Arriving at To Leave You, by Robyn Mineko Williams and performed on Sept. 19 at the MCA, feels like stumbling upon a neighborhood celebration. The space hums with the warmth of a community gathering. A karaoke screen glows across white mesh panels strung like laundry lines, a small disco ball gleams above tallboy tables, and a simple household lamp casts a homey light behind the fabric. Guests laugh, greet one another, and cheer as strangers belt out everything from the smoky ache of “Wicked Game” to a raucous group rendition of “Poker Face.” The emcee beckons each new singer with easy charm, encouraging the audience to sit onstage or mingle near the cocktail tables. This playful, communal prelude sets the tone for the night and establishes Williams’ world—one where art is inseparable from everyday life, and joy and connection matter as much as craft.
The shift from party to performance arrives imperceptibly. When dancer Jason Hortin steps up to sing Billy Idol’s “Eyes Without a Face,” clouds begin to drift across the hanging fabric. Jessica Tong enters, tugging Hortin gently away from the microphone. Together, they drift across the ethereal stage. Tong and Hortin intertwine their bodies every so often reaching for the microphone stand, picking it up as if it was another dance partner.
Williams herself appears in a solo of quiet power—each gesture deliberate, every step grounded and purposeful—projections of water, wooded landscapes, and faded backyard memories ripple across the panels. Live music by Nate Kinsella deepens the atmosphere, at times lush and cinematic, at others pared down to a single fragile melody. His presence at the piano, revealed behind the shifting fabric and illuminated by that household lamp, becomes the evening’s emotional center. Williams dances around him in an intimate dialogue of sound and movement, gently pulling his arm from the keys while his other hand continues to play—a poignant image of presence and need entwined.
Rather than follow a single storyline, To Leave You unfolds as a series of vivid fragments, evoking the way memory itself arrives: layered, incomplete, sometimes startlingly clear. Shadowy figures glide behind fabric screens like ghosts from old photographs. Recorded voicemail snippets—simple messages of love, check-ins, casual hellos—fill the space with the texture of everyday life. Dancers move in canon as if generations are handing memories from one to the next. A recurring motif emerges when performers clasp hands briefly before letting go, a quiet metaphor for the fleeting connections we share. In the final moments, Williams’ young son, was watching from the front row all evening, is invited onstage to take a performer’s hand. One by one, the others release and walk away, leaving him alone in the soft light, the last to hold and release.
Only after the lights fade does the deeper context settle in. In conversation with MCA Assistant Curator Laura Paige Kyber, Williams explained that To Leave You began as a “visual package” of thoughts she hoped to pass on to her son—a way to express things she might never find words for. That intimate impulse has blossomed into a meditation on life’s fragility and the subtle marks we leave on one another. Performed by Tong and Hortin with Kinsella’s live score and Julia Miller’s shadow imagery, the piece moves fluidly between dance, film, and audience immersion.
To Leave You continues themes Williams explored in earlier works such as Hisako’s House and Echo Mine, which also grappled with lineage and loss. Here, though, she goes further. This is not just an elegy for what has passed, but a living archive for what remains, a recognition that memory is made of countless small moments, many of them simple or even mundane. The sing-alongs, the sound of voicemail greetings, the casual clasp of a hand; these are the fragments that form a life, and Williams gathers them with a choreographer’s care.
In its quiet power and seamless blend of art forms—karaoke revelry, cinematic projections, exquisitely human dance—To Leave You becomes more than a performance. Audience members may leave with a flicker of their own memories stirred, a reminder of the invisible traces we carry and the ones we will someday leave behind. It is an invitation to remember and to be remembered.
To Leave You, with Robyn Mineko Williams & Artists, premiered as part of the Chicago Performs 2025 festival at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA). The work was presented as an early preview in the Edlis Neeson Theater on September 18 and 19, 2025,with performances beginning at 7:30 p.m. Directed and choreographed by Williams with collaborators Jessica Tong, Jason Hortin, musician/composer Nate Kinsella, and visual designer Julia Miller. It was commissioned by the MCA under its New Works Initiative, with support from creative residencies including Ragdale Foundation and The Momentary.
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