Like Birds on the Wind

One thing about watching dance is that is creates an opportunity to be a little less linear. You
enter the theater and have a different relationship to time and perception than most of us
experience on the daily. An hour set aside to simply sit, and observe, and think. I often find it
to be a kind of meditation, especially with more abstract dance, to let go of the drive to make
meaning. To settle into the state of being in space and time with the human form, without
agenda, letting the composition move before me like I might watch birds on the wind.

Last week presented a show ripe for this kind of meditative experience, MS+A’s Alternative
Future at the lovely and intimate Yaw Theater. Standing for “Mary Sigward plus Artists,” MS+A
is a newish independent company, established in 2022 and led by Sigward, who previously
danced with Spectrum, Khambatta Dance, and Karin Stevens Dance, among others. Like
these groups, Sigward’s choreography finds anchoring in classical capital-M-Modern dance,
with Western-cannon technical vocabulary connected through organic and imagistic driven
movements. According to the program, this particular show draws from Sigward’s “studies of
biology and ecology” to create abstract movements that “reflect on adaptation, diversity,
resiliency, and collective intelligence.”

The opening image is already happening as the audience enters, and right away the tone is
set for a meditative atmosphere. Ever-shifting waveforms projections dance on the scrim,
while seated upstage musician Lady Zade bows long ethereal notes on her cello. The
waveforms echo in the dancers costumes, textured white tops and flowing gray pants, as they
move at a snails pace through the room. Each appears to be on their own pathway when, out
of this seeming randomness, patterns start to emerge. Shapes begin to mimic one another
until gradually the seven dancers become a waveform themselves. Clumped together like a
Greek chorus, they fold and unfold their torsos, palm extending skyward, reaching up and
over the top before cresting back down. At first in unison and then in cannon, the formation
gives way to a rotation of solos, duets, and trios that make up the bulk of the work.

Alternative Future features seven accomplished and exacting dancers: Nathan Cook, Ivana
Lin, Olivia Link, DéShawn Morton, Kaitlyn Nguyen, Emily Walter, and Sigward herself. Each
had moments to shine throughout. I was particularly taken with two new-to-me dancers:
Walter, whose brilliant clarity of attack meant each movement expanded to fill the space, like
an arm whipping around to land perfectly in place. And Link, whose quick lightness came
alive in Sigward’s dynamic rhythms, combined with a very human presence that gave her
dancing an almost storytelling quality. But more importantly, as a group they achieved the
difficult balance of very connected and clear unison ideas, while each performer seemed fully
comfortable and individually expressive within the movements.

Sigward’s choreography is a constant swirl and eddy of dignified shapely grace, delicately
peppered with surprising moments—rigidity into melting, quick and well-timed gestures that
ricochet between dancers as if cause and effect. In one moment Lin circles Link’s head with
an arm swipe, appearing to release Link’s head with a gentle whip crack to the side. But in a blink
they have rebounded to another move.

The music creates distinct sections, with a more classical Bach composition, and then
another more sorrowful and contemporary piece. But the biggest shift comes when Lady Zade
takes a break, and the score becomes an audio recording from The Feynman Lectures on
Physics. The lecture, both in the manner of speaking and perhaps the analog nature of its
recording, has a distinct air of 1960s academia, lending a bit of nostalgia and human history
to its topic on the natural laws the universe. The shift is not just in the sound, but in the
dancing as well, which suddenly feels slightly less abstract and more human. Sigward’s
choreography plays with the rhythm of Feynman’s words in a delightful way, accenting both
through the dance—using the words as music—and through a timed projection of images that
flash different natural scenes in response to the text, adding in another layer of meaning.

“What would be the thing that contains the most information in the fewest number of words?”
asks our lecturer. Dance of course, I think in response. No words, but worlds upon
worlds—the composition in rhythm/space/time, the physics at play, the bodies of the dancers,
the food they ate that day, an epoch of evolution. It’s all there, making each moment possible. Sigward’s
choreography isn’t about the natural world in any transparent or tangible way. There’s no
moment where the dancers are clearly trees, or fish, or atoms. But that framing also gives a
chance to meditate on how the natural world is everything. How it’s always with us. And even
though these movements are highly stylized, there’s something about the energies at
play—the swirls and eddies, the cause and effect, the rigid into soft—that we recognize with
our instinctual bodies. Ah yes, this is what’s been happening since the beginning.

MS + A’s Alternative Future ran October 10-12 at Yaw Theater. For more information visit
marysigward.com. Program notes for this show can be viewed here. The program can be viewed here.
Featured photo by Trisha French.