Audience Reviews

AUDIENCE REVIEW: Terracotta Dance Invests in a Visually Striking Future with Amphora Underway

Company:
Terracotta Dance

Performance Date:
August 9th, 2026

Freeform Review:

In a garden of intricate architecture, antique ornaments hang weightlessly from the ceiling like ivy draping over a curved archway. From these seven intricately designed wooden pieces, a show emerges. Guided by the unique rhythms of lips smacking together as they prepare to speak in slithering rhymes and the footsteps of a musician strolling across a stage, Amphora Underway features choreographer and dancer Macee Eppard in a continuous state of amazement and intrigue.

In its first movement, Eppard appears in a gown of silk the color of fresh grass in spring. Long orange hair flows in delicate waves down her back, and she carries a wistfulness with each step, calling to a natural image of a Greek goddess. Eppard invites a flutist onto the stage and lives in the musician's trills and whistles, spiraling through the hanging art pieces like trees in a growing forest. The dancer sees the audience almost immediately, and speaks to them like an elder telling illustrious stories to children. The dancer mimics a mythical entity through alliteration and the specific rolling of the tongue.

“Crisp. Caught. Collide. Coiled. Collapse.”

These phrases are repeated on and on, inviting intrigue despite the fixed nature of the spoken word. A third player enters the stage, who is now known as the woodworker of the show. The pieces are untied from the ceiling; pieces slide together and snap into divots, charming, a familiar image. The seven pieces are now one. They form the piece's first stable shape, a chair. The change of physicality in the wood moves Eppard into a modernist air of drama illustrated in the articulation of the spine, the artistry of the breath, and the contractions that are almost mocking the audience. In the audience's padded, manufactured chairs, they can only watch Eppard curve and stretch like it is a right she has earned across the handmade piece of art. Be it envy or a wistful dream, the audience is rooted to their chairs—numbingly boring chairs—that could never compare to the stability and craftsmanship on display.    

The dance resolves with a melody from the flutist, and the joining of dancer, musical artist, and woodworker. They exist together, with the chair clutched between Eppard's palms like a gift from a lost loved one, but these three could not be further apart, for they have not once acknowledged each other, only acknowledged what they can give, be it music or a physical piece of art, to the story of the work.

The addition of live music and the woodworker almost seem unneeded in the presence of the self-importance Eppard brings to the stage. It is striking to see the sound of her breath parting her lips paired with the lines of her legs searching through the air. These powerful images are energized with such depth of passion that it is daunting to ask other mediums to aesthetically and emotionally fulfill the task. Credit must be given to Eppard’s commitment; her presence pauses time and effortlessly steals attention.

Amphora Underway performed two successful shows at Arts on Site on August 9th, 2026. Amphora Underway premiered under Terracotta Dance Company and was choreographed and danced by founder Macee Eppard. Eppard was supported by the talented live musician Zach Reed and relied on a physical chair created by the artist Sanders Green. Eppard looks forward to expanding the process and diving deeper into the story of Amphora Underway.

Author:
Kayleigh Duggan