While dance films today often have nebulous to no discernible subject matter—left open deliberately so viewers have room to think, surmise, and feel what they will about “story” (which I also love!)—Nicole Spring’s beautiful dance short Motherhood uses movement, cinema and sound as a gentle, and honest meditation on one woman’s experience on this universal subject.

It opens with white window curtains fluttering in a breeze, cuts to an infant asleep but slowly waking, then soon widens to a resting mother also coming into consciousness. The film then cuts to two other very young but still older girls pouring cereal into a bowl—of course bumbling and spilling it out onto the kitchen counter. The rhythm of the film builds slowly, cut by cut, sound by sound. We hear a human hum, which then expands to become an undertone to the score itself (by Sami Freeman). Shots (by cinematographer and editor Steven Fadellin) of gorgeous dancer and choreographer Stephanie Kim build to create a rhythm. Her movements begin in one scene, then are match cut to continue into another, perhaps embodying a different emotion in each. What begins as a wakeful roll, or as an upwards stretch of the arms in one scene, continues as an expression of exhaustion in another, and perhaps a reclaiming of space for the self. The dance aspect in Motherhood hovers between being formalized gesture and pure human, expressive movement.