Another duet brings pirouettes and staccato steps into the mix. Schumacher’s choreography is fluid and often surprising; the steps switch up before they get too predictable. Most interesting are the ways the dancers connect with one another in lifts and supported extensions. As two stand front to back, they are like the Vetruvian Man, moving their arms around to different angles. While each silhouette brings its own quality of movement to the starry stage, the dancers, together, seem to make up the interactive components of a greater organism. 

In the program, an essay by award-winning fantasy author Ken Liu notes that, “Neuroscience tells us that we do not lie in the moment; rather, our awareness of the ‘now’ is delayed in order to integrate the nerve inputs from the most distant parts of our bodies.” I wonder if these dancers are neurons firing inside a brain, or something more undefined. I didn’t expect to see their faces at all, but halfway through the performance, the lights come up on Kappa, dressed as if she’s in a desert-set sci-fi epic, wraparound sunglasses shielding her eyes (costumes are by futuristic brand Demobaza, styled by Scott Shapiro).

For quite a long while, she is alone. She removes the sunglasses, looks around, and stretches her limbs, and comes to her knees, forehead reverentially to the floor. Her arms cast out behind her flicker like a cross between a dying swan and an insect (Kappa, I later learn, is a trained entomologist). 

Through this passage the dancer moves almost impossibly slowly, though she picks up the pace when lights strobe in from the side of the stage, as if attacking her, and she now runs, tumbles, moves forward and back. The others—also dressed in the realm of Mad Max or Dune—come out to join her.