Subject matter is drawn from things important to the communities where they live.
Text is created from stories told by the people with whom they interact.
The work honors both the dignity of simple individual expression and the complexity of recognized shared experience. Set to an exciting percussion score, EarthSongs is a contemporary work drawn from sources as diverse as the songs of the Netsiliks and the writings of Freud to explore differences between primal and contemporary attitudes about the environment and humankind's relationship to it. Susan Van Pelt's Bloodlines developed out of the Collective's interest in their personal histories. It weaves words, movement and music into an exhilarating celebration of family.