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Since founding SLOWBURN dance in 2019, Meredith Pellon has been diligently making and displaying work throughout the Puget Sound area, popping up in every single place from artwork galleries, parks, and festivals, to Vashon Center for the Arts and the Georgetown Steamplant. And when you catch on to SLOWBURN’s crystalline type—wherever you see them—it’s unmistakable.
An Evening with SLOWBURN Dance ran this previous weekend at Seattle Open Arts Place (previously 18th and Union). A blended program of eight brief items pulled from the corporate’s repertoire, together with a number of new works, was an ideal alternative to look at Pellon’s signature method to motion, usually made in collaboration together with her dancers. Rife with blade palms, sculptural holds, clear balances, and spines that appear to carve area, it will be laborious to overstate how managed Pellon’s choreography is. Each motion shifts into form with out an oz. of reverb. Sometimes snapping into place in a rhythmic staccato—blink and also you’ll miss it—generally rising into a brand new form just like the physique is filling a mould.
There is one thing extreme, virtually militaristic, in regards to the forged of six as they enter for the primary work Agony Column (2025). Hair slicked again and carrying a mixture of black separates and black socks (one other frequent function of SLOWBURN’s aesthetic). They wait at consideration as Pellon performs an prolonged maintain in backbend, arms stretched and palms clasped above her head. Finally it offers method to a sequence of extremely exact shapes that unfold by the ensemble, every held after which snapping to vary at unpredictable intervals. Right away we’re launched to Pellon’s different foremost choreographic devise—rhythms that observe their very own inner logic, composed with a way of musicality that always creates counterpoint with the music or the opposite dancers on stage. This is especially true on this first piece, set to music by The Smiths and Mk.gee, the place the rhythms and aesthetic appear to deliberately problem the music’s jangly vibes. Most of the works use extra atmospheric soundscapes, wherein the contrasting rhythms dwell extra organically, however nonetheless simply as clear.
The second piece, Ours (2022), a duet between Pellon and Elise Meiners, finds softness and movement within the sculpted motion, however by no means launch. The two appear on completely different trajectories however coming into flashes of synchronicity, like two sea creatures caught in the identical wave. Similar moments of unison punctuate the following ensemble work Something New (2025), the place abrupt simultaneous shifts give me the momentarily phantasm that the room itself has slid sideways. In one other second the forged ideas ahead, reaching arms and circling their legs to make an extended line parallel to the ground. Then in a single breathtaking beat they flip their pelvises open and it’s like a faculty of fish altering path, showcasing unimaginable management and coordination with each other.
SLOWBURN’s dancers (Hannah March, Madeline Morser, Shayley Timm, Izzy Wroblewski, Meiners, and Pellon) are a formidable group, due to their particular person bodily prowess, but in addition due to what should be a fastidious rehearsal course of. Every angle, form, and beat is known and executed with a stage of uniform precision that’s virtually with out comparability in Seattle—Pellon’s tough rhythmic sensibility carried out with out hesitation or apparent musical cues. Clean pirouettes float out of the choreography, seemingly with out preparation, and in a single significantly jealousy-inducing second, Timm drops into the splits in measured bursts of pure energy and agility.
Watching Pellon as a performer, it’s so clear that this type originated on her physique and he or she’s completed a superb job cultivating her type in her dancers, with one (actually obtrusive) exception. While she appears to have mastered a compelling, virtually glamorous, vacantness of expression, on her dancers this ‘neutral face’ can simply change into an expression of worry, stress, flatness, or grumpiness that both layers on unintended which means, or steals expressive energy from motion itself. And when every thing is so uniform and clear, even subtly completely different expressions will be very distracting.
It additionally made me mirror on the human-ness of those dancers throughout the context of every piece. Pellon wrote in this system notes about human experiences as inspiration for a lot of of her works, however largely I skilled the works as summary compositions of area and time. It made me hungry to see an extended format work, the place theme and variation may develop over time to create which means. Or maybe creating the human factor extra inside Pellon’s well-defined container.
The one piece the place the humanity of the dancer felt current was Ivory (2022), a solo carried out by Morser the evening I attended (Meiners and Timm every carried out it on the different showings), and was positively a spotlight of the present. Pellon’s fascinating use of form—like a fist hovering over an open palm—had time and focus to land. Morser’s refined efficiency made every picture really feel like an expression of her inner expertise. A repeated windmill of the arms, with foot brushing the ground lulls us into the heart beat of repetition, sooner and sooner till Morser releases up right into a second of floating suspension. The piece ends when the music cuts abruptly: mid notice and mid motion. An apt end for a choreographer who’s play with timing retains me anticipating the surprising.
SLOWBURN has two upcoming performances:
June 10 at Seattle International Dance Festival’s Spotlight on Seattle
August 2 on the Georgetown Steamplant
An Evening with SLOWBURN ran May 30-June 1 2025 at Seattle Open Arts Place. The program for the present is offered right here. To study extra go to slowburndance.com.