Flutter: The Monarch Butterfly Project

“Flutter” brings Open Dance Project’s theatrical approach outdoors, where the company takes on the natural phenomenon of the monarch migration with its signature athleticism and poignant wit. In addition to responding to the natural and architectural environment of the Garden and Tucker’s sculptures, which depict three different species of butterfly and a plant each pollinates, the performance incorporates painted textiles and artistic props fabricated by Bowdoin, whose work investigates and reimagines humankind’s relationship to the natural world. 

Open Dance Project choreographic director Annie Arnoult uses gestures and movement patterns inspired by the butterflies as the basis for an ensemble of quirky characters and personalities that seem at once totally human, and yet also completely butterfly. Turning “immersivity” inside-out, “Flutter” beckons and entices viewers to follow these “butterfly-creatures” on mini-migrations through the landscapes of the Susan Garver Family Discovery Garden.