perambulations
This intergenerational dance work centers elder women’s bodies as carriers of memory, care, and communal wisdom. The piece explores how communities recognize and respond to vulnerability—through ritual, humor, and embodied encounter.
The primary choreographic action is walking, or “perambulation,” encompassing many ways bodies move through space, based on texts from the Mishnah and the teachings of Rabbi Sharon Brous. Performers travel along intersecting paths, allowing absurdity, tenderness, misstep, and play to interrupt the flow. Those who walk counter to the dominant direction are not okay—in mourning or in states of fracture. When paths cross, one asks and the other names their loss, and the encounter is met with blessing, humor, and sometimes unexpected results.
Through repetition, perambulation becomes an embodied ritual of witnessing and connection—sometimes tender, sometimes unruly—offering a vision of communal responsibility where presence itself becomes an act of repair.
perambulations has been invited to the Jerusalem Biennale as part of a curated program of Portland, Oregon artists in May 2026.
Please help us get there by donating to our fundraising campaign. Thank you! (Coming soon.)