Newlywed dancers’ duet explores relationship strengths and cracks in “Refract/Reframe”

Newly formed dance collective The Click will premiere work by its co-founder, choreographer and dancer Kristin Wagner and feature a rotating repertory of soloists over four performances in Refract/Reframe: Reflections on Loss, Love and Light. The performance is a collaboration between The Click, Boston Moving Arts Productions and The Foundry, and runs December 2-4 at The Foundry in Cambridge, Mass., where the group is an Anchor Partner. 

Wagner says Refract/Reframe explores moments of beauty and joy despite the undercurrent of loss experienced collectively over the past several years. In each work, Click artists spotlight dichotomies of light and dark, togetherness and loneliness, progress and stagnance. The evening’s works celebrate rebirth and regrowth while also holding space for what has passed and been lost, Wagner says.

Each full-length program of Refract/Reframe includes Wagner’s new ensemble premiere “make light: or how I survived it all” and the duet “cradled in the arms of myself (with you)” by Decent Dance. Wagner with her dancer husband Tony Guglietti, whose COVID-forced pre-wedding togetherness in a small apartment revealed both the strengths and the cracks in their relationship, and resulted in this co-created work. Rotating solo performances during the run include current and former Click members Angelina Benitez who presents “dancing by myself (a work in progress)” on Friday, Leah Misano Abbott whose “Inbetween” is on both Saturday programs, and Lonnie Stanton whose piece “your eyes are mirrors of the skies, reflecting clear for me” closes the run Sunday.

With an ensemble of six dancers, Wagner’s “make light” is rooted in lesser-known Darwinian theories that argue how aesthetics are inherent to survival. Inspired in part by physical and metaphorical windows into human existence, Wagner’s choreography considers how beauty and joy ensure our resilience as a species during periods of great challenge.

“With my new work and in curating this program, I was taken by the idea of light through a window or prism as a metaphor for our human experience the past few years,” Wagner says. “When light refracts, it bends and shows new dimensions, variables and colors. But, for all the nuance and shades it creates, refraction really just reframes the light, breaking it into smaller, simpler pieces that form a more robust picture.”

Developed in 2021, The Click is a collaborative dance company and creative collective centered in Greater Boston. Its members are dancers whose primary medium of physical expression is through contemporary dance forms, but who experiment in many modes and genres of creativity. As a collective, The Click’s members are deeply invested in answering the universally complex question: who am I and what am I doing here?

Tickets for Refract/Reframe start at $20, with a limited number of free community access tickets reserved per performance; Available now at theclickboston.com. The program run time is approximately one hour with no intermissions.