Untitled Night by Morgan Thorson

Untitled Night by Morgan Thorson with collaborators Jay Afrisando (Audio Description Creator & Director), Sam Aros-Mitchell (Performer), Alexandra Beaumont (Performer), Dakota Blankenship (Apparel & Wearable Art), José Luis (Performer),  Kristen McCoy (Apparel & Wearable Art), Eva Mohn (Performer), Nao Nagai (Lighting), Margaret Ogas (Performer), Morgan Thorson (Performer), Arwen Wilder (Performer); and Taja Will (Performer) is an outdoor nocturnal dance event made for extreme climates. A multi-phase dance project in final development, Untitled Night draws inspiration from night skies and the dynamic winter of the Upper Midwest, inviting audiences to immerse into the temperament of winter and bask in the dark cover of night. 

Instigated by research in queer ecology and dark sky advocacy, Untitled Night is a necessary, ever-evolving, multisensory partnership with stars, trees, land, ice and creatures. Performed on a frozen lake in Minneapolis, MN, January 27, 2024, as part of The Great Northern Festival, this first iteration will include audio-descriptions by the performers, illumination and sonic electronic playback as creative accommodations. Both environmental advocacy and hospice, Untitled Night activates connections to land and celestial bodies, summoning consideration of aliveness and environmental precarity. 

As a memorialization and a call to action, we are moved to make gentle marks of remembrance; Untitled Night is a mark made for night and winter, and for movement as necessity, because outdoor dancing at temperatures below 30 degrees Fahrenheit is itself an exercise in survival. 

With a dance language sourced from audio description techniques, star constellations and elemental movements shared by living creatures, like rocking and pumping, Untitled Night also advocates for very dark nights as a salve to our climate crisis. No matter where it is situated, Untitled Night invites participants outdoors at night, into living and dying world, to share in a moving culture of action. 

Untitled Night is commissioned by The Great Northern and supported by Red Eye Theater and MOVO Space. The trailer above was edited by Morgan Thorson and features narrator Taja Will, and dancers Alex Beaumont, José Luis, Morgan Thorson, Arwen Wilder and Taja Will.