DATE: February 2, 2025
TIME: 4:00pm
LOCATION: The Ark
Open Gathering in The Ark on Duke’s East campus
Grief - personal and collective- wants to move us. Into song and towards the earth. Into each other’s arms and towards other ways of being. Where grief takes us is not always clear, but one thing is certain: we do not travel alone.
Thresholding is an immersive performance and community practice featuring an intergenerational ensemble working with movement and song inspired by Threshold Singing. Threshold Singing is a contemporary practice of accompanying those on the threshold of life and death with song. Grounded in the embodied experience of singing and being sung to, performers weave a threshold song between each other and the audience through an improvised movement score.
Thresholding nurtures intimacy with liminal experiences of loss, change, and death. Instead of running away from or trying to smooth over the reality of personal and collective loss, Thresholding invites us to meet in our grief and consider how we can creatively care for one another.
Throughout the performance, you may choose to connect with an ancestor or a loved one who’s passed. You might reflect on a change or transition you are moving through. Thresholding can also simply be an invitation into presence and embodied listening- with ears, heart, and your whole body. There will be prompts to encourage your own personal experience while being in community with others.
Threshold Singing was started 25 years ago by a group of women in California to creatively accompany the sick and dying. Today there are over 200 choirs, one being the Threshold Singers of the Triangle who serve the Durham-Chapel Hill area. Learn more.