Home Run

The things I miss most about the theater are the requirements. I have enormous respect for the fourth wall not just because I routinely decline participation opportunities, but because it is a mandate to observe and a notice of import. In this new world, there is the fifth wall of my computer. This fifth wall is where all the things are: the legislative website where I am tracking unique abuses to trans people by our state government, the fourteen Canvas pages open for me and children, the playbill, the endless stream of texts, the sticky note about the Valentine’s Day parties on Zoom I’ve yet to plan as the room mother, “Class 6” from Brenda Daniels that I meant to do at 9 am.

All these things pull me away from what I like to do most – sit in the dark and quietly watch. 

Winter’s Light by Daniel Charon does its best to bring me into the dance. Rather than staging a majestic scene (as much screendance does) the videography reveals the body and patterning. It makes undercutting feet and elbow/wrist/hand sequencing more sensory; it shows how satisfying those things are when you get to do them yourself. The dance is like the best parts of a good class that you wish you could do together. If I wasn’t a dancer, I think the falling and recovering would still be more or less recognizable as beautiful. 

Photo by Daniel Charon.

Because my fifth wall comes with the expectation of being able to fast forward, I lift up my hand to the mouse when a gestural phrase begins midway. My impulse might be a worthy critique or it might cement my belief that part of the pleasure of viewing a dance is the requirement to do so. 

Next I’m watching Woes, the durational installation by Megan McCarthy and Dominica Greene which has paint reminiscent of Shen Wei’s Connect Transfer. Accidentally, I swipe the desktop and I’m kicked off the streaming platform. I’m sent a new link (nearly immediately from RW’s own fifth wall) but I miss Don’t Chew With Your Mouth Open. Please send me your own review. 

Still from Wash.

Next is Wash, an excerpt of a film choreographed by Joan Woodbury in the seventies. I have seen some of this footage before and I love it still. I have always thought these earlier collaborative projects from Utah’s modern dance scene are much zanier than today’s fringe works, in part because they take themselves less seriously. Claudia Sisemore once notably filmed Utah dancers coming out of a sewer and this scene is similar in tone. What would it be like to run through a carwash fifty years ago? What it would be like to do modern dance with traffic superimposed on your artificially pink body? Everything is inexplicably pink and orange. Everything is slow. It’s very Nikolais in that humans are forms as much as people. Maybe that’s problematic but it’s also sublime. A face becomes a T-Rex. You understand how Pilobolus became what they are. You wonder where Martha Clarke is now. 

I’m distracted because someone in the chat named TalkativeSelf says “omg wash is so good.” More unfolds, the credits of the film visibly shake. 

Martha Myers was known to say “if you want to show difference, use unison,” and Again by Bashaun Williams and Fausto Rivera does this. Their symmetry shows what I know about Bashaun and will miss watching live as he leaves RW — clarity of motion, depth without noticeable striving, and a central place from where the dancing happens. I can see Fausto performs with a different sense of weight and without the same aplomb. And that’s okay. These are two friends dancing. Fausto is settling, Bashaun is shedding. The dance ends in a hug that’s felt, even with the limitations of my device.

Fausto Rivera (front) and Bashaun Williams (behind). Courtesy of Wonderstone Films.

Full View is the last dance on the bill, by Molly Heller. It’s colorful and stylized — dancers in a pale green set (chair, blanket, phone, picture frame, potted plant) with an amethyst cloud hanging above. It looks like a modern dance taking place in the Wing (on my fifth wall, I google what will happen to co-working spaces after the pandemic?).

Many of the idioms in Full View have been present in other Heartland Collective projects. I think the exaggerated facial gestures, pronating, straining, and repetitive tics are meant to be the contemporary version of Wash: an absurdity that is familiar yet hard to perfectly place. Yet, as my sister has been known to say about current concert dance: “why are they impersonating disabled people? Why are people laughing?” 

I do think that ataxic movement has a unique feeling to a trained dancer and thus has gained visibility in concert dance nationwide. However, in our culture, recognizable contemporary dancers like Maddie Ziegler are taken to task for playing roles including autistic artists. With that context, I’m unsure why concert dance has become not only exempt from but lauded for co-opting some of the common movements of disabled bodies for visual pleasure. 

Perhaps my sentiment here is strong because in a non-pandemic world I have the pleasure of watching young adults with intellectual disabilities and movement disorders perform through my work as a teaching artist. One of my classes also made a dance with a cloud. In ours, the cloud rose taller and taller. In Full View the cloud turns from purple to white and sinks toward Florian Alberge whose hands gesture around his heart. After the sweeping solos and duets from varied directions, it felt like it was coming to rest in his lap. 

Ashley Anderson is the founder and director of loveDANCEmore and Ashley Anderson Dances.

Discussing what Should Be Discussable

I have not seen (this version) of Nine Sinatra Songs by Ballet West and have no plans to review it. In this show, which was given locally at the Capitol Theatre, Ballet West ignores that more than one in one hundred people in Utah have COVID-19 and they refuse to talk about it. I understand that there were masks and other hygiene measures, but of course no one goes to the ballet for the social distancing. 

People are asking whether Ballet West’s type of show is the new art form. Potentially killing strangers as an art form? Yes, yes, I suppose disease can be art in a screwily post-neo-Dada sense. But this is not the sense intended by Ballet West, even though some of their programming is billed as experimental. 

If I understand Ballet West here, and I think I do — the publicity has been deafening — it is a kind of messianic return to the theater, designed to do some good for sufferers of fatal illnesses, both those in the cast and those who may be in the under-capacity audience. If we ask what a show does that no hospital, clinic, church, or other kind of relief agency has so far been able to do, I think the answer is obvious. If we consider that the experience, open to the public, as it is, may also be intolerably dangerous, the remedy is also obvious: Don't go. In not reviewing Ballet West, I'm sparing myself and my readers a dangerous experience, and I don't see that I really have any choice.

A critic has four options: (1) to see and review; (2) to see and not review; (3) not to see; (4) an option — to write about what one has not seen-becomes possible on strange occasions from which one feels excluded by reason of its express effects, which are more intelligible than theatre. I don't deny that seeing dance in a pandemic may be of value in some wholly other sphere devoid of responsibility, but it is as theatre, dance theatre, that I would approach it. And my approach has been cut off. By ignoring dying Utahns to produce their act, Ballet West has put themselves beyond the reach of criticism. I think of them as literally refusing to discuss the public as their victims and their artistry as martyrdom. 

In theatre, one chooses what one will be. The pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic audience members at Nine Sinatra Songs will have no choice other than to be sick. The fact that they are there in person intensifies the starkness of their condition. They should be there on videotape, the better to be seen and heard, especially now. They are the prime exhibits of a company administration which has crossed the line between theatre and reality — who thinks that victimhood is a sufficient presupposition to the creation of an art spectacle.

The thing that Nine Sinatra Songs makes immediately apparent, whether you see it or not, is that ignoring the pandemic is a kind of mass delusion that has taken hold of previously responsible sectors of our culture. The preferred medium during a pandemic is video (see your computer at almost any hour of the day), but the cultivation of in-person attendance demanded by institutions devoted to the care of art is a menace to all art forms, particularly performing art forms. The critic is part of the audience for art that COVID-19 also threatens. I can't review someone I am worried for or hopeless about. As a dance critic, I've learned to avoid companies who ignore the obvious problems with their events in context of our larger society. 

The strategies of dance companies as the victims of pandemic are proliferating marvelously at the moment. There's no doubt that the public is filled with much more hardship, which companies will meet with fewer patrons and less applause. This a politicized version of blackmail, that certain companies have resorted to, in a self-pitying moment. Instead of compassion for Utahns truly suffering, they invite a cozy kind of complicity demanding that their audience support local artists. This perfect, mutually manipulative union is formed which no Governor has put asunder. 

Photo by Luke Isley, courtesy of Ballet West.

Those who have read New Yorker critic Arlene Croce’s original essay “Discussing the Undiscussable” will realize that I have more or less stolen it to make a comparison between Bill T. Jones’ piece Still/Here (made during the early years of the AIDS crisis) and Ballet West’s Nine Sinatra Songs (produced during the coronavirus pandemic). 

It’s worth noting that my criticism is more than witty plagiarism. Ballet West has made headlines for contributions to racial justice such as: calling for more pointe shoe shades and being part of the “final bow for yellowface” in The Nutcracker. However, just like they’ve made no change to other equally racist divertissements, Nine Sinatra Songs ignores not only that the pandemic rages on but that it disproportionately impacts Utahns of color and low-income Utahns. The danger of opening the theater is not only for affluent, masked patrons, but for all employees of Salt Lake County. 

Another danger that’s misconstrued? Using (exclusively heterosexual) married couples for pas de deux underscores the heteronormativity of concert dance, while also pretending that their safety will somehow extend to the audience. 

Arlene missed out on some of why Still/Here was important; the dance looked at HIV/AIDS and other chronic and/or terminal illnesses as something that impacts more than one group. While many Americans failed to apprehend that AIDS wasn’t only a crisis for (cisgender white) gay men, we seem to have done the inverse. We assume that the pandemic applies only to smaller subgroups and do not acknowledge the way a space, like a theater, impacts us all. 

Ashley Anderson is the founder and director of loveDANCEmore and Ashley Anderson Dances. At the time of writing, the state of Utah is at a 20% average positivity rate for COVID-19 with neighborhoods near the theater at over 30%. 661 Utahns have died.

Repertory Dance Theatre: Emerge

This past weekend, Repertory Dance Theatre presented its fourth annual Emerge program, a collection of works choreographed by company dancers and staff. I appreciated that no unifying theme was forced on the show, so that each piece was free to be what it was.

The evening opened with “Indebted,” choreographed by RDT member Jaclyn Brown in collaboration with the performer, Angela Banchero-Kelleher. This understated piece featured gorgeous lighting and a regal yet simple feel.

“This Is What It Feels Like,” choreographed by company member Daniel Do and Mar Undag in collaboration with dancers Morgan Phillips and Nicole Smith, featured alternating solos and duets. The dancers moved with matching stylization, which was especially enjoyable to watch during a brief section of unison choreography. 

Choreographed by company member Lauren Curley in collaboration with performer Mikaela Papasodero, “Soliloquy” demonstrated impressive navigation of floorwork with a full long skirt, and lovely moments of uplifted posture and gaze.

I loved the flow of overlapping parts and the contrast of fast and slow movement in the group piece “Proto,” choreographed by RDT artistic associate Nicholas Cendese and dancers. Within the group, partnering between company members Megan O’Brien and Jonathan Kim stood out to me as feeling both natural and interesting, and I appreciated that one of their sequences together was performed twice within the work with different directional orientations each time.

“I… Me… We” was a delightful piece choreographed by company member Dan Higgins, who also performed spoken word live alongside the solo danced by Morgan Phillips. The vibe was generally silly, and the movement was floppy and weird in the best way – I imagine it would be fun to perform. Through eye contact and action-reaction pairs, there was a nice connection between dancer and speaker/choreographer, as if they were trying to figure something out together but not taking it too seriously and finding amusement in the idea that they weren’t really sure of whatever it was they were exploring.

“femme.” featured beautiful and well-rehearsed partnering between dancer/choreographers Ursula Perry (of RDT) and Laja Field. I interpreted the piece to be about female friendships until a friend pointed out that the title is a word that refers to an aesthetic presentation by a lesbian that fits into society’s typical conception of a feminine look.

After a brief intermission, we saw “Trick Mirror,” choreographed by RDT dancer and education associate Megan O’Brien in collaboration with the four dancers. The part of this work that I enjoyed most was the end, the dancers lip-syncing exaggeratedly to The Bee Gees while facing the audience at the front of the stage – I’m not sure what it had to do with the rest of the piece, but it made me smile.

“Trapped” (1974) by former RDT member Lynne Wimmer was well-performed by Tiana Lovett. I loved the small, sharp movements at the beginning, Lovett’s amazing leg extensions, the grand use of space, and how Lovett seemed to break out of her trap by the end of the piece.

Comparatively, “until you are no more,” by company dancer Jonathan Kim, was much less clear in its theme. For me, the most distinct and memorable part of this piece was a simple yet effective silhouette of purposeful walking, from the downstage to upstage at the beginning of the piece, and from upstage to downstage at the end.

The program ended with “The Hours,” directed and structured by Cendese with choreography and performance by twelve dance educators. This piece got exciting during a transition where three benches, which had been stationary for the first part, were creatively moved and interacted with – I would have loved to see this section extended with more choreographic exploration of this concept. Then the benches were placed in three rows and the dancers sat facing the audience like a congregation in church pews, and from there performed a very satisfying series of movement in canon.

Within the otherwise very professional presentation, I was distracted by the amount of backstage noise throughout, including multiple instances of doors closing, cast conversations, and, once, what sounded like keys being dropped. 

Overall, Emerge presented beautiful dancing alongside choreographic talent, coming together in a likeable show. I think it’s wonderful that RDT offers this opportunity for their dancers and staff to both create and share their creations. 

Kendall Fischer is the artistic director of Myriad Dance Company, and has enjoyed performing opportunities with Voodoo Productions, SBDance, Municipal Ballet Co., and La Rouge Entertainment, among others. Her choreography has been performed by Myriad, Municipal Ballet, and at Creator's Grid, and her dance film project “Breathing Sky” received the 2017 Alfred Lambourne Movement prize.

SONDERimmersive: Thank You Theobromine

SONDERimmersive’s Thank You Theobromine, in collaboration with The Chocolate Conspiracy, is an interactive dance theater production built around the story of a chocolatier who may have poisoned people. Groups of audience members tour downtown shop The Chocolate Conspiracy, guided by performers but allowed the freedom to explore within that framework. Attending when I did, toward the end of the show’s multi-month run, audience management was all figured out and the performers seemed well-rehearsed and well-connected to their characters.

On the sidewalk outside The Chocolate Conspiracy, audience members were initially greeted by Graham Brown, co-creator and choreographer, who gave a welcome speech that included carefully created guidelines for how to interact within the immersive production. Then, we were invited into a tent filled with objects that the sold-out, 30-person audience was encouraged to explore, while a performer took her time welcoming us, whispering to us secrets about characters in the story, serving us hot chocolate, and dividing us into five smaller groups with corresponding colored wristbands. This beginning was a bit underwhelming, and I overheard some audience members expressing impatience as we waited to enter the chocolate shop one group at a time. The excitement did intensify once we left the tent and entered the building.

Once inside, the performers were confident and firm with their verbal and physical guidance of the audience - pushing, pulling, coaxing, and demanding us to participate as they intended. They moved us from room to room, but we were also free to wander. The interactive component of the production involved both theater and dance, and there were often multiple scenes taking place at the same time, such that the music and verbalizations of one scene served as background noise for another.

One success in involving audience members in dancing included a phrase in which Rebecca Aneloski, “The Libra,” took someone’s hand and led them to the window and then back to the center of the room, easing them into the part where she instructed them to close their eyes, and then moving them through ballroom dance-esque postures and finally into a gentle yet sincere embrace. Aneloski then returned that participant to a bench and repeated the sequence with another, and then another. 

I was very pleased with the use of space, both in the sense of performers interacting with the venue’s architecture, and also in the sense of their utilization of the venue to create unique perspectives from which they could be viewed. One of my favorite instances of this was some group choreography on a stairway: dancers thrashed between the wall and railing, with the audience standing beyond and below, and then one dancer lifted another into a back-roll to walk sideways along the wall.

Another good example of the use of space was when Aneloski rolled off the balcony railing to climb down to the driveway below, where she and Lauren Payne threw each other around and clambered up and down the street-level doors, exhibiting impressive strength and choreographic creativity. Payne boosted Aneloski up to a second story window, first to open it and then to climb into it, and seconds later pushed me out of the way, from where I was leaning over the balcony railing to watch Payne below, so that Aneloski could slide across the railing.

Lighting was especially effective in the room farthest to the west upstairs, during a scene toward the end in which the performers guided all audience members to the center of the room under a single bare bulb before weaving pathways among the crowd. In this scene, Michael Watkiss impressed me with his intentional focus and emotion as he performed a ritualistic gesture phrase, seemingly directed only at me.

The most memorable moment for me was one which not many other audience members got to see. Watkiss pushed me into a bathroom and left me alone there for a minute until Elizabeth Golden joined me. Golden mirrored my body position and facial expressions until, without verbally directing me to do so, she was able to lead me to mirror her. As we mirrored each other, she told me she was glad it was me, and began to nervously discuss her hunch that if I stayed here to take her place in purgatory then she could move on instead of me. As our mirroring game eased into a comfortable rhythm, her gestures perfectly led me to open a cabinet to find a jug marked “rat poison,” pour it into a cup, turn on the sink to add water to it, and raise the cup toward my mouth. Just before I would have had to decide if I really wanted to play along enough to drink whatever it was, Aneloski burst into the bathroom, emotional with criticism for Golden’s intentions, and snatched the cup away and poured it out. Then Aneloski led me downstairs where she handed me a chocolate bar, thanked me for coming, and pushed me outside into the softly falling snow.

Overall, the performers’ commitment to character, and specifically their eye contact, was important to creating the overall impact of the experience. The program credited four writers for the project, and I could tell that the performers were motivated by a specific and detailed story. However, the work of the writers seemed somewhat diminished by the mysteriousness which was brilliantly cultivated within the performance. I’d love to see a bit more clarity of story and characters to balance out all the intriguing mystery.

 It is possible, however, that other audience members experienced greater, or different, clarity than I did, and the fact that each individual’s experience could be so unique is a magical element of this project.

SONDERimmersive’s Thank You Theobromine continues through Sunday, January 5 at The Chocolate Conspiracy in downtown Salt Lake City.

Photos above courtesy of Graham Brown.

Kendall Fischer is the artistic director of Myriad Dance Company, and has enjoyed performing opportunities with Voodoo Productions, SBDance, Municipal Ballet Co., and La Rouge Entertainment, among others. Her choreography has been performed by Myriad, Municipal Ballet, and at Creator's Grid, and her dance film project “Breathing Sky” received the 2017 Alfred Lambourne Movement prize.

Molly Heller & Heartland Collective: Cosmos

On December 21, the sun set in Salt Lake City at 5:03 p.m. Normally this, the shortest day of the year, reminds me of my desperate need for more sunlight (if you’re like me, you may want to check out a seasonal affective disorder light, which helps to combat the winter blues). But this year, the Heartland collective invited us to celebrate the winter solstice with them at Cosmos, a performance and dance party at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA). 

The date of the performance was no coincidence. The winter solstice holds significance in many indigenous cultures and various religions as a celebration of the longest hours of darkness. Winter is about to begin, but hours of daylight also are about to begin lengthening, and the solstice is a time to embrace reflections upon and rituals of regeneration and renewal. The evening, curated by director Molly Heller alongside her troupe of Heartlanders, was dedicated to this kind of communal reflection. 

As I entered the museum, the walls, normally illuminated to highlight galleries, were darkened. A kaleidoscope of rainbow light was strewn across the space, resembling the aurora borealis. Inside a gallery, two benches were filled with dozens of handcrafted silver boutonnieres for guests to select. I was delighted to admire each tiny piece of charming art and to select one for myself to pin onto my clothing. Cosmos also then invited me to have my face bedazzled with silver jewels. This was a theme throughout the evening: attendees were continuously invited to participate, becoming part of the art themselves.

Nick Foster and Michael Wall entered the upstairs gallery, both wearing shimmery, silver tops, and filled the space with serene sounds that carried the evening from performance to dance party and on the journey in between.

Florian Alberge, an unbilled surprise guest who recently moved back to Salt Lake City, invited the audience to write a letter, beginning “Dear Closure,” that would be burned by the Heartlanders on New Year’s Eve. This idea calls upon the tradition of a fire-releasing ceremony, often practiced on the winter solstice, where what is desired to be released is first written down and then burned as a symbol of closure. 

Heller has noted her fascination with closure: “The vulnerability within letting go and in allowing closure to be non-linear and self-actualized is what we’re exposing within Cosmos. I am discovering on a personal level that healing/release can happen with strangers and if we can’t choose our endings in life, we can practice curating beginnings.” Throughout the evening, attendees were offered many opportunities to explore such ideas of release through writing, witnessing, and dancing. 

As the performance continued, attendees outlined the long row of windows that look down upon the lower-level galleries. Heartlanders Nick Blaylock, Brian Gerke, Molly Heller, Marissa Mooney, and Melissa Younker entered and began diving in and out from the gallery walls, like atoms vibrating, darting, and pivoting. One person remarked what a magical fish bowl we were peering into, as we witnessed the Heartlanders expand and contract throughout every corner of the space.

One of the most striking moments began as Blaylock took off in a full sprint and dove to the floor, sliding nearly twelve feet across the gallery. The rest of the performers soon followed suit. There was something so whimsical and playful as they slid with such vigor in between the gallery walls that still displayed art by Cara Krebs and Stephanie Leitch, among others - all while wearing silver vintage costumes. It was a dazzling juxtaposition that brought a smile to my face.

We were soon invited down to wander the lower galleries. In a moment of delightful surprise, the side garage door (normally used to transport large works of art in and out of the gallery) opened and the Heartlanders re-entered in a series of repetitive, quirky gestures. Foster and Wall transitioned into a whimsical, carnival score. A mist of whispers filled the space: “How fun!” “How exciting!” “How wonderful this all is.”

Heller began to give verbal instructions; attendees and Heartlanders alike participated in an improvisation score that spread throughout the space, the instructions guiding everyone first to spin on an axis, then to prance through the feet. It was a carefree, unpretentious, and shared sequence. An attendee later expressed, “I felt like I was inside of this world and the characters were unraveling right in front of me. It was exciting to be in the middle of the chaos and also inside the resolution.” The model of Heartland events is unique in this way -  it interweaves performers and attendees in such a way that facilitates a shared experience. You do not simply watch a Heartland event; you become a part of it.

As performance bled into dance party, everyone began to jump, shimmy, spiral, wiggle, sing, and bop together. Heartlanders swirled throughout clusters of attendees, sharing hugs and inspiring new dance moves. One attendee remarked on the palpable shared energy. It was fun. It was tiring. It was meditative. In a darkened museum on the winter solstice, we jammed out together, sweating through our shimmering clothes. 

Heller’s work has long been dedicated to her research of performance as a healing practice. It felt important to me that this performance-cum-party took place in such a shared setting. I found myself deep in thought about the role of community in supporting the health and wellbeing of ourselves and those around us. Heartland events have introduced a very special ritual to the community for these reasons. 

Those that stayed until the end witnessed Younker, Heller, and Mooney sing and shout a manifesto dedicated to release, healing, and closure. Attendees shouted along (even when we didn’t know the words), and I couldn’t stop myself from bouncing and clapping. The evening ended with catharsis, in the presence of friends, strangers, and glittery boutonnieres. 

Rachel Luebbert is a Utah-based dance artist. She also teaches and works in arts administration and programming, and has previously worked in Colorado, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C.