Met·a·mor·pho·sis: A Dance of Change
At Concord Academy, a new chapter is unfolding for dance teacher Patrick John O’Neill, who arrived this fall from Kingston, N.Y. With excitement for fresh beginnings and a twinge of nostalgia, O’Neill began conceptualizing met·a·mor·pho·sis, a CA Dance Project performance exploring the theme of evolution in both life and art.
O’Neill began by asking CA dancers to reflect on a transformative experience and create movements expressing their personal metamorphoses. He then incorporated these gestures into the larger choreography. “So much can be learned from watching a person’s process as they create and generate movement,” O’Neill says. “I then took their creations and rearranged, built, and deconstructed them, fitting them into the movement I created. The entire piece is a reflection of the dancers and their journeys, linked to and sitting side by side with my own.”
In met·a·mor·pho·sis, the studio is transformed into a dreamscape, bathed in soft pink light, with white translucent fabrics hanging like delicate chrysalises, suspended from the ceiling and draped along the walls. The dancers, dressed in black, sit in a triangle formation, their arms rising and falling in slow, meditative motions, in harmony with a piano and violin melody. As the music swells, they gradually stand, their bodies weaving through hypnotic movements, creating flowing chains of interconnected motion.
As the music intensifies, the dancers’ speed quickens, and their bodies rise as they lift each other in moments of collective ascent. Their clothing subtly changes, from dark to light, symbolizing the shedding of one form to embrace another. The choreography plays with levels, each dancer’s movement reflecting the process of birth, growth, and renewal. As the music softens, the dancers return to their original symmetrical formation, a reminder that all of life is cyclical.
To deepen his understanding of transformation, O’Neill looked to the natural world for inspiration. “I spent a lot of time watching time-lapse videos of plants and flowers growing or blooming, caterpillars making chrysalises and becoming butterflies, tadpoles growing into frogs,” he says. These videos have been incorporated into the final performance as wall projections, perfectly complementing the dance.
“Change and growth are beautiful to witness,” O’Neill says. “As we change and grow, we leave behind some parts of ourselves, but we gain new and exciting aspects that make us stronger and better equipped to handle the life we’ve been given.”
Collaboration with Concord Academy dancers became one of O’Neill’s favorite parts of the creative process. “The students at CA are genuine and vulnerable, and getting to know every one of them has been one of my favorite things about joining the CA community,” he says.
As met·a·mor·pho·sis took form, O’Neill envisioned how the audience would experience the performance. “I am so honored to present this work to the CA community and I hope they will see the hard work, dedication, and discipline of all these dancers,” he says. “My hope is that the audience will join us on this transformative journey as we all—dancers and audience—look inward and reflect on our evolutions, both individually and as a collective.” Met·a·mor·pho·sis is an invitation to embrace the resilience that emerges through change.
