Earlier with month, loveDANCEmore sat down with 15 Bytes, published by Artists of Utah, to discuss the state of dance in Utah, and how we as a small non-profit are navigating in these current times. We discuss Utah’s dance history and current infrastructure, the average lifespan of an arts organization, how we are evolving, and our dreams for the publication moving forward.
Read what we have to say, linked here.
In this conversation, three of loveDANCEmore’s current leaders—Ashley Anderson, Samuel Hanson, and Halie Bahr—reflect on the state of dance in Utah today, and on the changing role of their organization in that landscape. Anderson, a 2014 Mayor’s Artist Award recipient whose choreography has been presented nationally from New York’s Danspace Project to Salt Lake’s Rio Gallery and who currently serves on the Salt Lake City school board, provides a long view of how the city’s unusually rich dance ecosystem developed. Hanson, a dancer, educator, and writer who has performed in the work of Ishmael Houston-Jones, Yvonne Meier, and Simone Forti, speaks from the vantage point of executive director—balancing the realities of education and funding with the creative aspirations of a small, artist-run organization. Meanwhile, Bahr, an experimental choreographer and recent Utah Division of Arts & Museums Performing Arts Fellow, is steering loveDANCEmore’s journal toward new models of criticism.
Together, the trio discuss the challenges facing Utah’s dance field: rising costs for rehearsal and performance space, shrinking federal arts funding, and the fragility of small organizations. Yet they also celebrate the resilience of artists who are, as Bahr puts it, “shapeshifters,” who keep adapting.
