{"id":300602,"date":"2025-10-13T18:45:44","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T18:45:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/300602\/"},"modified":"2025-10-13T18:45:44","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T18:45:44","slug":"impressions-hivewild-presents-with-your-sweet-fragrance-at-new-york-live-arts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/300602\/","title":{"rendered":"IMPRESSIONS: Hivewild Presents ‘with your sweet fragrance’ at New York Live Arts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Features<\/a> > Impressions <\/a>The Dance Enthusiast’s Brand of Review\/Thoughts on What We See \n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\"IMPRESSIONS:\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Published on October 13, 2025
‘with your sweet frangrance.’ Photo: Travis Emery Hackett<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tHivewild Presents<\/p>\n

with your sweet fragrance\u00a0<\/p>\n

Artistic Director: Katherine Maxwell<\/p>\n

Dancers: Robyn Ayers, Felix Bryan, Julian Grubman, Hardy, C\u00e9line Maillard, Sean Rosado, Kira Shiina, Ragin Smith, Madison Wada<\/p>\n

Scenic Designer: Sarah Karl<\/p>\n

Lighting Designer: Jackie Fox<\/p>\n

Composer: Paul Maxwell<\/p>\n

Costume Designer: Caitlin Taylor<\/p>\n

New York Live Arts<\/p>\n

September 18-20, 2025<\/p>\n

Katherine Maxwell, Artistic Director of Hivewild<\/a>, is not one to shy away from the value of human connection. with your sweet fragrance, her evening-length work at New York Live Arts<\/a>, presents an opportunity for us to sit with how we can deepen our relationships to each other and our surroundings. She raises the question: How can we become tender with the Earth?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Hivewild in with your sweet fragrance. Photo: Travis Emery Hackett<\/p>\n

The work\u2019s opening, however, is anything but tender. Amid darkness, the audience sits in the acoustic hypnosis of teardrops falling into a pool of water. The stage is bare except for a thick sheet of crinkled plastic. The cast of nine performers emerge as a unit in cold white light and smoke. We hear the plastic crinkle as they stomp, flinch, and step barefoot on demi pointe, an effect which is simultaneously unsettling and satisfying. Maxwell creates the atmosphere of a nightclub in the performance space as the dancers rage in articulated unison to the booming, reverberating beat of Paul Maxwell\u2019s score.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Hivewild in with your sweet fragrance. Photo: Travis Emery Hackett<\/p>\n

As the group transitions offstage, Felix Bryan remains left behind, curled into a fetal position with their back to us. The image of Bryan\u2019s still body sinking into a plastic void carries an eerie immediacy. They transition into rhythmic solo material in a state of isolated, melancholic wonder, starkly contrasting Maxwell\u2019s ecstatic choreography in the previous scene. As Bryan mimes pulling something out of the plastic ground, the stage floods with bright lights from the downstage corner, casting a monstrous shadow of their figure on the opposite side of the stage\u2014an image that somehow makes them appear more alone.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The story of an intense personal relationship surfaces when Madison Wada joins Bryan. The pair maintains intimate eye contact as they embrace and interlock their necks, torsos, and legs, only to burst into a wrestling match. As they fight to take each other down, the sense of angst between them, especially from the first row of the audience, feels genuinely passionate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Hivewild in with your sweet fragrance. Photo: Travis Emery Hackett<\/p>\n

Throughout the work, characters assemble and disassemble like pieces of a puzzle as they question how they fit in with each other, oscillating between resistance and embrace. The stage remains an open field of play for discovery, intimacy, domination, and rejection. One dancer, Hardy, seizes the stage in a game of manipulation and control: like a videogame simulation, her hands act as remote controls to command Bryan and Wada\u2019s movements. When Hardy\u2019s hand goes flat, the dancers suddenly drop to the floor; when she raises her fingers, they desperately try to lengthen their bodies to the ceiling on demi pointe. As each cast member re-enters, Hardy\u2019s strength and enjoyment of manipulation grows. Her facial expressions add an enticing expressive dimension as she rules over all the dancers at once. She smiles as if cackling and her eyes widen as the dancers anxiously struggle to keep up with her demands.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Even<\/p>\n

Hivewild in with your sweet fragrance. Photo: Travis Emery Hackett<\/p>\n

A dynamic change of scenery occurs when the dancers collectively pull the plastic sheet away from the stage to uncover a field of grass along the upstage wall. The room immediately transitions from cold to warm, revealing a golden meadow in which the dancers break free of their collective choreography into their own personal worlds. Solos, duets, and trios intermingle as dancers levitate and glide through the field in the foreground and background. They suspend their bodies in the air for impressively long stretches of time, whether gliding through a lift or planted on one foot. C\u00e9line Maillard contorts her limbs, knees, and back at an accelerated pace, roaming across the stage with intense specificity. The soundscore continues to change tempo and dynamic, finally resolving in a calm passage of electric strumming.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Three<\/p>\n

Hivewild in with your sweet fragrance. Photo: Travis Emery Hackett<\/p>\n

As the cast comes together again, they run to each other in desperate embraces and cover themselves under the thick plastic sheet. Blended into one creature, all that we see is a large, writhing shadow that pushes and prods the plastic into new shapes, pierced by the light from flashlights the dancers hold within. As they find stillness, they find resolution to their collective turmoil.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At Hivewild, dancers are humans and the stage is the Earth. \u201cwith your sweet fragrance\u201d invites us to ground ourselves in an opportunity to witness the experience of what it means to be human.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Hivewild in with your sweet fragrance. Photo: Travis Emery Hackett<\/p>\n

The Dance Enthusiast Shares IMPRESSIONS\/our brand of review, and creates conversation.
For more IMPRESSIONS, click here<\/a>.
Share your #AudienceReview<\/a> of performances. Write one<\/a> today!<\/p>\n

The Dance Enthusiast<\/a> – News, Reviews, Interviews and an Open Invitation for YOU to join the Dance Conversation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Features > Impressions The Dance Enthusiast’s Brand of Review\/Thoughts on What We See Published on October 13, 2025‘with…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":300603,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[147693,147692,147700,5229,40646,147695,147699,10929,147694,3095,147701,147691,14839,3765,147698,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,147696,147689,32921,11853,82405,147690,147697,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,989],"class_list":["post-300602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-a-day-in-the-life","tag-a-day-in-the-life-of-dance","tag-african-dance","tag-america","tag-ballet","tag-barefootnotes","tag-contemporary-dance","tag-dance","tag-dance-up-close","tag-features","tag-flamenco","tag-from-the-press","tag-hip-hop","tag-impressions","tag-modern-dance","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-dance","tag-postcards","tag-qa","tag-reviews","tag-tap","tag-the-dance-enthusiast-asks","tag-the-dance-enthusiast-hits-the-streets","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-video"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}