Getting swept up in dance theater ‘Buried Giants’ by konverjdans

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February 19, 2026.
Triskelion Arts, Brooklyn, NY.

konverjdans, the female-led contemporary ballet company based in Brooklyn, presented its first full-length evening work in late February at the Triskelion Arts theater. Amy Saunder, Jordan Miller and Tiffany Mangulabnan – all three co-founders and directors – premiered the company’s ninth season with Buried Giants, a multimedia dance theater production, based on the 2015 novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. The piece has an original score by Alexis Gideon.

In short, it’s a tale of memory — the lack thereof, our feeble grasp on it, the desire to reclaim it and the perennial search for its truth. The main characters, a couple, take a journey fueled by those aims and endure many twists and turns along the way.

There are projections on the wall, perhaps memories from the characters’ younger days, or future dreams. The editing reveals vague flashes, never long enough to quite understand the context, but enough to release a feeling into existence. An ensemble group of dancers serve as various characters who encounter the couple, sometimes in human form, sometimes not. In the same way our memories are strange but also make sense, does the ensemble morph between the real and the surreal.

There’s such value to this type of dance. Work like Buried Giants not only connects stories through various genres (book to ballet, in this case), but it also serves as a testament to how hard and relentless artists work conveying the human experience in ways that we often can’t describe. Dance, uniquely, gives us the ability to connect with feelings we can’t name, and mystical elements of existence that we can’t really understand. Sitting in the audience, this piece allowed me to release the desire to understand every last detail. Getting swept up in the thoughtful execution of art, for the sake of deepening our connection to ourselves, is a tremendous use of anyone’s time.

By Emily Sarkissian of Dance Informa.

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