By HANNAH WING BONICA

Maria Caruso’s Bodiography presents Arcadia isn’t just a performance of one of her works; there is a buildup featuring a selection of past choreographic works before Caruso reveals her newest work. Arcadia, a full-length ballet collaboration with composer Kevin Keller, opens with a performance of Astravore, choreographed by Kirstie Corso and performed by Bodiography’s Student Company. It ends with Arcadia, a sequel to Evensong, a previous collaboration between Keller and Caruso.

While Evensong is about birth through death, Arcadia is a closer examination of the end of life and rebirth.  It’s a circular, unending cycle as one feeds into the other. This can also be easily read as a metaphor for how Maria Caruso’s Bodiography presents Arcadia’s program at the Kelly Strayhorn Theater. Caruso notes that the student performers who train with her eventually find their way into the company as members, then “retire” and continue to give back to the Pittsburgh community through their love of dance. The selected works featured before Arcadia are a homage to the journey of Maria Caruso’s Bodiography, but they do not really complement the themes of Arcadia, which is just as powerful on its own or paired with works from Caruso’s extensive list of choreographic works that better align thematically. 

Before Arcadia, Caruso acts as a guide, narrating a “living program” that provides some context for the works. After Astravore‘s opening work, Bodiography Contemporary Ballet presents Journey, a 2008 choreographic work by Maria Caruso. Journey is an eight-minute work which features just three dancers: Madalyn Bauer, Madelyn Shaw, and Marie-Amelle Thenoz. In this short amount of time, Bauer, Shaw, and Thenoz dance with a powerful yet vulnerable energy. These women are together, but also a part of their separate journeys as they travel with a haunting momentum across the stage. After Journey, there is Under the Hat, a duet featuring Madalyn Bauer and Issac Ray, dressed in matching suits and hats. The duo cheerfully glide across the stage together with their hats in tow. This is the first time Under the Hat has been performed on stage since the COVID-19 pandemic began. While both Bauer and Ray are dedicated to their movements, it’s apparent that Under the Hat still needs a bit more work to share its magical potential fully. A work like Under the Hat calls for more surprises, such as literal hat tricks and energetic movements, such as rapid turns and jumps, to fully engross the audience in a magical world where anything can happen. 

Sisters of the Sword, featuring Bauer and Thenoz, is one of Caruso’s recent works, and it takes inspiration from female ferocity (think Xena Warrior Princess). Bauer and Thenoz move with determined, synchronized steps that mimic tension between the sisters as they seem to fight one another across the stage. The tension of Sisters of the Sword gives way to Timeless, one of Caruso’s more personal works, which is about the off-again, on-again relationship between her mother and father. Timeless, which pairs company dancers Thenoz and Ray, is an emotional love story, filled with joy and sorrow. Both Thenoz and Ray move dynamically together and apart with passion. Timeless is a really engaging narrative and one of Caruso’s standout pieces. 

Lastly, the full company of Bodiography Contemporary Ballet (Madalyn Bauer, Carolina Giansante, Opher Ilany, Issac Ray, Madelyn Shaw, and Marie-Amelle Thenoz) takes the stage for the anticipated Arcadia. To prepare for this performance, Caruso mentions that the dancers met with doctors to learn as much as they could about death and dying. These interactions with the doctors informed Maria Caruso’s Arcadia. Keller’s music in Arcadia is a sequence of songs with haunting melodies and an ethereal chorus of voices. Caruso tries to take a more narrative approach to death and the afterlife, but it unravels back into abstraction. The beginning is definitive. The performance opens with dancers trying to make sense of their surroundings and slowly clothe themselves in their own identities. But a sense of place and characters fade as Arcadia transforms into stirring, frantic movements, as dancers fly on and off the stage in pursuit of meaning in an afterlife. Exchanges of clothes, repeated over and over, become symbolic of rebirth.

Despite the lack of narrative, Arcadia is a compelling ballet as a metaphor for death and what comes after. When Arcadia is eventually paired with its predecessor, Evensong, then perhaps a stronger narrative will come through. 

Maria Caruso’s Bodiography Presents Arcadia premiered at the Kelly Strahorn Theater from April 17, 18, and 19, 2026. Interested in seeing Maria Caruso’s work? The Bodiology Center Movement Spring Concert is scheduled for June 13-14, 2026. 

Categories: Arts and Ideas, Reviews