Annie-B Parson choreographed David Byrne’s American Utopia and staged work at the Metropolitan Opera — then she made a film because she could not let the dance disappear. The Oath, a nearly 24-minute installation featuring seventeen women and femmes moving in unison through gestures that slide from ritual into something more unsettling, comes to MASS MoCA in North Adams on Saturday, January 9.
About the Show
The work started as a live performance at the Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center site in December 2023. When the run ended, Parson — whose collaborators over the years have included David Bowie, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Lorde alongside Byrne — worked with filmmaker Alla Kovgan to preserve what the stage could not hold permanently.
“This film was born from the sadness of seeing the dance disappear after its final performance and the curiosity of how cinema could capture and transform that energy,” Parson has said.
The piece asks a disarmingly simple question: why do we choose to move in unison? What the film unfolds in response spans from primeval times into the future, moving through vibrant color palettes as its seventeen performers enact what the production describes as “collective gesture as bond and bind, promise and battle, celebration and intimidation.” Ritual and threat share the same choreography.
Kovgan brought 25-plus years at the intersection of cinema and performing arts to the translation. Her 2020 feature Cunningham won the 75th Prix Italia. The resulting film first played on 29 screens across Moynihan Train Hall in New York in January 2025, appeared at EMPAC’s Corpus Festival in Troy in April 2026, and took the Jury’s Stellar Award for Screen Dance at the Thomas Edison Film Festival. The MASS MoCA showing is the work’s latest stop.
The Oath was originally commissioned by PAC NYC, the American Dance Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, and the National Center for Choreography, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Parson co-founded Big Dance Theater in 1991. The company has earned OBIE and Bessie awards across three-plus decades of work. Among Parson’s individual honors: a Guggenheim Fellowship, three Bessie Awards, the Chita Rivera Award for Lifetime Achievement (2022), a Tony nomination (2024), and an Olivier nomination. The Financial Times called her “the choreographer who democratised dance.” The Wall Street Journal put it plainly: viewers could watch “anything by Annie-B Parson.” The Oath makes both cases.
Venue & Logistics
The January 9 showing is in B6: The Robert W. Wilson Building, part of MASS MoCA’s campus in North Adams. For visitors from the Capital Region, this is a drive west into the Berkshires — plan extra time and check road conditions in January. The event is listed as a film exhibition; no start time appeared on the MASS MoCA event page at the time of publication. Check the museum’s site for current scheduling and access details before you make the trip.
Tickets
No ticket price was available from sources at the time of publication. Visit the MASS MoCA event page for current admission information. Buy tickets