Sunset Park dance company debuts first evening-length performance

(All)Ways Dance Company’s full-length production of “Absent of…” premiered at the Mark O’Donnell Theater in Downtown Brooklyn last weekend, but the seed for the production was planted here in Sunset Park.

Originally from Arizona, Alyssa Myers, the company’s artistic and executive director, describes connecting deeply to the neighborhood when she moved from Midtown in 2021.

“I love how much I can settle in my body, and the proximity to familiar things, like the schools, the park, the view, and these treasures, like small businesses,” says Myers. “That provided me creatively the space to have the mental capacity to create work and think about work that I wanted to make.”

Of course, when searching for the ideal Brooklyn living space, having a great roommate makes all the difference. When her friend, (A)DC co-founder and rehearsal director Aurora Vaughan, needed housing, the two took the opportunity to move to Sunset Park together.

They originally met while studying at the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance and worked together at a dance school in Tribeca. Their easy access to studio space gave them the opportunity to explore movement, but living together allowed them to have deeper conversations about the future. The two recall spending a lot of time at nearby Judy’s drinking coffee and wine while discussing what truly mattered to them.

“We had a lot of conversations about what we value in life, and what's important to us, and how we differentiate ourselves as artists in a city that has so many artists,” says Myers. “And having to come face to face with that and figure out what really defines you.”

As the two began performing together and continued to teach and organize productions, including a piece at Fort Hamilton High School last year, the need for something on a larger scale emerged.

“We started dancing together and presenting a lot of Alyssa’s choreography over the course of four years, and after every show people were asking, what’s next and what are you going to do with this?” Vaughan says. “And that turned into where we are now.”

In 2023 Myers developed a relationship with MOVE\|NYC\|\, a program that provides free professional\-level training for New York artists\, which she credits for helping her develop her unique style of choreography\.

“I started to understand a little bit more what are the different things that I want to start creating,” says Myers. “And I started to play more with music and messing around with sound, not just as a classical lens, but also something that's a little bit more atmospheric and builds familiar senses or dissonance inside of our bodies based off of what we hear.”

What eventually grew into “Absent of…” began in the summer of last year in their living room.

“Aurora was like, we need to make this a company and ‘Absent of…,’ a 20-minute rendition of it, was what we used to premiere the name (A)DC in the fall,” says Myers.

They based that first production on workshops with dancers where they discussed the meaning of absence, diving into the shifting nature of the concept, how its meaning changes not just from one person to the next but for the same person as their circumstances evolve.

“There's not just heaviness with absence, there's also freedom with absence sometimes, or lightness,” says Myers. “Sometimes absence is very complex, and you're weighing multiple things with something that's not there, or something that you're trying to find.”

The piece kept expanding after its debut at the Spark Theatre Festival in 2024 and eventually grew into the richly textured 65-minute show they premiered this month. The soundscape, assembled by Myers, acts as its own character in the performance. Mellow guitar lines give way to syncopated beats and harsh, metallic scrapes. At one point, it sounds like bubbles rising underwater. Even when the music cuts out, the silence is thick with the slap of hands, the thud of bodies hitting the floor, and the effortful breath of the dancers.

Onstage at the O’Donnell, motifs loop and reshape themselves. Dancers put on and take off layers of clothing, chairs migrate across the stage, snippets of text rise and fall like short poems. The movement shifts between fluid, floating phrases and deliberately broken, doll-like gestures, as if the body is relearning how to move.

Vaughan describes the current version as “a full experiential dance piece” that asks both performers and audiences to sit with discomfort.

“We dove into places that are uncomfortable, to experiences that rub at those little wounds that you maybe forgot were there,” says Vaughan. “And it's not meant to be something that people walk away from without thinking and talking and contemplating.”

Each show is different, says Myers, as the dancers respond to each other, listening to each other and making decisions in real time based on how each is experiencing the show differently night after night.

“Onstage, I have to meet the other artists where they are and stay true to where I am in that moment,” says Vaughan, who is both the rehearsal director and a performer, a dual role that has its challenges. “I also have to step back and evaluate what’s happening visually and artistically. Sometimes that means taking my ego out of the equation and being pragmatic in ways that are uncomfortable.”

Objects on stage can read as characters, memories, or ghosts. Chairs, clothes and other items become stories and acknowledgments. Myers worked with concept and production designer Kyle Livsey to develop the set.

From crediting (A)DC co-founder and producer Aidan Tyssee to costume designer Emilia Dagradi, Myers is quick to acknowledge the spirit of collaboration that went into the production.

“This small idea that was really just a sentence or a phrase has become something so large, and I wouldn't have been able to do it alone,” says Myers. “It actually doesn’t feel like my own. It feels like I got to be a part of some seed that was planted, and that’s become what it is, and I just get to bask in it.”

Vaughan gets emotional when describing the collaborative process Myers has developed with her team. “The way that Alyssa makes space for other people to have agency and create their own vision within a larger scope of everything is what we want for a company and it is thanks to the leadership and it is thanks to the quality and caliber of artists that we are lucky enough to have in our community.”

Mentorship is built into (A)DC’s structure and the founders stress that the company is meant to develop artists holistically through their unique rehearsal process and workshops that blend dance with leadership and professional development.

Asked what she would say to Sunset Park readers thinking about starting a business or following their own artistic ideas, Myers doesn’t sugarcoat it.

“The harder, colder part of me says no one’s going to do it for you,” she admits. “But there’s something beautiful in that. The perseverance, the determination, the ability to recognize that what you hold is powerful, and even more powerful when it’s shared honestly and openly.”

Vaughan adds a second piece of advice.

“You have to know yourself and be willing to learn and relearn who you are in different situations,” they say. “And you have to be okay with asking for help.”