Photographed by Crystal Manyloun.
Premiered in Harvard Ballet Company’s Ephemera in April 2025.
Music: “Ceasefire” by Zela Margossian Quintet.
In Reading Dance, Susan Leigh Foster wrote that dance contains “the spontaneous and the crafted; the psychological and the physical, the personal and the universal, the rational and the passionate, and the unconscious and the conscious […] into a fragile but supreme moment.” This quote inspired In Situ. In Situ explores the idea of objectifying, capturing, and boiling down the joy and ethos of gathering together into a singular moment. What if this community concentrate could exist as an artifact, bottled up in a jar?
The creative process began with a written survey of the dancers on the memories they wish they could relive, and they were asked to describe the feeling it gives them as if it were an object: its texture, color, and where the feeling rests in the body. For a fragile six minutes, the dancers will embody the textures of their most joyful memories—from a windy ski mountain and a fishing village on the coast of France to a friend’s wordless, compassionate support at a hospital.
Original cast: Sedina Ackuayi, Selorna Ackuayi, Sophia Barakett, Katie Granner, Nikoletta Kennedy, Thom McNeilly, Sophie Naud, Audrey Sakiewicz, Mia Steis, Scout Stevens, Josephine Willman
Adrienne Chan 