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- Courtesy Of Julia Barstow
- Vulture Sister Song
Vultures have a bad rap. In movies and literature, the birds of prey are often harbingers of death and other bad things to come. "Vulture" can also describe a predatory or exploitative person.
But these stereotyped creatures play an essential role in our ecosystems: As scavengers who eat dead animals, vultures help prevent the spread of disease.
Enter Vulture Sister Song, a performance using vultures as a vehicle to explore humans' relationships with other living beings through a combination of modern dance, storytelling and live music. The nationally touring show premiered at the Grange Theatre in Pomfret in 2022 and returns to Vermont this month.
Audiences can make a night of it: On Tuesday, July 9, at Capital City Grange in Montpelier, the performance will follow a potluck dinner accompanied by music from teen folk band the Purple House Trio, along with a sculpture exhibit from Middlesex artist Talitha Landis-Marinello. On Thursday, July 11, at Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park in Woodstock, attendees are invited to picnic on the mansion lawn before the show.
Vulture Sister Song features five artists from around the country. Ellen Smith Ahern of Lebanon, N.H., currently an artist-in-residence at Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller, is one of two dancers in the piece.
People tend to look at nature as something "we are separate and apart from," Smith Ahern said. "We're trying to look at vultures and look at interspecies relationships in a larger sense [as] not separate at all ... We're deeply connected."
The roughly 40-minute show opens with a song featuring lyrics by Georgia-based poet Josina Guess. Jacob Elias, a musician based in Ithaca, N.Y., accompanies on electric guitar. "Eyes open, eyes closed," the performers sing repeatedly.
Then Pete Dybdahl — a violinist in Georgia's Athens Symphony Orchestra — reads a fairy tale he wrote about a baker who receives mysterious messages from vultures after his wife and daughter go missing.
Later, Guess reads her "Poem for Tree Fall": "If skin's a wall and eyes / are windows. What are / hands, or paws, or anything / you've got now?"
Inspiration for the performance came from Guess' son, who in 2021 found nesting vultures in the barn behind their house and took two of their eggs. He incubated the first egg until a baby vulture hatched. The second egg met a very different fate: He cooked it into an omelette. Toward the end of the show, a recording plays of Guess interviewing her son and his girlfriend about the experience.
Meanwhile, the two dancers — Smith Ahern and Seattle-based artist Kate Elias — act out the words onstage. They lie on the floor and intertwine their limbs when Guess asks, "Where does your body stop and another's begin?" At times, they vigorously flap their arms like wings. Lantern sculptures of various sizes create a mystical ambience and serve as props. At one point, the dancers conceal themselves by stepping inside sculptures that resemble large, glowing eggs, then reemerge as if hatching out.
Smith Ahern acknowledges that the abstract nature of the show may make it difficult to follow. To aid audiences' understanding, performers pass out a guidebook with illustrations, poems and essays exploring the rich symbolism of vultures. Included is an essay called "Six Reasons to Love the Vulture" by Anna Morris, a director at Quechee's Vermont Institute of Natural Science.
But Smith Ahern also encourages audiences to sit with their discomfort. She views the piece as ideal for children ages 5 and up, because kids tend to be more willing than adults to admit they don't understand and ask questions, she said.
"It's sort of a long-standing joke with postmodern dance that it can be tricky to grasp, and sometimes folks feel really uncomfortable with that challenge," Smith Ahern said. "It's been really wonderful to have children present, sort of giving everybody permission to wonder what the heck is going on."