too good to be true (oceanic feeling) departs on a journey in search of performative techniques and states of happiness, borrowing from an exchange between Romain Rolland and Sigmund Freud. In their letters and discussions between 1924 and 1936 the notion of „oceanic feeling“ describes the individual experience of a somewhat enigmatic and ephemeral state of non-confined and trans-subjective merging with an objective totality. Without committing neither to Freud's reserved skepticism towards this feeling nor to Rolland's testimonies as an attempt to rescue what according to him is at the core of religious wisdoms, the performative research is interested in an „illusionary presence“ that only emerges as a processual encounter, as a dynamic negotiation of expectations, phantasies and shifting perceptions. Weaving together autofiction, different registers of dance and somatic practices, cultural textures and gestures of happiness, the performer becomes the medium and master of ceremony of a possible experience whose shape is yet unknown.

Certain sequences developed in the collaborative research have re-appeared or inspired individual scenes in the subsequent pieces "Intimate Strangers" and "Coast of Pleasures".