With very little air moving in the hot Mercat, Aina Alegre’s somewhat aggressively-entitled performance piece This is not (an act of love & resistance) is a somewhat deflated reflection on ‘air’, with the question implicit in the title – So, if it is not X then what is it? – never really answered. It seems something of a U-turn from the near neurotic precision of light-ignited solo R-A-U-X-A, performed by Alegre herself, pure fission on stage, that she brought to the space last year.

Knowing what she is capable of, this new co-production of the Grec Festival with the Center Chorégraphique National de Grenoble, makes a very tentative step into larger format works. Alegre, born in Vilafranca del Penedès but based in Paris where she has lived since the age of 19, pays homage to her homeland and its insecurities, employing Catalan female musicians to accompany the piece. Nine performers: five international dancers of distinct disciplines plus the musicians, gradually form a circle and attempt a form of united front. The unevenly-weighted brass band consists of three trombonists and a tuba player; the heavy instruments of the wind repertoire, unwieldy, not least to dance with by non-dancers, they make an ergonomic go of it.

The piece emerged of the pandemic, says Alegre, delivering that oft-repeated line with its inbuilt apology. The concept of air is certainly intriguing, and “the dependency of bodies through which it circulates”. More so, though, it is a game of control between self and instrument, self and other: air fought for and forced through horns; air competitive or “politicised”: when one air was better than another; when there was safe air and risky air, prohibited or infiltrating air-stopping masks (or simply not breathing at all in closed spaces); when air improved as traffic stopped, when air as an life-saving fuel became life-threatening…

As in other works, the lighting in Alegre’s piece is definitive, yet its script here, too, seemed hesitant, defensive: at what point does calculated disorder simply become disorder? Is forced community the same as community? Among the many questions left blowin’ in the wind.