NOISE REDUCTION

A Practice of Listening Deeply

(2025)

NOISE REDUCTION is an evening-length contemporary dance work about listening. The piece excavates listening practices, exploring their capacity for harm and liberation. Ten dancers navigate the space as individuals and as a community, intently listening to their own bodies, communicating as a collective, and at times, demanding the attention of outside authority. NOISE REDUCTION boldly questions how communities should engage with artists, and vice versa, by asking what critical perspectives need to be amplified in this historical moment. At times built on improvisational tasks, the work embodies listening practices that center the body. Dancers verbally cue each other – stop, return, speed up, slow down – to develop movement composition in real time, compelling audiences to imagine the listening practices they might cultivate in their own lives.

Musician Lauren McCall brings an original music score, weaving an entrancing live, improvised clarinet performance throughout the work. McCall’s soundscape exists both in tension and in collaboration with the dancers, finding its own distinct voice that takes, makes, and upends space. The dancers interact with evocative props such as q-tips, megaphones, and headphones, all resonating with the dual acts of needing to listen and needing to be heard. These objects create moments of both comfort and disruption within the performance environment. Filled with storytelling, humor, and dread, NOISE REDUCTION bravely asserts the vital role art must play in this moment: to demand that stories be heard and to ignite crucial conversations.