Dance as Duration

This resting, patience” has been danced in cities ranging from Helsinki to Porto to Venice, and in all of them the crooning vocals of its most-repeated music, Burt Bacharach’s “What the World Needs Now Is Love,” must have been instantly familiar. But in choreographer Ewa Dziarnowska’s hands, the easy-listening classic becomes something radical: an invitation to intimacy in an era of disconnection.

Performance

“This resting, patience” by Ewa Dziarnowska

Place

NYU Skirball, New York, NY, October 1, 2026

Words

Anna Eastman

“This resting, patience” by Ewa Dziarnowska. Photograph by Louka Van Roy

From her performance’s first moments, Dziarnowska cues that she’s going to ask more of her audience than most choreographers dare to. To watch “This resting, patience”, viewers must be willing to be watched themselves. For its North American premiere at New York’s NYU Skirball theater, the audience was seated on stage, initially in a wide ring of chairs encircling Dziarnowska and her collaborator Leah Marojević. We were spectators, and spectacle, unable to observe from our accustomed distance. From the start, Dziarnowska signaled, we were in this together.

The performance’s three-hour run time, which unfolds without intermissions, is another way in which Dziarnowska invites her audience to step up. We’re asked to be generous with our attention and time. This is a risk, of course, but Dziarnowska pulls it off. As we’d entered the theater, ushers assured us that we could exit and return at any point we wished. When I took my seat, I thought by the end I might be one of a proud few who’d stuck it out, but I was one of many. Dziarnowska and Marojević were far too captivating to walk away from.

At the opening of the piece, Dziarnowska and Marojević danced to a loop of “What the World Needs Now,” each marching, swinging and stretching her arms, and revolving in place. Dziarnowska’s movements were sinuous, slinky, seductive; Marojević’s were punchier, more emphatic. Four repetitions in, the song’s volume dropped, and we could hear the dancers’ increasingly effortful breathing as they continued to windmill their arms and turn under their respective spotlights. Their exhales became percussion to their movements; we were close enough to see the sweat begin to glisten on their brows as Dionne Warwick sang over and over about how love is “the only thing that there’s just too little of.” We could see exertion, and then exhaustion. If what the world needs now is love, Dziarnowska seemed to be saying, it’s going to take real effort, and some sweat, to get there.

“This resting, patience” by Ewa Dziarnowska. Photograph by Louka Van Roy

Over the next three hours, Dziarnowska and Marojević drew us closer, literally and figuratively. As “What the World Needs Now Is Love” gave way to a sound mix segueing between gentleness and urgency, a cacophony of beats, barks, birdsong, and bicycle bells created by Krzysztof Bagiński, the dancers added new chairs or asked audience members to stand so that they could rearrange the seating into tighter circles. Each empty chair was an invitation to get up and move in towards the center of the stage and greater proximity with both the dancers and with each other. Seated in circles rather than rows, we in the audience also watched one another, our turning heads and shifting bodies becoming part of the landscape of the piece. Gradually, the dancers initiated increasingly frequent interactions: eye contact and winks became sliding underneath an audience member’s chair, then taking someone’s hand to hold a balance, or resting a head against someone else’s knee. These small moments of improvised contact and reciprocity, challenges to the usual division between audience and performer, added surprise that sustained our attention: what would happen next?

Like water, the performance’s energy ebbed and flowed, sped up and slowed down. Extended passages of the middle section took place on the floor, with Dziarnowska and Marojević moving through slow-motion somersaults, crawls, shoulder stands, and backbends as though underwater, an effect enhanced by the dark blue carpet on which they danced. Periodically, one performer would move to the shadowed sides of the stage to briefly rest before emerging in a different costume, toggling between clinging, sheer blue gowns and torn jeans and t-shirts. At times, each dancer seemed in her own orbit; at others, they synced up. Dziarnowska became increasingly playful, darting out into the auditorium to take a seat for a few moments, smiling through pin-up poses and twirls, and exchanging words with the audience. Marojević seemed to gather force like a storm cloud. Two hours in, she erupted into two piercing screams, before breaking into a solo to which she brought feral energy even as she bounced to the vintage R&B beats.

“This resting, patience” by Ewa Dziarnowska. Photograph by Louka Van Roy

In the end, we returned to where we began: Dziarnowska and Marojević each spotlit, framed by rings of audience members, revolving in place to a loop of “What the World Needs Now Is Love.” Dziarnowska seemed to luxuriate in the song like it was sunlight, her body rippling as she turned and unfurled her arms up into the air. Marojević danced like she was trying to convince herself that the universal “sweet love” Warwick sings of was possible, her prancing escalating into stomps. As before, the song gradually played more quietly, and the dancers’ breathing and the sound of their feet against the carpet became part of the soundtrack.

Heard once, “What the World Needs Now Is Love” is sticky-sweet, with a message so simple as to be banal: the world needs more love, for everyone. But as Dziarnowska and Marojević danced to it over and over, the song came to feel fiercely insistent—an anthem, even a battle cry. In the performance’s final minutes, each dancer faced the other for a moment with her arms outstretched, before one last dance to one last song. Their hands reached into the air, stretching towards something that seemed to remain just out of reach yet which they were still determined to seek.

By the end of the evening, none of us were where we’d started. We’d moved closer together, both in physical proximity and through the experience of sharing this remarkable performance. We hadn’t been entertained; we’d been engaged. Over the last three hours, the dance had come to feel like a place, one we all inhabited. A shared experience of body, breath, sound, light, and the narrowing space between us.

Anna Eastman

Anna Eastman is a writer based in New York City. She is currently an MFA candidate in Columbia's nonfiction writing program.

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