Vultures have a bad rap. In movies and literature, the birds of prey are often harbingers of death and other bad things to come. "Vulture" can also describe a predatory or exploitative person. But these stereotyped creatures play an essential role in our ecosystems: As scavengers who eat dead animals, vultures help prevent the spread of disease. Enter Vulture Sister Song, a performance using vultures as a vehicle to explore humans' relationships with other living beings through a combination of modern dance, storytelling and live music. The nationally touring show premiered at the Grange Theatre in Pomfret in 2022 and returns to Vermont this month. Audiences can make a night of it: On Tuesday, July 9, at Capital City Grange in Montpelier, the performance will follow a potluck dinner accompanied by music from teen folk band the Purple House Trio, along with a sculpture exhibit from Middlesex artist Talitha Landis-Marinello. On Thursday, July 11, at Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park in Woodstock, attendees are invited to picnic on the mansion lawn before the show. Vulture Sister Song features five artists from around the country. Ellen Smith Ahern of Lebanon, N.H., currently an artist-in-residence at Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller, is one of two dancers in the piece. People tend to look at nature as something "we are separate and apart from," Smith Ahern said. "We're trying to look at vultures and look at interspecies relationships in a larger sense [as] not separate at all ... We're deeply connected." The roughly 40-minute show opens with a song featuring lyrics by Georgia-based poet Josina Guess. Jacob Elias, a musician based in Ithaca, N.Y., accompanies on electric guitar. "Eyes open, eyes closed," the performers sing repeatedly. Then Pete Dybdahl — a violinist in Georgia's Athens Symphony Orchestra — reads a fairy tale he wrote about a baker who receives mysterious messages from vultures after his wife and daughter go missing. Later, Guess reads her "Poem for Tree Fall": "If skin's a wall and eyes / are windows. What are / hands, or paws, or anything / you've got now?" Inspiration for the performance came from Guess' son, who in 2021 found nesting vultures in the barn behind their house and took two of their eggs. He incubated the first egg until a baby vulture hatched. The second egg met a very different fate: He cooked it into an omelette. Toward the end of the show, a recording…