Dance, music, drama, and sculpture meld in unexpected ways to create striking experiences in the Vitreous Theater at the Perry Glass Studio. Multi-disciplinary artist Brendan Fernandes utilizes the Glass Studio as a lens to explore the true essence of movement, juxtaposing the fluid materiality of glass-making alongside the elegance of human bodies in motion.

Fernandes presents dancers in moments of utilitarian choreography. Their individual actions—subtle gestures of endurance and tension—convene to form a sense of collaborative and interminable solidarity. The hot shop comes alive through presentations of live glassmaking while dancers create boundless action around them. The breaking of glass vessels acts not as a symbol for destruction, but as a notion of new beginnings, with each shard destined to be collected and made anew. Much like the molten materials ossified in each glass sculpture, the performers’ every move transforms the atmosphere into an active exploration of labor, vulnerability, and fragility. Thinking through these precarious times, Fernandes posits the question, How do we move forward? Can we breathe life back into that which was once broken?