This past weekend seems to have included plenty of dance here in Salt Lake City. On Friday, June 18, I headed to the lawn outside of UMOCA to see a performance by poet-artist Alex Caldiero, who is currently being honored with a retrospective at that institution.
Traveler Dances: a transperformance might not have qualified as a “dance event” to everyone in attendance. Still, I think it’s worth discussing briefly because the musicians collaborating with Caldiero – Steve Ricks, Christian Asplund and the Utah County-based Theta Naught – are part of a music scene that has some crossover with dance in this city. Much of their work has been seen in showcases like 12 Minutes Max and honestly, I wonder why more dance artists don’t reach out and collaborate with them. They are excellent at what they do on their own, and on Friday they were excellent at listening in the moment to the improvising Sonosopher, as Caldiero sometimes calls himself. Watching this collaboration, especially as Caldiero romped around the concrete square that served as the stage in a self-styled head dress, reminded me a little of New York choreographer Jennifer Monson’s ongoing collaboration with experimental harpist Zeena Parkins.
As I alluded to above, lots seems to be happening in our community and we don’t always manage to get writers to all of the events. If you’re an independent choreographer who’s working on something, please, send a press release or a brief note to sam@lovedancemore.org and we’ll do our best to get a writer to your show. I’ve heard that there was some dance at some of the Juneteenth events this weekend as well as a backyard show produced by, among others, Hunter Rowe. If you made it to anything that we haven’t covered, get in touch. If you showed up, there’s still time and space to write about it.
Without further ado, here’s a review of another show this weekend that Max Barnewitz made it to at the Art Barn…
–SBH, editor
Tori Meyer & Arin Lynn invite audiences to experience the every-day in Finch Lane Flash Project: Quotidien/Quotidian
This past weekend, Tori Meyer and Arin Lynn invited Salt Lake City to their “housewarming” party, an evening-length, multidisciplinary Flash Project at Finch Lane Gallery that playfully engaged audiences in disrupting the border between public and private spaces, and that explored the absurdly, sweetly repetitive nature of the everyday.
Quotidien/Quotidian as Meyer explained, was meant to let audiences “get bored” and to discover what might emerge from that feeling. While the point is well taken, it was hard to feel bored in the busy environment crafted by Meyer and Lynn. The artists make good use of Finch Lane Gallery as dancers and curators of their own lives. Meyer and Lynn open the show by positioning themselves outside on the balcony – framing themselves through two large sliding glass doors, sometimes in opposition to each other, sometimes moving in sync. The gallery itself was filled with objects from Meyer and Lynn's home – objects of creative and sentimental value such as a collection of ceramic ducks, a shelf of baseball caps, a handmade "crooked house" by eighth grade Lynn, and pieces of art made by friends in the community, including a beautiful illustration by local artist Nora Lang that couldn't help but stand out even though it was hiding in a corner. These pleasant surprises are frequent throughout the piece. Colorful clutter that might fill up a house becomes somewhat dispassionate in the space of a gallery, forcing us to question the nature of performance and what our material world reflects, not on the aesthetics of the object, but rather about who we are.
The two performers, who are partners and who have recently moved in together, wanted to share "a collage of art we made during COVID," said Lynn. This collage includes the object world, as well as recorded clips of dance made by Meyer and Lynn over the past year. Their choreography, which elegantly balances humor and technical skill, relied on subtle movements emphasizing hands and gesture. Repetition, a theme unto itself, and a sense of duality, felt especially important to the work, with Lynn and Meyer often returning to synchronous movement and symmetry. Lynn in particular emphasized a certain weightiness of (e)motion that grounded the choreography that might otherwise have floated away into the breezy use of lighthearted covers of ABBA's song "Fernando.”
What may be most striking about the work was the range of emotions explored. Quotidien/Quotidian lets audiences oscillate between the curiosity felt when you visit a friend's house for the first time, to the gratifying slap-happiness of a dance party (which was enjoyed by all in an advanced-hokey-pokey-style dance circle), to the intimate anxiety felt by partners when hosting people in your home. The piece reaches an apex when Lynn and Meyer have a mock argument about hosting friends. While the conceit of the argument was superficial, there was an edge, the edge of everyday repetition that comes from quotidien life, and pandemic life. Lynn and Meyer took this moment to create two poignant duets, not with each other, but with projections of themselves. Lynn in a rocking chair, and Meyer at a dining table, each paired with footage of the same scene filmed at home. These intimate duets, putting bodies into conversation with themselves, used repeated, contemplative gestures once again, creating a bittersweet beat.
Of course, audiences were not left to dwell in this melancholy for too long, as Meyer and Lynn joined each other for a delightful pas de deux across the gallery floor. The charismatic duo ostentatiously exaggerated their role as performers, delighting audiences with a vaudeville-esque ending. Far from the dullness that the name suggests, Quotidien/Quotidian reminds us to find pleasure in the performance of our day-to-day lives.
Max Barnewitz is a writer, comics enthusiast, and outdoor nerd based in Salt Lake City. Max holds an M.A. in Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies from the University of Utah and is currently pursuing and MFA in comics at the California College of Art. Max wrote the libretto for DEXO’s recent production One Hundred Years Hence. They also serve on the organizing committees for Salt Lake’s Grid Zine Fest and for Queer Spectra Arts Festival.