Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance Presents Shapes of Change

Mesmerizing….

Six dancers seem to float on to the stage to form a line that slowly turns. At first glance they seem to be costumed in parachute tents. Then with much whoosh, and later breathy sounds, they swirl like clouds. We hear whistles and gusts. We feel the breeze created by the billowing costumes. Visions of oceans foaming come to mind. The dancers are slapping their billowing wings on the stage floor as the music picks up pace as if it is chasing the clouds across the sky.

Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance Find Permanent Home With NY Society for Ethical Culture

Not a dance performance venue per se, we see Sperling and Time Lapse Dance perform in the great hall of the New York Society for Ethical Culture, where Sperling is the Eco-Artist-in-Residence. Many in the audience are part of the Society and have seen Time Lapse Dance performances before. The Society sponsors Sperling and the Dance troupe’s work to focus our attention on the planet and to use dance to open our minds and spirit to deeper consideration of the natural world.

After Wind Rose, Sperling gets on stage to talk to us about trees and gets us standing on our feet to imagine ourselves as trees— sharing nutrients and news via our root system below to fellow trees. We are urged to reach out across the room with our imagined branches too, making eye contact and friends with new fellow trees.

This is the prelude to an excerpt of Arbor, in which the dancers perform in similar parachute like wings. This time however, the veins of tree roots decorate their costumes, adding to the kaleidoscope-like effect, as does the colored light that accompanies mood shifts in the choreography.

Sea Change, Sperling’s newest work in the program, was introduced by Sperling as a lamentation on rising sea levels, as much as an outgrowth of a persistent dream she has had for many years, inspired by the sight of a tree stump in a lake speaking to an unseen before.

Images of sea weed clumps swirling with the tides and waves ebbing and flowing come to mind. You also might feel though that the program’s third time use of Loie Fuller inspired costumes took away from the experience, with the costumes losing their initial mesmerizing effect.

Showcase of Environmental Composer Matthew Burtner

You too may also find this visual snow blindness as an open door to better hear the mastery of Matthew Burtner’s composition. How brilliant to learn that what we might have thought of as the rhythms of popcorn readying, was actually a recording of a glacier melting dating back to the 90’s. Better still, the voices of the four singers continuously emerge and submerge into the synthesized musical chords, as if a metaphor for the human-nature interactions Alaska native Burtner hopes this and his other collaborative works with Sperling help us to better appreciate.

If you haven’t ever seen Time Lapse Dance perform it will be well-worth your time to take in the creative collaborative visions of Sperling and Burtner. More, following the performance your taking a deep dive into the Time Lapse Dance website is time well spent.**

**On the date of this review, two headlines of note: 1) (New York Times) Scientists propose a Bering Strait Dam to preserve ocean currents; and 2) March, 2026 marked the first month when renewable energy sources globally were the primary source of electricity.