All the six dancers were featured in solos and duets capturing their distinctive qualities. Tessa Russ danced an expressive solo, or rather an encompassing duet with space, and introduced the motif of blowing a dandelion—rendered with the innocence of a child. It seemed, as she ran about with arms spread wide open, that she wanted to collect all the dispersed particles of the fuzz ball and put them back together. But like a child, she repeated the blowing gesture again.
Mizuho Kappa asserted her memorable presence as she jumped from a narrow stance to an exceedingly wide, straight legged posture. She stopped and started in challenging positions, finally blowing the dandelion while hovering in a tenuous balance. Additionally, Colin Heininger, Erin Maher, and Joe Tennis also performed memorably in solos, often reprising the dandelion blowing motif. Chelsea Ainsworth and Joe Tennis embraced in a deeply connected slow partner dance, scribbling love notes on the floor.
The group reconvened at several intervals representating a collective humankind. Their quasi-folk dance of interweaving lines merged into a circle dance. The circle expanded into further formations until the dancers gathered into their original clump of pulsing bodies. These group sections are where one feels the inherent structural form of the dance. Towards the end, the entire cast reappeared in an uneven row crossing the stage from right to left. Squatting low, they pulled at the ground as if trying to yank out weeds. They eventually stood and kicked them instead.
Chelsea Ainsworth, a Zvidance veteran of fifteen years and choreographer in her own right, had the final word. In a brilliantly performed solo, she moved through a range of emotions—from caressing the ground and rolling about its surface to leaping through the air and then punching the ground. Finally, in a display of humanness at its most fundamental level, Ainsworth faced the audience and simply breathed. Her ribs visibly expanded and contracted as she spread her fingers framing her breathing body. When all is said and done, we must breathe to live. And dandelions must breathe too.
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