Sat. March 15

 If you call your dance project "Jupiter" you're suggesting something rather big and that Daniel McCusker's "Jupiter" - at Tufts Sat. March 15 - is. They're calling it a “massive” exploration, comprised of one lengthy group dance enhanced by a number of satellite dances. Taken together, the dances mean to investigate contrasting ideas about mass — of material, events, performers — and duration, not only in time but in space. Sounds like a delightful mind-scramble. For "Jupiter," McCusker has reeled in Alison Ball, Leah Bergmann, Janet Blackman, Nikki Carrara, Yenkuei Chuang, Karl Cronin, Peter Deffet, Joelle Garfi, Daniel Gonzalez, Edie Hettinger, Ana Keilson, Rozann Kraus, Rebecca Lay, Daniel McCusker, Jessamyn Schmidt, Wanda Strukus and Melody Ruffin Ward. As Mary Curtin, our trusted commincator about slightly off-center arts events says, "McCusker often works collaboratively with diverse groups of dancers and creates dances for a variety of performance settings. In addition to creating the material, he includes material that is generated by the performers in response to instructions, visual images/scores, movement problems and other tasks. As material is fragmented, rearranged and passed from one performer to the next, it is personalized and reshaped by the dynamics and phrasing of each dancer. Presented in a series of changing contexts, elements are isolated, magnified, repeated, made transitional and events are located in space and sequenced. The object and outcome of the process is necessarily unknown and, perhaps, uncertain, but the process, like a trip to another place, can be exhilarating. The shows starts at 8 at the Tufts Dance Lab at the Jackson Gymnaisum. Tickets: $15.

40 Talbot Avenue, Medford 617-524-3746 www.danielmccuskerdanceprojects.org.