The paintings that will be created after the 24 performances are finished are what we will be left with, but the experience of watching their creation was one of the more total experiences I’ve had.

September Spring combined dance, painting, light, and music, in a way that privileged each enough to transcend ossified notions of concept art.

The synchronicity of the dance was highlighted by the black and white shifting outfits worn by Elizabeth Hart and Jessie Gold and their generally similar haircuts and noble bearings. The dance began ponderously, tracing the outline of the circle but after a light and costume change became vivacious and playful.

Elizabeth and Jessie’s traced footfalls coalesced into paintings that looked to me like two rustic looking runes. Others looked at them and saw rosettes. I was told Sam intended them to look like records. Specifically, the Oldd News albums that inspired the September Spring. The music by Oldd News – pen name of the late Jamie Kanzler – was reminiscent of early Beck, The Violent Femmes, and generally a lost time when music used to communicate human emotion.

Jamie Kanzler was Sam’s god-brother, and depth of the connection is clear when watching the work; there is more going on here than just a new way to create paintings. All of the artists have put something of themselves into September Spring, so much in fact, that a trace of each of them is left behind, made present for us to witness.

And just as a little side bonus, September Spring was also everything I wished M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Village” would have been.