In the Belly of the Bird/Godmother by Pioneer Winter Collective & OnStage!

Presented by City of Miami Beach, OnStage! features live performances and temporary art installations featured in Miami Beach parks and public spaces throughout the city. Onstage! culturally diverse programming includes music, movies, dance and more.

In the Belly of the Bird/Godmother is a live poetic dance-theater performance about memory, grief, and transformation, honoring mothers and the stories they carry across generations. It follows a child’s search for their late mother’s voice, which may still live on, trapped, in an African Grey parrot given away after her death. Choreographer Pioneer Winter at 37 – the same age his mother died – begins to reckon with what is carried, what is inherited, and what we long to recover.

Performed in partnership with City of Miami Beach OnStage! and by multigenerational ensemble of performers, the piece blends original choreography by Winter, with fragments of Isadora Duncan’s historic works, layered with spoken word, sound collage, and community-sourced storytelling through partnership with O, Miami. It asks: what remains when the body is gone? What happens when memory is trapped in the wrong vessel? And how do we release what we were never meant to hold?

Dancers: Gaile Holland

Andréa Labbée Lisa Nalven

Sound Collaborators: Juraj Kojš Laurah Merisier + Miami Sound Space, a community choir collective

Partners: The City of Miami Beach and OnStage! Miami Beach Regional Library O, Miami