Performed at The Dance Complex, Boston (November 22, 2025).
By beheard.world.
If you have ever wondered whether the body can be a site of socio-cultural resistance, Anna Myer’s How We Go answers with clarity. Stripped of props and elaborate costumes, the work leans toward minimalism, allowing the dancers’ bodies—and their lived experiences—to carry the narrative. Movement emerges from thought and emotion, abstracted yet sincere.
The performance opens with the words:
“How do you belong? Through adolescence and adulthood, we realize that we must check boxes in order to fit in. Labels: race, sex, ethnicity, and religious beliefs. How do you belong in a society filled with exclusion. How can you belong ?
Recited by two poets, these lines set the tone for an evening anchored in inquiry and reflection.
The work unfolds in two sections—Belonging and othering, and, How We Go—with a short film in between by Jay Paris featuring Myer, composer Nate Tucker, and members of the company. This behind-the-scenes glimpse becomes a highlight, offering insight into how personal stories, community experiences, and artistic choices shape the choreography. The film deepens the audience’s connection to the performers, grounding the work in personal experiences of the dancers
The cast brings together artists whose identities represent the multiplicity of experiences in our cultural landscape—an African American man, a trans woman, a gay white man, a Black woman, white women, a Jewish man, and an Asian immigrant. Their stories evoke realities of racism, gender bias, immigration prejudice, and LGBTQ+ experience. That same principle of unexpected harmony extends to the music as well.
What becomes most striking in How We Go, particularly in the second half, is not a single musical movement phrase or isolated emotion, but the remarkable cohesion created by elements that seem unlikely to coexist. Instruments we might never imagine in conversation—bagpipe, flamenco guitar, cello, piano, and human beatbox—meld into one seamless score composed by Nate Tucker.
As Jay Paris, Co-Director of beheard.world says: “None of these instruments should go together — and that’s the point. It’s a reflection of who we are as a nation — finding harmony in difference.”
Four poets, whose well-rendered poems resonate deeply, and nine dancers bring How We Go to life, expressing in their own ways what it means to belong and to be othered, to be both participants and witnesses. Frankly, if it were not mentioned in the program notes, their individual identities would not be immediately apparent. What stands out is the unity of the ensemble and the shared humanity they bring to the stage.
Meyer’s vision is clear: “Working together is how we go — and how we should all go.” A fitting message, well articulated through art, for our times.