By the Sea

They begin to move without warning, slowly, as if awakened from some eons-long slumber. A mass of 18 dancers, all dressed in varying bright tones, moves just at the edge of the rising tide in front of a U-shaped crowd sitting against the dunes of Rockaway Beach.

Performance

“Wayward” by Kim Brandt

Place

Rockaway Beach, Queens, New York, NY, August 23, 2025

Words

Rebecca Deczynski

Kim Brandt's “Wayward.” A commission for Beach Sessions 2025, Rockaway Beach, NYC. Photograph by Maria Baranova

Over the course of an hour or so, the dancers migrate at an unhurried pace to their own individual domains. This is the premise of Kim Brandt’s “Wayward,” a piece commissioned for the annual Beach Sessions Dance Series at Rockaway Beach and performed on one of the nicest evenings in August, an hour before the sun has started to set. The work is simple in its directive, but nuanced in texture and form—the kind of artwork whose richness is best understood in hindsight.

From its first moments, “Wayward” resists any container. It is set in a public space (the stretch of landscape known as Beach 112) and so it encompasses all the things that exist away from a more traditional performance arena. There is no music. Three children in my line of sight continue to build a pile of sand, intermittently digging and collapsing into the soft terrain, when the dancers begin to move. The audience is not completely silent, and soundbites of conversation float through the crowd. Every so often, beachgoers—a couple, a parent and child, a stray person trudging through the shallow water—cross into view, perhaps unaware of what’s actually going on right in front of them.

The mass of bodies, after all, defies immediate identification. The dancers move together, but retain their individuality in their sequencing. While one dancer lies on their side and casts a leg in the air, another stands and bends their torso back in an arch. When one crawls on their hands and knees, another progresses, bent forward in an ambulatory downward dog. They press their bodies into the damp sand, leaving the environment changed, albeit temporarily. Together, they recall the image of an octopus floating across the ocean floor, each leg flicking out independent of the others, yet somehow pushing the creature in its entirety forward. Eventually, however, the dancers break apart and move to different extremities of the beach. A few children, following their slow movements, join them.

Kim Brandt's “Wayward.” Photograph by Maria Baranova

One group veers to the left and another to the right, while a line of dancers progresses, gradually, up to the center walkway that leads back out to the pavement. From there, they mount the dunes. It is only their direction that changes—they continue the slow, methodical sequences that act as their mode of transport.

It takes a few minutes to realize what’s happened, in spite of the slow pace of the change. With the dancers no longer in front and center of the audience, a few clusters of people move from their seats to get a better view off to the side. Soon enough, everyone realizes that the piece has entered entirely different territory. It is no longer the job of the audience to simply watch—we must instead go and see.

“Wayward” could feel interminable if not for this implied directive for the audience. No one tells us to follow the dancers, but after 20 minutes of creeping movement, they’ve bewitched us; we want to see where they are going.

I change my position frequently, never staying at one viewpoint for more than a few minutes. From the base of the dune, the dancers on top of the mounds of sand look monumental, like ancient figures that might have appeared on an amphora inexplicably wearing beach clothes from the ’90s. At the top of two lifeguard ladders, individual dancers languidly bend and stretch.

Ayano Elson and Lydia Okrent in Kim Brandt's “Wayward.” Photograph by Maria Baranova

There is some dissonance between the crowds of people moving and chatting amongst themselves as these dancers continue their now-stationary movements. It’s like they’ve become a part of the environment—some thing of beauty that could be taken for granted with its continued exposure—as the attention of attendees shifts to their friends, to their phones, or to any other distraction that might surround them.

Still, the dancers retain their presence like moving statues, allowing people to find them where they are. I join others walking across the sand, up the dunes and down again, to discover a dancer I hadn’t noticed before. In their new formation, it becomes possible to consider each performer in silo, where before they existed primarily in the context of the others around them. It is a treat to choose one dancer on whom to bestow your attention, if only for a moment, before following your gaze to the next one.

It is only when the piece has nearly concluded that I find that some have migrated as far as the two jetties which flank this stretch of beach. I walk toward the closest one to my right to find several dancers standing upright on the rocks, lifting their arms up and down. I watch them for just a minute or two before claps begin in the distance, then spread out. The piece is finished, and the dancers return to their human form, leaving, in their wake, a sense of wonder, like the aftermath of an eclipse.

Rebecca Deczynski

Rebecca Deczynski is a New York City-based writer and editor publishes the newsletter Thinking About Getting Into. Her work has appeared in publications including Inc., Domino, NYLON, and InStyle. She graduated from Barnard College cum laude with a degree in English and a minor in dance.

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