, the film is a vision of the warmth of life in the cold world.\u00a0 I described it thus:\u00a0 \u201cThe body is a slow flame, a campfire in the snow, a star in the vastness of space, a pulsing heart in the ocean.\u201d\u00a0 Every living being is a kind of fire.\u00a0 Metabolism is combustion.\u00a0 Life force is like a flame, cohering as long as it consumes experience, adhering to the body as a candle flame clings to its wick.\u00a0 The heart and mind of a sentient being give warmth and light into the world.<\/p>\n Still from "Inner Heat", video by Fred Hatt with Corinna Brown<\/p><\/div>\n The title, \u201cInner Heat\u201d, refers to a traditional Tibetan meditation practice called tummo<\/a>.\u00a0 A combination of breathing exercises and highly focused visualizations<\/a> can produce enough heat in the body to survive in the snows of the Himalayas<\/a>.\u00a0 This is more than just legendary tantric magic, as Harvard researchers<\/a> have documented the ability of experienced tummo practitioners to produce striking changes in body heat and other supposedly autonomic bodily functions.<\/p>\n Still from "Inner Heat", video by Fred Hatt with Corinna Brown<\/p><\/div>\n I suggest viewing this video as a meditation.\u00a0 Give yourself over to the waves of slow movement and feel the warmth generating within your own belly and heart, and be a source of light in the darkness.\u00a0 The video is embedded below (except in the email subscription version of the blog), or click the link to see “Inner Heat” on my Vimeo page<\/a>.<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>
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