Auspex, a dance piece for 10 dancers incorporates bird courtship behaviors and inspiration from their dances and plumage to draw parallels between us and our relatives in the animal kingdom. It undermines an anthropocentric perspective of how we come to understand ourselves, our behaviors, our instincts, and our relationships with each other and with nature. Directed and choreographed by Sarah Yasmine Marazzi-Sassoon with costumes and set by Meinzer, the project asks: Why do we tell stories? Why do we dance? How did we go from the instinct-based modes of communication we see in the animal kingdom to our complex grammar? Why has every human population danced and told stories? Auspex is the Ancient Roman practice of telling the future through observing animals, especially birds. Auspex draws on the behavior of the blue manakins who rehearse their mating dance in groups, the Vogelkop Bowerbird who meticulously builds a set out of twigs and flowers and continually destroys and rebuilds it, in the same way we build and rebuild the structures and confines of our lives. These among many other species will serve as jumping boards from which to spin an ultimately human narrative.

This work is a continuation of Sarah’s senior thesis, On the Evolution of Narrative, at Barnard College of Columbia University