Jamais Plus

To love is to surrender to something we cannot control.

Throughout his life, Edgar Allan Poe experienced profound attachment and devastating loss. His writing returns repeatedly to the fragile boundary between presence and absence, exploring the beauty of intimacy and the painful reality that even our deepest connections cannot promise permanence.

Jamais Plus gives physical form to this tension. Sculpted aluminum mesh twists, rises, and unravels, as though a soul is being drawn from the earth. Both strong and fragile, the mesh retains the memory of its distortions, much like the ways grief reshapes us. Where separate forms intersect, although unseen by the eye of the audience, faceted crystal teardrops hang suspended. Each tear marks a moment of connection, catching light across its many surfaces and reflecting the complex emotions of love, longing, tenderness, and loss.

Created for Tom Mattingly’s world premiere ballet Nevermore, and inspired by Poe’s works Nevermore, Annabelle Lee, and The Bells, Jamais Plus occupies the space between holding on and letting go. It considers the extraordinary courage of allowing ourselves to be changed by another person, knowing that the beauty of human connection is inseparable from its vulnerability.