At the end of last Saturday’s afternoon performance at the Yard Mary Paula Hunter, the founder of the dance company Jump, took a bow with her dancers, all of them teenage girls. The girls wore what one might expect classically trained dancers to wear. Leotards, ballet shoes, a tutu or two here and there.

Ms. Hunter, on the other hand, wore the ragged remains of a wedding dress. She was also covered in food.

It’s the singer, not the song or is it? After all, it is the melody that lingers, the words that capture the undefinable. Songs are mercurial things, each having a mystery path — so far from the iPod or radio dial — that evades the fan. But next weekend, at various locations across the Island, the Martha’s Vineyard Songwriters Festival brings a dozen of the nation’s best songwriters together to celebrate songs, stories and each other.

There was a sacred energy on stage last Saturday at Nectar’s when John Forté took the stage alongside his good friend Ben Taylor, Ben’s sister, Sally Taylor, and their mother, Carly Simon. It was a little like peering into someone’s living room. There was a banter on stage that you didn’t want to interrupt and yet wanted to be part of, hoping someone would clue you in on the inside jokes and sideways glances.

JUMP! Leaps Into the Yard

Last spring, the performance artist, dancer and choreographer Mary Paula Hunter staked out a storefront window space in New York city and covered herself and her fellow dancers in food products. The commissioned piece was called We Are Karen Finley, after the outrageous, and oft labeled obscene, legendary performance artist.

This weekend Mary Paula Hunter arrives at the Yard with a group of youthful collaborators in a program entitled JUMP!