Shot in and around the artist’s house in upstate New York, Horse Opera is Moyra Davey’s pandemic project. In the film’s voice-over, she speaks of a text message from a friend that captures the spirit of lockdown with a single word: “bardo,” it says—that liminal state in Buddhism between death and rebirth. Bardo is also used in a New York Times article to describe the different phases of a dance party DJ’ed by David Mancuso (the legendary gatherings were collectively known as the Loft and first thrown in the 1970s).

Departing from the first person—the mode of address in her other cinematic works—Davey shifts to the third in Horse Opera to tell the story of Elle (“she” in French), a habitué of the Loft. While a chronological arc is implied, Davey blurs time, describing each party in the present tense. She speaks of getting high, of feeling by turns anxious and euphoric, of admiring people beneath the disco ball, of waiting endlessly for the bathroom.

Counterposing Davey’s account are images of her rural surroundings. Often seen through a telescopic lens, there are birds, a bear, but mostly horses—running, turning to the camera, urinating in abundant streams. At first, the juxtaposition feels incongruous, but over time a dialogue builds. When Davey wraps a horse’s ankle with brightly colored cloth, she might be dressing it for a night out; when the horses nuzzle, they are social actors, so too the mingling partygoers; when they bolt, it is toward a freedom like the kind only felt on the dance floor.