How to Just Be
Arini Byng with Jacob Coppedge, Peta Duncan and Amaara Raheem

Featured in Arini Byng's exhibition How we breathe is the performance How to Just Be.

Byng has brought together an all-Black ensemble of collaborators—Jacob Coppedge (Philadelphia, USA), Peta Duncan (Mer Island, Torres Strait), and Amaara Raheem (Colombo, Sri Lanka)—each bringing different cultural lineages and varied experiences in movement and performance. Together, they developed a choreographic score through a series of workshops, embracing co-authorship as a means to process and explore.

How to Just Be asks: What feels meaningful to express in a world shaped by absence? Through the interplay of language, movement, and relational dynamics, the work reveals how vulnerability, care, and identity surface through the body.

The performance was first developed for Performing Care, presented by Performance Review in early 2025.