Ballare Carmel portrays layered tragedy through outdoor dance performance.

The Carmel Dance Festival presented Ballare Carmel’s Farm~to~Tendu (pronounced "tawn-dew") at Hacienda Hay & Feed last weekend by making some audience members a little uncomfortable.

The prologue of the performances in Carmel Valley began as a tableau of the wild west where dancers gently interacted with the audience members as they walked through the display of movement. The main event beckoned audience members to sit in front of a stage set in the field south of the barn, with the Santa Lucia Mountain Range as the perfect backdrop for what was about to unfold.

Accompanied by cellist Michelle Djokic and harpist Vincent Pierce, the dancers launched into two pieces carrying solemn reminders of native voices that have been silenced and the delicate coexistence of humans and nature. But the final piece, titled "Pesticide Portraits: the anguish of erosion" directed and choreographed by Kelly Ashton Todd delivered a heartbreaking blow in an awe-striking performance by the ensemble.

Todd’s creation layers a story of her late grandfather—a Midwest farmer who earlier in the 20th century sustainably cultivated fields of corn, wheat and soy. Sadly, costs of farming began destroying his creation when government subsidies for pesticides such as DDT became mainstream. Compounding the tragedy, Todd’s grandfather was stricken with Parkinson’s disease, adding to the unforeseen costs of the bounty. 

The piece began with dancers holding bags of dirt, slowly coming center stage with their backs facing the audience. Performers stared out at the lush Santa Lucia Mountain Range as gray clouds from the coast crept in with the wind. While minor notes played, Javon “Ja’Moon” Jones began spoken word describing facets of healthy soil—”water, sunshine, humus, bacteria, oxygen,” in between slow movements while the rest of the dancers remained still. Then Jones’ poem began to include capitalistic prices of chemical compounds. The piece underpins what industrialized farming now believes to be “healthy”—more in terms of profit than nourishment. 

Performer Brittni Van Dine broke away from the group without notice, and began convulsive dance movements, as if possessed, yet still fluid. Another performer joins her in the movement, as though attempting to prop her up while Van Dine collapses and struggles to get up again and again. Meanwhile, the group begins their movements, and slowly, expressions of anguish come into their faces. Jones circles the performers in a run, while dirt from the bags is slowly poured out onto the performers and the stage. A blood-curdling collective scream from the ensemble crescendos the piece as the allegory of despair brought about by foreign poisons has now culminated.

As the piece concludes, the ensemble lies down and appears dead. Performer Skye Schmidt Varga goes off stage and whispers something to a woman in the audience, unclear if scripted or not. Varga then returns to the ensemble, now center stage and covered in dirt, but begins to rise with the rest of the performers. She emerges from the half-risen ensemble with a forced smile on her face as Jones recalls some of nature’s beauty through his spoken word.

The piece is heartbreaking and cuts deep, told with the bodies of the performers—a testament to the mission of Ballare Carmel. The audience understands the meaning and warning behind the message. The use of soil—broken pieces of earth—to narrate the allegory of Todd’s grandfather’s life seems insignificant since it can so easily be taken for granted. But then again, the very material that we use to cultivate life can also break it when it is poisoned, and the expression of dance highlights that.