AUDIENCE REVIEW: Philadelphia Fringe Festival: "She Carries the Moon" by Harper Wang
Company:
Harper Wang
Performance Date:
September 8, 2026
Freeform Review:
I really enjoyed She Carries the Moon. It is a quiet dance film, and at first I wasn't quite sure where it was going. The dancer walks, stops, breathes and spends quite a lot of time simply being still. But the longer I watched, the more I started to notice the small things.
I especially loved the setting by the sea. The wind catches her clothes and hair, the waves are always moving behind her, and sometimes it feels as though the landscape is moving with her. Some of my favourite moments were actually when she wasn't doing very much at all.
The film made me think about memory and how we return to things that have already happened. Some movements seem to come back, but each time they feel a little different. There are also moments when a movement seems unfinished, which gave me the feeling that she was trying to hold onto something without quite being able to.
I liked that the film never tells us exactly what she is remembering. I could connect some of the images to my own experiences instead.
It is a simple and very gentle piece, but I found it surprisingly emotional. By the end, I felt that it was about carrying parts of it with you as you move forward. The image of the dancer alone beside the sea stayed with me afterwards.
