FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 3, 2025

Contact:
Name – Micky Sikorski, Marketing and Communications Manager
Organization – Mutual Dance Theatre
Email – communications@mutualarts.org
Phone – 513-494-6526
Website – mutualdance.org/performances

CINCINNATI, OH —

Immersive. Immediate. Unforgettable.

Returning as a season favorite, Up-Close ’25 brings audiences into the dance. Up-Close is Mutual Dance Theatre’s small-studio performance series. In this unique show, the resident company performs in the round, just inches from the audience. Every seat is front-row, every breath and step within reach.

“Breaking the fourth wall is an understatement,” marketing and communications manager Micky Sikorski told Cincinnati Magazine earlier this year, “there is no fourth wall in the Up-Close series.”

This year’s program features Crystal Michelle (Associate Artistic Director, Dayton Contemporary Dance Company), and Mutual Dance Theatre’s own Hannah Williamson, premiering her second Up-Close creation. Crystal Michelle’s work, Breath, Flesh, and Bone / A Manual for Lovers at the end of the world, asks how we endure the grief and joy of daily life. Hannah Williamson’s Look Thrice will explore the patterns and cycles we see in history and our own lives. Full descriptions for both of these works can be found below. 

This is a fundamentally different experience than Mutual Dance Theatre’s Aronoff shows, and it has become a fan favorite. This show sells out year after year, and quickly: Last year’s sold out during the early bird pricing period. Mutual Dance Theatre is proud to bring this unique experience to life yet again for Embrace 25-26: A Season of Connection. 

Show Blurbs 

Breath, Flesh, and Bone / A Manual for Lovers at the end of the world (2025) – Crystal Michelle 

What is love at the end of the world? How do we endure the daily demands to love and grieve, witness and testify, prosper and depart? Is survival possible? Breath, Flesh, and Bone / A Manual for Lovers at the end of the world explores these questions to create a field guide for those considering love. 

This work uses original sound design and projection to immerse audiences in a world defined by tenderness, resistance, arrival, and care. Inspired by Black feminist poetry, the work harkens to bell hooks, Toni Morrison, and Audre Lorde. 

Choreographer Crystal Michelle describes the work as “an urgent excavation” that uncovers and considers the potential futures laid before us. It offers a blueprint for choosing love while living within the raw realities of breath, flesh, and bone. 

Look Thrice (2025) – Hannah Williamson

Life moves in rhythmic cycles. Beginnings echo endings, and every step forward carries the imprint of what came before. History turns and returns, spiral-like, reminding us that the past has never truly passed. The patterns that emerge — of longing, of anger, of grief — are quietly governed by forces we cannot fully understand. Still, life continues: a sacred symmetry woven into the fabric of time itself. Think Thrice reminds us that, even in the turning, we are held by something eternal. 

This new work will be Willamson’s fourth commission from MDT, and promises to continue a theme of psychological journeys with thrilling, mysterious, and time-period elements.

Details, Tickets and More Information

Event: Mutual Dance Theatre in Up-Close ‘25
Location: Mutual Arts Hartwell, 8222 Monon Ave, Cincinnati, OH 45216
Dates: December 4, 5, & 6, and December 12 & 13
Time: 7:30pm
Website: mutualdance.org/upclose25

Tickets for this performance are available now at: mutualdance.org/upclose25 or at the Aronoff Center box office at (513) 621-ARTS or 650 Walnut Street

For the full season schedule and more details, visit: mutualdance.org/performances.

For more information about Mutual Dance Theatre and Arts Centers, visit mutualdance.org

Mutual Dance Theatre and Arts Centers’ work is made possible by: the generosity of tens of thousands of contributors to the annual ArtsWave Campaign, the region’s primary source for arts funding; an investment of public funds from the Ohio Arts Council, a state agency that funds and supports quality arts experiences to strengthen Ohio communities culturally, educationally, and economically; and individual donors.

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About Mutual Dance Theatre and Arts Centers

Mutual Dance Theatre is the city’s longest-running and most consistent Modern Dance organization, both as a presenter and a resident company. MDT was formerly known as Contemporary Dance Theater (est. 1972 by Jefferson James) and MamLuft&Co. Dance (est. 2007 by Jeanne Mam-Luft) until their merger in 2021. Both organizations began as performing troupes, but in the early ‘90s, CDT dissolved its company and subsequently focused on presenting guest artists . The two organizations joined to create the aptly-named Mutual Dance Theatre and Arts Centers, taking enumeration from its elder half and thus celebrating its 54th season in 25-26. Mutual has honored and combined the priorities of both founding organizations: investing in a virtuosic local company with the aim of becoming a significant presence both locally and nationally, as well as the continued presentation of Modern and Contemporary Dance from across the States (and sometimes, beyond). Mutual also reaches thousands of children each year through education and its academy, as well as charity-supported outreach. Learn more at mutualdance.org.

Photography / Links

Image above available at https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1uk1mjsp4X4t6NA3nACbvLstSxzJggmMq?usp=drive_link.

Additional images and assets available upon request to communications@mutualarts.org.

This press release can also be accessed as a Google Doc at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZSrexQv3xI-7k3RzUnw_Ok4gVTVJJHcTLTSKSNZ70PY/edit?usp=sharing

Social Media Handles:

Performances: Facebook and Instagram @mutualdance
The Centers: Facebook and Instagram @mutualartscenters