MIRRORS is a choreographic and musical performance inside the Therme Vals spa at the very moment when night becomes day.

The starting point for MIRRORS was the encounter of music and dance with the extraordinary architecture of the Therme Vals spa (Peter Zumthor). The choreography was created through the dialogue of opposites which meet in this bath: stone and water, night and day, interior and exterior. At dawn the still sleepy spectators come into the bath. Its halls are built of rock from the valley of Vals and filled with thermal water which sparkles in the morning light shining through the windows. The air resounds with the piano and cello music ('Mirror in the Mirror' and 'Fratres' by Arvo Pärt). Two dancers all dressed in white come out from behind the high walls, one standing on top of the other’s shoulders. They reflect deep down into the water, then suddenly fall apart and begin to run, climb and glide over the spa's landscape of stone and melodic water whilst the day breaks. For a silent moment in the rising sun, it seems as if the rock and water of the Therme Vals reunited with the elements in the valley outside.

Only one year before, in the context of Sessiun 2006, herdeg&desponds had created a site-specific performance in the Vals stone pit together with singer Noëmi Nadelmann and dancer Adrian Schulthess: ’Not only did Andrea Herdeg and Adrian Schulthess give a stimulating performance dancing in Switzerland’s biggest excavator to Ravel’s Bolero, virtuously played by André Despond. But also, the excavator shovel itself, led by operator and Chief Executive Pius Truffer, danced over the river Rhein with vertiginous speed’. (Bündner Tagblatt, 21 September 2006)
After their first production in the valley of Vals herdeg&desponds were invited a second time in 2007. For the new performance MIRRORS two internationally renowned artists, dancer Juliana Moraes and cellist Orfeo Mandozzi, joined the project.