Petrichor
Artist: Lyra Butler-Denman
Researcher: Danielle Reed
Science Subject: Smell
Petrichor
Dance Theatre
This work explores the emotional experience of losing or distorting the sense of smell. Through movement and sound, Lyra Butler-Denman and collaborating artists examine 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.
Lyra’s process brought together scientific expertise, lived experience, and artistic interpretation. She interviewed researchers at the Monell Chemical Senses Center and gathered perspectives from people living with smell loss, using both to inform the emotional and sensory direction of the work.
The piece was further developed through three primary workshops with collaborating movement and sound artists. Dr. Reed attended all three sessions and provided feedback on the scientific content, helping the work remain grounded in current understanding of smell and smell disorders. Together, these perspectives shaped a work that reflects not only the science of olfaction, but also the deeply personal experience of losing or distorting a sense that connects us to memory, emotion, and one another.
The piece is performed by Lillian Ransijn, Laura Schmidt, Bellisant Corcoran, and Lyra Butler-Denman with sound design by Taylor Burgess. Michael Amendola and Connor Hogan were key collaborators in the development of the piece. Other artists who contributed include Sezgin Ciftsi, Emmie Parker, Marija Liberman, Markas Liberman, Karen Orrik, Chris Cauffman Cooke and Reb Martin.
Artist: Lyra Butler-Denman
Lyra is a theatre maker, dancer, choreographer, actor, and storyteller living with chronic pain and chronic illness. Her live physical performances offer the pleasure of being touched, the joy of our magnificent bodies, and the kaleidoscopic nature of grief. Her work moves back and forth across the line between dance and theatre: a kitchen scene morphs into a movement phrase so gradually the transition point disappears, or a large partner dance sequence shrinks until it becomes the quotidian hand gestures of two people talking. She grounds her work in relationality, living systems, and liberatory practice.
Lyra holds an MFA in Devised Performance from the Pig Iron School, is a steward at FLOCK Dance Center, and co-leads multiple ongoing collaborative projects. Her work has been presented nationally and internationally, and she has taught Alexander Technique, Movement, and Lecoq technique at Swarthmore College, Rowan University, University of the Arts, UT Austin, Portland State University, and Meadowmount Music School.
She lives and works between Portland, OR and Philadelphia, PA. Her work has been supported by the Anna Sosenko Assist Trust, PhysFestNYC, the Regional Arts and Culture Council, the Oregon Arts Commission, Fresh Ground Pepper, Creative Philadelphia, Pig Iron Theatre Company, Gimmick, and Chimaera Gallery. She is obsessed with how dams affect rivers over time, and what happens when we remove them.
Researcher: Danielle Reed
I am the Chief Science Officer at the Monell Chemical Senses Center; my laboratory studies genetics, specifically person-to-person differences in taste and smell, but I am interested in almost all aspects of science. Science and art are both ways of learning the truth of human experience—one through observation and experiment, the other through expression, intuition, and form—and both are necessary to understand what it means to be alive in a body.
Taste and smell sit at this intersection: they are sensory gateways that carry memory, emotion, and cultural meaning, reminding us that biology is not separate from feeling.