“After a lot of laughter, comes a long cry.” This old Finnish saying was shared with me by a somewhat distant, but beloved, family friend while I was visiting Helsinki last summer. This notion resonated with me and became the root of my current choreographic research. When I returned to the UW for my final year, I knew I wanted to explore the intense emotion this saying evoked in me and how it could propel a choreographic investigation resulting in a dance work. In 2018, I created a dance, Undertow, that explored the broader idea of nostalgia and its often captivating and drowning effects on people. The choreographic process I utilized in creating Undertow, laid a rich foundation for me to expand upon the idea of nostalgia. I began my research on After Everything with the Finnish saying–– looking for meaning, ideas, and images that stood out to me. Coincidentally, on a visit home I discovered an 8mm film reel from 1968 that had hours of candid footage with my mom and uncle as children on it. The first time I watched it, I was brought to tears as I witnessed these young strangers play and explore. The complex emotions of family, personal histories, and longing for a presence in a history that is not directly mine collided with my reaction to the Finnish saying. This intersection became the focus of my research: exploration of familial nostalgia, relationships, and my planned uprooting after graduation. I cast four incredible collaborative dance artists to conduct this dance research with me, inviting them to explore their own reactions to the saying and nostalgia, so we could begin building a communal vessel of knowledge from which to draw movement material. I presented prompts, discussed ideas, and shared sound to facilitate and generate movement material.