BOSTON — Alexandria Nunweiler knew she had to finish her new choreographic work after television icon Betty White died in 2021. Nunweiler shares White’s Jan. 17 birthday and the profound kinship she felt with the star for that reason (they never met) cemented her thinking about the phenomenon of birthdays as intersections of time, identity, and shared human experiences.
“When Betty White died, she was about to turn 100 — and I was about to turn 30,” Nunweiler says. “This passing of a stranger somehow deflated my own celebration and made me realize more clearly the idea of time slipping away. It made me refocus on a dance piece I thought about for several years.”
Two years later, the South Carolina-raised, Malden-based choreographer, producer, and member of the dance artist collective known as The Click is reading her premiere of “Edge of Aquarius.” This dance/theater performance will be presented Jan. 19-21, 2024, at The Foundry, a creative and performing arts space in Cambridge’s Kendall Square.
During gestation of “Edge of Aquarius,” Nunweiler dug back through home movies of past birthdays and began asking others about their experiences. “The traditions, values and expectations I heard around people’s birthdays began to create this throughline of human experience,” she says.
Nunweiler’s research on birthdays surprised her: simply knowing one’s date of birth used to be a luxury for the rich and royal, for whom heirs were important. “Marking and celebrating birthdays wasn’t commonly in practice until the 19th-century Industrial Revolution, when medicine began to advance and families who had procreated for the benefit of having more hands for chores, began needing less labor… and having fewer children.” The notion of knowing one’s age at all levels of society began to normalize the tracking of growth, physical development milestones, and aging.
The setting for “Edge” is itself a birthday party. The Foundry’s Black Box Theater will be fitted out like a family living room: couches and chairs line the space for audience members; elements of performers’ childhoods (rocking horses, blankets) are strewn about; party favors are handed out.
While the performance hinges on Nunweiler’s own journey of being placed in the Capricorn zodiac timeline at the “cusp” or edge of the Aquarius sign, it weaves through the evolution of birthday traditions, values, and expectations.
Stories told by the performers in “party chat” dialogue and visualized by the dance segments are inspired by true experiences within the group. One section suggests dancing with ghosts, recounting how one dancer was named for a grandmother who died just before she was born. Another recalls an ill-advised 21st-birthday rite of passage. Aging plays a factor too when a “dance of comfort” is performed first by two young dancers then by two performers in their 60s. The dancers’ ages impact the way audiences see and feel the movement.
In addition to Nunweiler, who choreographed the work and also performs, dancers include:
- Lynnfield-born and -based Angelina Benitez,
- Mount Pocono, Penn.-born/Somerville-based Katrina Conte,
- Lunenberg-born and -based Tony Guglietti,
- Massachusetts-born and Cambridge-based Amy Jill,
- Boston-born/Brookline-based Jody Leader,
- Westbrook, Maine-born/Brookline-based Hannah Ranco,
- São Paolo-born/Dorchester-based Carmen Rizzo,
- Boston-born/Cambridge-based Linda Spencer.
“Edge of Aquarius” features new music and soundscore by Worcester-born, Somerville-based composer Benjamin Cuba.
Nunweiler hopes the piece makes audiences contemplate the connections that bind humans across time and cultures. But she says there’s also plenty of room for fun, inspired by a fascinating fact, known as The Birthday Paradox, which she discovered while doing research.
“Apparently, if at least 23 people are in a room together, there’s a 50% chance that two of them will have the same birthday,” Nunweiler says. “We’re definitely going to have some fun with that!”
