Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance Announces Shapes of Change: Company’s 25th Anniversary Season

Jody Sperling and Time Lapse Dance announce the program Shapes of Change, two performances in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the company, from April 24-25, 2026 at New York Society for Ethical Culture, Adler Hall, 2 West 64th Street, New York, NY, 10023. In keeping with an ethical ethos, all performance tickets are offered at pay-what-you-can pricing. Suggested general admission is $35 with lower-cost and free ticket options available here.

For two-and-a-half decades, choreographer Jody Sperling and her Time Lapse Dance ensemble have been creating stunning spectacles that illuminate the relationship between the human body and the natural world while reckoning with climate change realities. Since 2022, Sperling and company have been Eco-Artists-in-Residence at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, co-presenting programs that embody an ethical and ecological ethos. Shapes of Change celebrates the 25th Anniversary of Time Lapse Dance and the 150th Anniversary of the New York Society for Ethical Culture with two unique performances (come to both!) featuring a world premiere and repertory favorites at the Society’s historic Adler Hall.

The world premiere piece Sea Change is a poetic reimagining of humanity's relationship with water in the wake of rising sea levels. Performed by the company’s six exquisite dancers, the dance delves into somatic experiences of submersion and conjures a misty realm between sea and sky. The work continues a decade-long collaboration between Sperling and Emmy Award-winning environmental composer Matthew Burtner. For the season, Burtner performs live and conducts The New Consort vocal ensemble to evoke a hauntingly luminous sea of sound.

Program A (Friday) features two other Sperling-Burtner collaborations: Fractal Memories, originally created for the documentary Obsessed with Light, which traces the entanglement of bodies through time; and Plastic Harvest, a romp about plastic proliferations. Performance followed by a reception honoring a special guest to be announced. Program B (Saturday) features the Sperling-Burtner collaborations: Wind Rose, visualizing patterns of atmospheric disturbance; and excerpts from the visually-hypnotic Arbor, dwelling on the intimacy of trees. Saturday’s performance is followed by an artist talkback.

All of these works feature transformative costumes that abstract human movement into elemental and organic forces, with the dancers appearing to conjure the oceans eddies, a growing forest, or hovering storm clouds. The company's unique style of movement draws inspiration from and furthers the art form created by dance icon Loie Fuller (1862-1928) a century ago.

Lighting design by Bessie Award-winning designer David Ferri.

Program A - Friday, April 24

Fractal Memories

Plastic Harvest

Sea Change

+Ticketed Reception

Program B - Saturday, April 25

Wind Rose

Arbor (excerpts)

Sea Change

+Artist Talkback

Time Lapse Dance ensemble: Frances Barker, Elinor Kleber Diggs, Tessa Fungo, Anika Hunter, Maki Kitahara, Lo Poppy, Sarah Tracy, and Rathi Varma

The New Consort, vocal ensemble: Madeline Apple Healey (soprano), Heather Jones (mezzo-soprano), Noé Kains (tenor), Brian Mummert (artistic director & baritone)



Performance-Only Tickets (Friday or Saturday)

No minimum, suggested pricing as follows

$10 - accessible price (e.g. senior, student, artist)

$35 - general admission

$75 - patron ticket (subsidizes accessible tickets for others)

Performance + Post-Performance Reception (Friday 4/24 only)

$50 - accessible price

$150 - patron ticket

$500+ - Leadership Circle Access (perks include VIP seating & rehearsal invitations)

About Jody Sperling

Jody Sperling is a dancer, choreographer and the Founder/Artistic Director of the Time Lapse Dance ensemble. Since 2022 Sperling has been Eco-Artist-in-Residence at the New York Society of Ethical Culture where, with her company, she is advancing the mission of dancing toward a more embodied, sustainable, and equitable future. Sperling is the leading exponent of performance technology innovator Loie Fuller (1862-1928)–her Fuller-style work is prominently featured in the Fuller documentary Obsessed with Light, the Fuller biopic The Dancer, and in Paul Taylor Dance Company’s repertory. Sperling has expanded Fuller’s genre into contemporary environmental forms and to promote climate literacy. In 2014, Sperling participated in a polar science mission and danced on Arctic sea ice, creating the short dance film Ice Floe, honored with a Creative Climate Award. Sperling’s work continues to focus on embodied climate engagement.

About Matthew Burtner

Matthew Burtner (www.matthewburtner.com) is an Alaskan-born composer, sound artist and eco-acoustician whose work explores embodiment, ecology, polytemporality and noise. A leading practitioner of climate change music and ecoacoustic sound art, his work has been exhibited and performed around the world and featured by organizations such as NASA, PBS NewsHour, the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the BBC, the U.S. State Department, and National Geographic. He has won prizes such as the IDEA Award for the climate-change opera Auksalaq, an Australian IMPACT Award for THAW with Legs on the Wall, an EMMY Award for Composing Music with Snow and Glaciers with Alaska Public Media, and an NEA Art Works Award for The Ceiling Floats Away with poet Rita Dove. He has been a composer for Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance since 2015. Matthew teaches composition and computer music at the University of Virginia where he co-directs the Coastal Future Conservatory (http://www.coastalconservatory.org). He is founder and director of the non-profit organization, EcoSono (www.ecosono.org).

About New York Society for Ethical Culture

The New York Society for Ethical Culture is a community dedicated to ethical living and social justice since 1876. Guided by Humanist values, we aim to bring out the best in the human spirit through education, advocacy, and service. Together we support both personal growth and collective responsibility in pursuit of a just, equitable, and sustainable world.

About Time Lapse Dance

Time Lapse Dance (TLD) is an all-women 501(c)3 dance company founded by Sperling in 2000. TLD envisions dance as a powerful force that can help move us toward a more embodied, sustainable and equitable future. The work aims to investigate the relationship of the moving body to the ecologies we inhabit through performance, media, education, and activism.

About New Consort

Winners of the American Prize in Chamber Music, THE NEW CONSORT is a vocal chamber ensemble dedicated to exploring the roles that musical ritual and community can play in 21st-century lives. We bring the unique emotive power of vocal ensemble music out of its historical place in religious ceremony, using it instead to humanize the marginalized and illuminate thematic connections among creators in many genres of musical expression.

Founded by baritone & Artistic Director Brian Mummert, The New Consort has been presented by organizations including Trinity College, Cambridge; Tippet Rise Art Center; Saint Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue; Williams College; Sacred Music at Columbia University; Princeton University Chapel; The Bach Store, an NYC pop-up concert hall; Pegasus Early Music; and New York State Baroque. Recent and upcoming commissions include projects by Rosśa Crean, Jonathan Woody, Simon Frisch, Hope Littwin, Kebra-Seyoun Charles, Niccolo Seligmann, and Ethan McGrath. Members of The New Consort appear as soloists, choristers, and conductors with some of the world’s best-respected ensembles, but relish the opportunity to collaborate as chamber musicians.

Connect on Instagram

Jody Sperling @jody_sperling

Time Lapse Dance @time_lapse_dance

New York Society for Ethical Culture @ethicalnyc

Matthew Burtner @matthewburtner

The New Consort @thenewconsort

Time Lapse Dance Ensemble Performers:

Frances Barker @wannabee8

Elinor Kleber Diggs @elinor.kd

Tessa Fungo @tessa.fungo

Anika Hunter @anikahunter

Maki Kitahara @maki_k_01

Lo Poppy @_lo_poppy

Sarah Tracy @sarahtracy

Rathi Varma @rathivarma

Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance programs are made possible in part by an ongoing eco-artist-residency at The New York Society for Ethical Culture, with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, with support from the Heinrich Böll Foundation Washington, DC, and the Harkness Foundation for Dance.

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