Collateral & Co. returns to the Museum for a multi-disciplinary, evening-length dance work that examines the fragile and ephemeral nature of life through the presence and experience of the endangered monarch butterfly. Fragments of Existence follows the butterfly’s remarkable metamorphosis – its delicate appearance, the threat to its survival, and its graceful, impermanent existence – as a mirror to explore human transience, the passage of time, and our own vulnerability within the larger web of human life.

Featuring poetry by Melanie Perish and Collateral & Co. Artistic Director, Caitlin Bell, time-lapse sketching by scientist and artist Tiffany Pereira, and choreography by Caitlin Bell in collaboration with Collateral & Co. Dance Artists, the boundary between human and insect blurs, emphasizing our shared fragility and interdependence. Offering a reflection on our own place in the ever-changing fabric of life, Fragments of Existence is a call to awareness and action: a celebration of beauty, a meditation on mortality, and a call to protect what is at risk before it is too late.