No one lives in a vacuum. That’s the obvious yet infinitely complex fact driving Vital Signs and Until I Connect With Another—the two new pieces choreographer Colleen Halloran is preparing for “Ground Effect,” a concert that also features work by Liz Burritt and Paige Cunningham Caldarella. Halloran says that the trio Vital Signs looks at what happens when you put “damaged people—damaged in the normal way that everybody is—body to body.” Philip Elson, Dardi McGinley Gallivan, and Maria Macsay capture all the intensity of the emotionally freighted choreography, essentially forming a love triangle that may be romantic or familial—it’s agonizing to watch the push/pull dynamics of their interactions. Tony Ingram’s understated, gently poignant sound design (birdcalls, machines working, an indistinctly heard love song by the Chantels) evokes the everyday.
