While the elder and younger dancers occasionally make direct connections, Jasperse demonstrates a lineage of movement that is passed down indirectly. We see Shick and Melnick's motifs repeated and altered by the other dancers, but it doesn’t come across as either imitation or a student's practice. Instead, it is as if the movement was just drifting along in the air (or in the water), inhaled then exhaled by the younger dancers, who probably weren't at all aware that it had passed through them, let alone where it came from. 

This idea—that movement styles, like accented speech, move and change across generations with little reflection on origin or technical integrity—does not scare Jasperse. He explains in program notes that the “evolving rhizome of styles” resulting from a “corruption, contradiction, and cross-pollination” of influences are to be celebrated and not mourned. 

The evolution of movement styles is part of what allows dance as an art form to live and grow, Jasperse says, and he welcomes the changes. What Jasperse does emphasize is intergenerational dialogue, as well as the coming together of generations in order to cultivate mutual respect, mentorship, support, and understanding, all of which he considers vital to an artist's life. 

At the end of “Tides,” all five dancers return downstage together. They don't look at each other so much as out, but they do stand shoulder to shoulder. They tilt their heads, and rub their faces, necks, and hands, each one a little differently, but all with a similarly dreamy look in their eyes.