Hannah Epperson, Rebecca Margolick, Niloufar Nourbakhsh

"Catenary," premiering at PS21 in Chatham, is the kind of hybrid performance that dissolves the line between sound and movement. A collaboration between violinist and composer Hannah Epperson and choreographer Rebecca Margolick, with composer and pianist Niloufar Nourbakhsh, the work positions musicians and dancers in active dialogue—not just sharing the stage, but sharing roles. Bodies generate rhythm, instruments shape space, and movement becomes another form of phrasing.

Epperson’s looping violin and vocal textures meet Nourbakhsh’s piano and electronic atmospheres, while Margolick’s choreography pushes performers toward a porous, improvisational edge. The result is less a suite of set pieces than a living system, where structure and spontaneity coexist and each performer becomes both anchor and agitator. "Catenary" gestures toward tension and suspension—like the arc from which it takes its name—balancing delicacy and force. For PS21, long a home for genre-bending performance, it’s a fitting fall moment: intimate, searching, and quietly radical.