As the audience follows the performers through the discreet areas sectioning off the black box theater, snippets of those archived recordings* and Butler’s understated choreography give us a glimpse into a resilient dance culture, persisting and shapeshifting inside an intergenerational cast of acclaimed Irish and Irish American performers. 

Greenan leads us further into the theater where Colin Dunne is on a platform and Butler stands just outside a diagonal path of light, both in socks and costumed casually by Harriet Jung and Reid Bartelme. A sound sculpture from Ryan C. Seaton and Andrew Rumpler—with overlapping voices, static, rattles, percussion reminiscent of a galloping horse (later Butler will perform the sequence that elicits this uncanny audio impression), and eventually a clear low voice repeating “starts, stops, starts, stops,”— accompanies Dunne’s rocking movements. A sense memory bubbles to the surface, uncoiling out of his body: arms swinging, toes lifting, knees bending, torso spiraling back and forth. Butler inches into Stephen Dodd’s graphic lighting. But before we can fully grasp the contents of this scene, Greenan returns to lead us beyond it.

The path winds us behind a black curtain to seats lining what looks like a low table or runway where two younger dancers—Maren Shanks and Kaitlyn Sardin—pose with one shoulder thrust forward, hips shifted out over the back leg. The fifteen-year-old Shanks, who made her professional debut in this work when it premiered in Dublin in 2022, dons traditional lace up slippers (known as Ghillies) and a short Black Irish-style dance dress while Sardin, who was just named one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch in 2024,” wears athletic shorts and socks. Butler joins them, now barefoot, and assembles her body to match their posture of confidence and anticipation. In a unison movement sequence that repeats and rotates to face different directions, they extend their legs in tendu, roll their shoulders back, rock forward on their toes, and stare out into the distance. When they face away from me, I can see the details in the hands as they squeeze and slightly release their fists.