“Bird Medicine: A Trio in Three Parts” is a three-layer dance: a solo, a duet and a trio. Each was created separately using the same movement score and then all three were performed simultaneously.

The braid of these dance improvisations illustrates the synchronicity that arises when people who know each other well meet and attune to what matters collectively. It was refreshing to witness how the three iterations commingled to make a unified statement. We performers also experienced how bonding can grow out of shared pasts with one another.

The score for “Bird Medicine” was crafted from memory. A year before three of the performers (Cecilia Fontanesi, Kristin Hatleberg and Rebeca Medina) had danced a trio together called “The Eagle has landed.” In 2014, six of us gathered to recall and share that dance—how could we pass it along? The choreography of “Bird Medicine” contains a shadow of the dance that came before.

“Bird Medicine” was titled in honor of and accompanied by a passage read aloud from Evan Pritchard’s book Bird Medicine. Pritchard’s reflections and observations on shorebirds articulate the dancer’s own behaviors and values being enacted on the stage.

“Bird Medicine” is, in a way, a reincarnation and expansion upon “The Eagle has landed.” It is a shared experience that grew from group memory. It is also a rebirth, an entirely new dance, with twice as many people interacting and creating fresh memories, inviting new cycles to begin.