Stages (2023), developed by Wang Lu and Bonnie Whiting, centers music for singing, speaking, and moving percussionist. The project explores and unveils deeply hidden stages of consciousness and moves fluidly between them using sounds, bodily movements, vocalizations, and text recitations, while also employing both everyday objects. Growing up in China, Lu played snare drum in marching band as a Communist Young Pioneer, waving plastic flowers in ceremonies to honor leaders. Simultaneously, Whiting found herself stuck between family and religious extremism. These shared experiences of confusion and struggle motivated the themes and subtexts of the piece, which moves between detonation of emotions and cool abstraction. The physical movement exemplifies both restlessness and exhaustion, drawing on elements of marching choreography, trauma release therapy, and charismatic rituals in evangelical Christianity. The text comes from Lucy Corin’s playfully devastating short story: “Questions in Significantly Smaller Font”, adapted in part from the website raptureready.com.