To The Things Themselves! explores an engagement with the performance moment in and of itself, while also exposing the cultural situated-ness of the performance actions. Movement, music materials, and actual physical objects are manipulated to at times emphasize their in-and-of-themselves object-ness, while at other times transforming into blatant representations: the stick becomes a sword, then a cane (stealing from Improv 101 beginning dance students). With sound design by James Lo, lighting design by Michael Stiller, costume design by Paige Martin and Parker Lutz, and performance by Neil Greenberg, Michael Ingle, Kyli Kleven and Omagbitse Omagbemi, To The Things Themselves! proposes that an experience of “the thing itself” necessarily includes the conditions of a phenomenon’s production and reception, both.

“Yet the ardent title refers as much to things you can’t physically grasp — movement, light, sound — and to the possibility of being fully present, as a viewer, in the moment. Mr. Greenberg, who has been making dances for more than three decades, allows us to do just that, creating a world that’s difficult to explain but easy to enjoy, a series of moments to get lost in.” – Siobhan Burke, New York Times