Flutter – The Monarch Butterfly Project

The Houston Botanic Garden and Open Dance Project will present the site-specific work “Flutter The Monarch Butterfly Project” in the Susan Garver Family Discovery Garden for two afternoons only, Saturday, Sept. 30, and Sunday, Oct. 1, 2023, from 4-7 p.m.

The family friendly event will celebrate and draw attention to the monarch butterfly’s approximately 3,000-mile southern migration, which passes through Texas each fall.

As visitors explore the Susan Garver Family Discovery Garden – including the hands-on Water Play features – and discover three interactive butterfly installations by local sculptor Meredith Tucker, which the Garden added to its permanent art collection in the summer, the company of Open Dance Project will present a series of three half-hour, immersive contemporary dance performances, in whimsical costumes by Houston-based artist Natasha Bowdoin.

“Flutter” brings Open Dance Project’s theatrical approach outdoors, where the company takes on the natural phenomenon of the monarch migration with its signature athleticism and poignant wit. In addition to responding to the natural and architectural environment of the Garden and Tucker’s sculptures, which depict three different species of butterfly and a plant each pollinates, the performance incorporates painted textiles and artistic props fabricated by Bowdoin, whose work investigates and reimagines humankind’s relationship to the natural world.

Open Dance Project choreographic director Annie Arnoult uses gestures and movement patterns inspired by the butterflies as the basis for an ensemble of quirky characters and personalities that seem at once totally human, and yet also completely butterfly. Turning “immersivity” inside-out, “Flutter” beckons and entices viewers to follow these “butterfly-creatures” on mini-migrations through the landscapes of the Susan Garver Family Discovery Garden.