Houston Botanic Garden, Open Dance Project Celebrate Migration of Monarch Butterflies with Immersive Flutter performances in Susan Garver Family Discovery Garden

The Houston Botanic Garden and Open Dance Project will present the site-specific work “Flutter: The Monarch Butterfly Project” in the Susan Garver Family Discovery Garden for two afternoons only, Saturday, Sept. 30, and Sunday, Oct. 1, 2023, from 4-7 p.m. The family friendly event will celebrate and draw attention to the monarch butterfly’s approximately 3,000-mile southern migration, which passes through Texas each fall.

As visitors explore the Susan Garver Family Discovery Garden and discover three butterfly installations by local sculptor Meredith Tucker, which the Garden added to its permanent art collection in the summer, the company of Open Dance Project will present a series of three half-hour, immersive contemporary dance performances, in interactive costumes by Houston-based artist Natasha Bowdoin.

“Flutter” brings Open Dance Project’s theatrical approach outdoors, where the company takes on the natural phenomenon of the monarch migration with its signature athleticism and poignant wit. In addition to responding to the natural and architectural environment of the Garden and Tucker’s sculptures, which depict three different species of butterfly and a plant each pollinates, the performance incorporates panted textiles and artistic props fabricated  by Bowdoin, whose work investigates and reimagines humankind’s relationship to the natural world.

Open Dance Project choreographic director Annie Arnoult uses gestures and movement patterns inspired by the butterflies as the basis for an ensemble of quirky characters and personalities that seem at once totally human, and yet also completely butterfly. Turning “immersivity” inside-out, “Flutter” beckons and entices viewers to follow these “butterfly-creatures” on mini-migrations through the landscapes of the Susan Garver Family Discovery Garden.

“Flutter” is the latest in a creative partnership between the Houston Botanic Garden and Open Dance Project, which started in the winter of 2021 with on-site filming of “Still We Tend,” another site-specific journey of movement and music that had its virtual premiere during the height of the pandemic, followed by four sold-out performances presented live at the Houston Botanic Garden in the fall of 2021. This is also Open Dance Project’s second time collaborating with Bowdoin, who is especially  interested in activating her artistic work through live performance.

Co-Presenters:

Open Dance Project is a contemporary dance-theater company, under the direction of Annie Arnoult, whose ensemble-driven work transforms literary, historical, and community-based source material into highly stylized performance experiences. Through a collision of dance and theater, live performance and new media, urban grit and magical realism, Open Dance Project breaks down conventional barriers between artist and audience to make dance more accessible and meaningful for both. 

Open Dance Project is on the Texas Commission on the Arts Touring Artists Roster and is funded in part by the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance. The company brings high-quality interdisciplinary arts education and arts integration to Houston school children through its extensive education and community engagement program and partners with Young Audiences of Houston and Arts Connect Houston to work towards arts equity in Houston schools.

Facebook: www.facebook.com/opendanceproject; Twitter: @opendanceproj; Instagram: @opendanceproject; Web: www.opendanceproject.org

Houston Botanic Garden inspires and connects visitors with a curated collection of tropical, sub-tropical, and arid plants from around the world that reflect the city’s rich cultural and ethnic diversity. As a 132-acre urban oasis and living museum with 1,000 taxa, the Garden enriches life through discovery, education, and the conservation of plants and the natural environment.

Instagram: @houstonbotanic; Facebook: @houstonbotanicgarden; Website: www.hbg.org.

Photos: Courtesy of Houston Botanic Garden & Lynn Lane