Inclined Dance Project- Alone With Everyone

Chapter 1: FOG

Chapter 2: AWE

Choreography: Kristen Klein with additional material by the performers

Dancers: Amy Aquilina, Kat Bark, Olivia Chesneau, Maria Gardner, Shannon McGee, Jordan Mendelsohn, Jillian Pajer

Soundscore Arrangement: Kristen Klein

November 21, 2025

Paul Taylor Dance Center East

Photo: Andrew J. Mauney Photography

Dance is powerful precisely because it is ephemeral. Images appear and vanish, bypassing the thinking brain and landing somewhere between the heart and the gut, with the mind left to tether sensation to memory. That brief exchange is what allows dance to forge universal connection and authentic beauty. Like life itself—marked by struggle, triumph, meeting, and parting—dance is fleeting and therefore precious. Alone With Everyone, Inclined Dance Project’s latest evening-length work, examines these truths through the lens of trauma and transformation.

Photo: Andrew J. Mauney Photography

The evening unfolds in two chapters, FOG (2024) and AWE (2025). FOG begins as Jillian Pajer slowly backs away from Maria Gardner, who is seated facing away from her, as if she is being led away reluctantly. Swiping her hands before her face to clear mental confusion, Pajer performs a lyrical, sculptural solo. Her focus returns repeatedly to Gardner who never turns around. Coming close but never touching, Pajer’s movements are agitated yet resolved. She is clearly in a place Gardner cannot, or will not, go. When she finally touches Gardner, she pulls her right arm into a high-five position. Gardner suddenly slaps her own hand and rises, breaking her trance. Walking the perimeter of the stage, she is on a mission. This time, Pajer is the one who cannot follow. She walks beside Gardner for a few paces, ghost-like, then exits, keeping her eyes on her unwitting partner as long as she can. With this unrequited relationship, choreographer Kristen Klein sets up a story of grief, isolation, community and the inevitability of change.

Two other dancers, Shannon McGee and Amy Aquilina, join Gardner on her journey. Sometimes the women appear as facets of Gardner’s own mental chatter, interrupting her trajectories with increasing urgency or coaxing her briefly into mirrored movements- distraction a beguiling coping strategy. They are able to divert Gardner only momentarily before she returns to her own familiar physical patterns. At other times McGee and Aquilina represent members of Gardner’s community that vie for her attention. She moves between them as they guide and manipulate her—not with avarice but with support—hoping to inspire Gardner to initiate her own patterns, with varying success. Sometimes Gardner shrinks away, looking in vain for relief from their assault. At others, she gives in and moves with them in full-bodied, athletic dance phrases. Contrasting large, sweeping movements with small staccato gestures, Klein paints a picture of a person trapped by her thoughts, struggling to break free. 

Photo: Andrew J. Mauney Photography

With bare bones stage lighting at Paul Taylor Dance East and the audience seated around all four sides of the large studio, the emphasis of Alone With Everyone is on the movement and the relationships between performers. A powerhouse company of seven women, the dancers of Inclined Dance Project master Klein’s unique movement style while retaining their individual strengths as performers. Gardner is flawless- deceptively grounded for such a slight person, her supple, articulate spine perfect for Klein’s gestural and precise movement vocabulary. Aquilina is a formidable force, with compelling stage presence and physicality. Gardner and Aquilina, company veterans, having been with Klein for over ten years. The newbies- Jordan Mendelsohn, Olivia Chesneau and Kat Bark- are strong additions and the group complements one another well. 

As a choreographer, Klein enjoys breaking from proscenium traditions, having produced two seasons of dance in the round, and she uses these uncommon vantage points effectively. With no visible “front” to the choreography, audiences are treated to multiple perspectives along all four sides of the space, allowing for unique entry points into the action and deeper connections to the work’s emotional themes. While the audience observes the dancers, the dancers also observe one another, both in stillness and in motion, underscoring a sense of dependency and community that shifts in the second half of the piece.

Photo: Andrew J. Mauney Photography

FOG ends with an agitated solo by Aquilina, her movements accelerating as McGee and Gardner lie prone and lifeless at her feet. Frustrated by their lack of response, Aquilina moves to exit, but Gardner stops her with a raised hand. Aquilina marches over and forcefully clasps it. Blackout. It is a resonant and thematically satisfying ending, yet the evening is not over. While this moment functions as a logical intermission point, the work would benefit from unfolding without a long pause—allowing the second chapter to rise out of darkness cinematically connected to the first, preserving the continuity of the inner journey.

Chapter two, AWE, begins with Bark performing a sculptural solo reminiscent of Pajer’s opening in FOG, but more emphatic. Her lines are sharper, her timing more staccato. Indeed, all of AWE is faster, more forceful, and busier. If FOG is about upheaval, AWE is about finding peace—but a peace that must be earned.The relentlessness of AWE flirts with visual overload, but Klein’s compositional control keeps the work from tipping into excess, grounding its frenzy in intention rather than spectacle. Dancers run, fling themselves into the air, rotate through stag jumps, then crash immediately to the floor. They rise and run again, change directions, slide and roll, forcing their bodies into the space around them. Sometimes they travel alone; at others, they connect briefly before bolting off once more on individual paths.

Photo: Andrew J. Mauney Photography

Gradually, all seven performers converge, their gestures decelerating as they gather into a cohesive group. In contrast to FOG, AWE emphasizes reintegration and the transformation—both internal and communal—that follow upheaval. Frenetic at first, this chapter sees Gardner’s fragmented inner world return to quiet and to familiar bonds. Unison passages for all seven dancers feel like a salve after so much chaos. Lifts and weight-sharing emerge in simultaneous duets and trios, then expand into larger groupings, as the dancers visually rebuild their community. AWE’s final image is one of hope and courage: close together, the dancers travel backward into darkness with halting yet determined steps, arms and gazes lifted skyward.