Chrysalis Effect

Chrysalis Effect was created for the Deep Water Literary Festival in Narrowsburg, NY, in 2025. The festival’s theme, Metamorphoses, felt like a perfect match for my painting series New Botanicals, which imagines a post-apocalyptic world where human bodies merge with plants in order to survive.

For this project, I collaborated with dancer and choreographer Corinna Grunn; dancers Hilary Chapman and Isabel Braverman; musician and composer Sheridan Grunn; and videographer Amy Bucher. I created four full costumes for the dancers, as well as over twenty wearable art pieces for the participants involved in the immersive conclusion of the performance.

The performance took place in an Evangelical church, chosen for its immersive atmosphere. I created interactive costumes inspired by my drawings; cords attached to the garments allowed dancers to link together and form “twins,” embodying connection and transformation.

The piece unfolded in three parts—struggle, release, and celebration—with the final section inviting the audience to join in joyful collective dancing. The performance was a great success. As festival director Aaron Hicklin remarked: “Chrysalis was exactly the kind of inventively thematic performance piece we were hoping for. The choreography, the costumes, and the music were superb, and we loved the way you took the audience on a journey that ended in a pure moment of joy.”