The Big Muddy Dance Company performed the work in partnership with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. Retracing the origins of this work is a little like a spiral diagram of overlapping collaborations and inspirations: composer Adam Schoenberg was invited in 2013 by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City to compose work inspired by certain pieces of visual art. Thus the first iteration of Picture Studies was born. More than ten years later The Big Muddy Dance Company has been invited to respond in movement to Schoenberg's music, which the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra brought to stunning life. Artistic Director and choreographer Kirven Douthit-Boyd notes in the program that inspiration was taken from both Schoengerg’s score and some of the original works of visual art from which they originally sprang. The result was a stunningly successful melding of artistry and disciplines.

At the opening of Awakening, the newest production by The Big Muddy Dance Company, the curtain opened to a dark stage and the sound of drums. The lights came up on two dancers dressed in blue suits, backs to us, in a street lamp-like glow. Separated from us by a screen, the dancers appeared slightly hazy. Jazz music played as the first dancer began to move: rolling shoulders emanated out into fluid, full-body unfurling. He made contact with his partner and she too came to life with sliding stretches and turns. They walked towards the audience as the screen rose and the light changed to a stark white, exposing the stage wall behind them. Eventually, the full company of 14 worked their way onto stage. Like the jazz music which inspired it, the movement in Something About a Dream, choreographed by Kirven Douthit-Boyd, was at once bouncy and taught, fluid and sculptural, playful and longing. The piece moved, ebbed, flowed, and filled the stage to the brim with color and sound. It ended as it began: two dancers facing back, silhouettes softened by the screen. As music and lights faded they continued to move. The dance, one supposes, went on without us.