Loss and Distortion
Leave a voice memo below to contribute to the project.
Are you experiencing smell loss or other smell dysfunction?
Record a voice note about:
If you have congenital anosmia (smell loss), what is your relationship to the idea of smell?
If you had smell but now experience smell loss or smell distortion/dysfunction, is there a smell that is/was meaningful to you? If so, how do you remember it? What does remembering it look or feel like
Is there a smell you miss? When do you miss it? What does that feel like?
What is something you wish other people understood about your experience?
Anything else you’d like to share.
***Stories will remain anonymous. Optional names and emails will only be used by the artist to contact you to further explore your story.
Press record, speak for up to 30 minutes, then press send.
(or send a voicenote via email to lyra@lyrabd.com)
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Petrichor is a dance theatre piece created by Lyra Butler-Denman in collaboration with Danielle Reed and Monell, the only independent research institute dedicated to the scientific understanding of taste and smell. The piece explores smell and smell-loss as it relates to memory, safety, longing, and delight. It also explores the relationship between smell disorders and memory loss.
Petrichor examines the emotional experience of losing or distorting the sense of smell. Through movement and sound, exploring the discomfort and repulsion associated with parosmia, a condition in which familiar smells become distorted, as well as the grief that can come with losing smell as a meaningful connection to memory, place, food, and loved ones.
By translating these often invisible sensory experiences into physical and auditory expression, the work invites visitors to consider how deeply smell is woven into emotion, identity, and human connection.