Rising

featuring the Neave Trio, Pigeonwing Dance, Composer Robert Sirota, Choreographer Gabrielle Lamb

Dances about water - rivers and oceans - are among the oldest human forms of expression.

In this time of climate change and rising sea levels, the Neave Trio and Pigeonwing Dance come together to perform Rising, an evening-length work with a rich score by composer Robert Sirota, and intricately detailed choreography by Gabrielle Lamb.

Weaving together music, text, and dance, Rising is a meditation not only on rising temperatures and sea levels, but also on humanity’s rising awareness of our connection to and dependence on the Earth’s oceans.

The project’s impetus came from the Boston-based Neave Trio (violin, cello, and piano), whose mission “to Engage, to Exchange, to Connect” prompted them to respond through music and movement to the 2021 UN Report on Climate Change. They chose composer Robert Sirota for his emotional musical language, complete with dramatic and lush harmonic landscapes, and choreographer Gabrielle Lamb for her understated lyricism, deeply felt sense of motion, and musical instincts.

Rising, for five dancers, incorporates music and choreography with the spoken words of scientists, marine biologists and oceanographers around the ideas of oceanic phenomena - Upwelling, Spiraling, Descending, Surging, Hovering, Rising - and water’s interaction with marine life and climate.

The evening opens with “Floating.” A single dancer is onstage, moving to spoken text by an oceanographer describing oceanic gyres. Words give way to the piano’s rippling arpeggios, and more dancers enter with sinuous oscillations suggestive of sea creatures. Soon, their five bodies combine into fluent living sculptures. Eye contact connects dancers, transforming abstract movement into human interaction and hinting at multiple interrelated stories. 

The Neave Trio is integral to the work, onstage and off. Musicians share the space with the dancers, and as the piece moves from “Hovering” through “Surging” the music changes course without losing momentum. 

“There are other intelligent creatures out there — whales, dolphins, elephants, fish. Some of them are really smart. But they don’t know what we know. They can’t see the inside of a star or the inside of a starfish…We have this power not only to explore, but we can go back in time. We can anticipate the future, far into the future. We can plot a course for ourselves based on intelligence. And the trick is: OK, homo sapiens, the smart ones, the wise ones — let’s take advantage of that capacity.”

—Dr. Sylvia Earle, marine biologist