Performance Art Festival 2019 at the SLC Public Library

While I was seated on the second floor of the Salt Lake City Public Library, staring at paper shapes suspended from the railings of the “bridges” in the library’s main Urban Room, Joseph Ravens approached me and asked, “Do you mind if I join you? I need to just sit for a minute!” 

I had just watched Ravens travel from one end of the third floor bridge to the other with a playful energy, flirtatiously peering down, his fingers dancing across the railing, with a yellow dunce cap on his head. He now sat in the chair across from me, dropping turkey feathers that had been painted black over the edge of the balcony, one by one. 

“These were originally attached to my elbows but they came off. Sometimes I put them on my toes but that would have made it too hard to go up and down these stairs.” 

I took notes as he continued to tell me that repetition of simple tasks, like ascending and descending staircases, is a frequent device he uses in his art, that performance art is very popular where he lives (Chicago), and that he made the piece that I’d been admiring with children’s responses in mind. He eventually asked,  “Anyway, are you here for the Performance Art Festival or are you just hanging out?” 

I was shocked that he’d told me so much about himself and his art, unaware that I was taking notes for this review. Such an interaction reveals several qualities of an experienced performance artist: the ability to be adaptable and responsive to the present moment (He needed a break so he took a break! His feathers malfunctioned so he repurposed them!), the confidence to interact with strangers, and the awareness that some spectators of performance art want more information about what they’re witnessing so that they can “get it.”

Is making sense of what you’re seeing always necessary? Isn’t it invigorating to stumble upon the unusual in the midst of your predictable library experience, regardless of whether or not you understand what’s going on? 

I wondered this as I watched a group of University of Utah School of Dance students and alumni improvisationally dance to a soundtrack I couldn’t hear (they were wearing headphones) while a speaker intended for the audience’s ears played NPR’s “Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me.” Seeing the smiles on the spectators’ faces as the dancers eventually took off their headphones, turned their attention to the crowd, and playfully bombarded us with countless balloons filled me with delight. 

As a choreographer and performer myself, I am keenly aware of how premeditated and alienating (and sometimes pretentious) dance performances can be, leaving spectators (or myself, at least) longing for inclusion, spontaneity, and surprise. This group provided just that. My favorite part of this performance was one of the dancer’s closing remarks: “It’s never over! Take a balloon!” 

Which brings me to one of the pillars of performance art: the exploration of time. 

I am a sucker for durational performance pieces that you will inevitably catch less than half of, because it’s rare to have six free hours to spend watching someone rearrange piles of glass-like particles. This was Chelsea Coon’s task. By the time I saw her, she had made three large circles of glass on the floor and was sitting in the center of them, transferring handfuls of leftover glass into clear bowls. A pool of sunlight illuminated the entire scene magically. Though I was mesmerized by her concentration and the calmness of the display, I knew I needed to catch a few other pieces that were scheduled to end soon. 

In a nearby room, Marilyn Arsem sat behind a table, poised like a fortune teller but helping passersby to recall their pasts instead of intuiting their futures. My love affair with all things nostalgia couldn’t resist her invitation to calculate how many days I’ve been alive (11,684 in case you’re curious) and then trying to recall the events of one of those days, which was selected blindly by pointing to a date in “101 Years: A Calendar Book.” I was very surprised that, with a series of calculated questions, Arsem was able to help me recover some very forgettable details of a Tuesday during my senior year of high school. I departed just as a child, born in 2013, exclaimed, “I’m old!” after being told his age in days (there was a collective cringe and then giggle from the adults in the room) and once again I found myself entranced by Coon, who had begun placing a fifth circle of glass around herself, just as focused and meditative as before. 

Other performances I saw, too many to describe each in detail, included asexual alien creatures performing reproductive dances, women dressed as men reciting poetry in soothing voices, and a woman taping blank sheets of loose leaf paper onto a wall as a reflection on dyslexia. To supplement this piece, I encourage you to visit the Festival’s lineup while it’s still available and to find the websites of all participating artists. The Festival’s founder and curator, Kristina Lenzi, has her finger on the pulse of some exciting artists and, as this is an annual event, I look forward to seeing what she puts together next year. 

Chelsea Coon (pictured six hours later than above photo) at the 2019 Performance Art Festival, in the Urban Room at the Salt Lake City Public Library. Photo by Paul Reynolds.

Alexandra Barbier is a dance artist and performance-maker. She is a modern dance MFA candidate at the University of Utah and has taught courses on creative process, queer performance art, and dance in culture.

Performance Art Festival at the SLC Public Library

The following is a preview of Emma Wilson’s experience at the Performance Art Festival, hosted annually by the Salt Lake City Public Library at its Main branch downtown. Emma’s thoughts on other performances at the festival are forthcoming.

Before I entered the SHARE space, a small storefront in the Urban Room of the Salt Lake City Main Library, I peeked at the smartphone taped to the glass doors. Both phone and doors revealed Grafting by Kristina Lenzi and Eugene Tachinni, the two wearing matching maroon outfits and sitting side by side, just as the festival program said they would be. However, there was another aspect to this two-hour long vigil between two people: a woman, Sasha K -- identified by her business card on a shelf behind the three -- was styling Eugene’s and Kristina’s long hair elaborately, silently curling and smoothing it with precision: an art in itself.   

The live phone footage created a kaleidoscopic effect wherein one could choose to look at the artists framed in the phone or at the artists framed by people watching them, framed by the glass, framed by people watching from outside the glass, framed by frames to infinity. The piece invited me to zoom in or out, each aperture revealing a valid view of this performance that, like all performance art, is dependent on audience as witness. Upon further zoom inside the room I realized another possible reason for the phone footage was perhaps to simulate the intimate view of the work without being subjected to the smell of hairspray. Eventually, Sasha braided Kristina’s and Eugene’s hair together, and left them grafted for the remaining hour or so; two tree-people continuing their growth together.

Stay tuned for more.

Emma Wilson received her BFA in Modern Dance at the University of Utah and has since been making solo works, choreographing for Deseret Experimental Opera (DEXO), and working as the Salt Lake City Library’s Community Garden Coordinator.

Tanja London & collaborators: Save Your Own Skin

The performance content of Save Your Own Skin is inspired by questions arising from a prototype of bulletproof skin and other ways that we attempt to shield ourselves from vulnerability. The collaborators of the work include Tanja London, Carloss Chamberlin, Jason Rabb, Nick Foster, Ami Hanna.

The performance takes place within a ‘thought exhibition,’ which, based on the event descriptions I had read, I initially thought meant that there would be a well-explained exhibition that would give context to the performance. It turned out a ‘thought exhibition’ can look like a modern art-inspired set with no explanation.

The thought exhibition is located in a small storefront of the Salt Lake City Public Library. Though the audience is limited to 20 people per performance, there were maybe half that many chairs at the premiere this past Friday. People who arrived less early filled up the floor space near the chairs. The audience was hushed, and it didn’t feel appropriate to speak at more than a whisper.

Slowly, I realized the cool statue near the entrance was actually a live person, dancer and thinker Tanja London, covered in blue foam triangles, Velcro-ed together to resemble a sculpture by Xavier Veilhan.

It’s unclear at what moment the performance ‘began.’ The fog machine went off three times with pauses in between each time. Then London twitched - or did she?

For a long time she barely moved. Gradually her movements became larger. They were stiff and ungraceful. Bit by bit, London broke through her costume, and of course was wearing nude clothing underneath. Nude costuming is commonly used in modern dance, because it’s visually striking and because it suggests the ideas of natural, vulnerable, and human. This costume change said to me, ‘you’re more natural yet more vulnerable without the man-made things you surround yourself with.’

At some point within this first section of the performance, a thin bright blue line of light in the shape of a rhombus was cast across London’s scene. I felt this made this part of the experience less enjoyable, but maybe that was the intention.

Blue triangles shed, London ducked under and behind the sheer white fabric that decorates the space. She proceeded to press her way along the fabric stretched in front of the walls, interacting with it in a manner that seemed an expansion of a concept that Salt Lake City has recently seen from SBDance, which they first showcased in their Wine Theater Food and Box Bar performances of early 2016.

Much of the audience had to move to different seating arrangements in order to get a view of London as she transitioned from section I to section II. There were great moments of quiet eye contact and smiles that seemed to say ‘modern dance, right?’ and people scooting over to make room for others on the floor.

Emerging from behind the fabric, London’s quality of movement had, thankfully, changed from section I, to become more natural and attractive. In section II, London expressed vulnerability, wearing nude-colored clothing, fumbling with the thin ropes and carabiners that dangled from around her waist, asking the audience for help her with clipping the lines to various parts of the set, stumbling around within her skirt-turned-stage. It struck me as wonderful use of space as a collaborator, and a great way to involve the audience in the experience of vulnerability.

Vocal text accompanied London’s movement, in what is called by the performance’s program ‘a quote clash collage’ including London’s own thoughts and quotes from 20 other sources. It covered a wide range of topics, all vaguely related. There were fragments about technological improvements, and war and security as their justifications, and lots of repetitions of ‘man-made.’

She asked us to consider ‘this’ the ‘house of white supremacy,’ and asked if we felt at home. Silent answer: um, no, not really, when you put it like that.

The ambient music began to seem more involved with the live dancer / speaker, at times echoing her words. Live musicians, Rabb and Foster, were attentive to London’s actions, glancing back and forth between her and the keys of their laptops and their unique percussive instruments while staying aware of each other’s cues.

Among their instruments was a fork-sized rocking statue of a seahorse in a top hat, which at first rocked regularly, and I thought maybe it was a quirky metronome. Later, a percussion performer put what looked like a water glass beside it, so that the seahorse knocked into it making great clinking noises.

Also notable was what I will call a ‘tiny woodpecker with crazy hair’ that a musician placed along the top of a thin rod, allowing it to vibrate and make quiet pecking noises as it slid down the rod. Really, I recommend making sure to go see these guys perform live. I hope they read my descriptive attempts and get a good laugh.

After allowing myself to be distracted by Rabb and Foster, I turned my attention back to London. She suggested that vulnerability is what has made humans ‘the dominant species’ on Earth. I waited for an explanation, but she offered none directly. Instead I thought about it some more after the show and realized that our attempts to make up for our vulnerability have driven much of our technological progress.

Interesting point. I like the idea that vulnerability drives us. But don’t many other species also have vulnerabilities, and also come up with ways to make up for them?

Throughout sections II and III, softer and less colorful light projections rolled across the dancer and set. These projections successfully added to the enthralling nature of the performance, and maybe to the sense of passing time and of complication.

Section III involved a costume change, and continuous interaction with an unexplained prop that looked like a clear blow-up doughnut with blue dots, about as tall as London’s shoulder height. She rolled around in the doughnut. She stood inside the doughnut and let her neck ooze/flop around, and her arms drape over the edges as she spoke - it was lovely.

Probably my favorite moment of the whole performance was when London lounged on top of the doughnut like a goddess and said ‘superiority!’ in a manner of someone letting you in on a brilliant scheme or a joke that she knew you still didn’t quite get. She then folded in half, sinking through the doughnut hole.

Overall, Save Your Own Skin could be described as interesting, frustrating, and draining - as was likely the intention. The performance ended somewhat abruptly when London’s vocal text brought attention to the present, she released the doughnut, letting it roll and settle, and the lights went dark.

The small audience clapped for longer than politeness required as the lights came back on. London beamed, thanked us, and offered a Q and A session that she took longer to make good on than I was patient enough to wait.

Kendall Fischer currently performs with Myriad Dance, and has also enjoyed recent opportunities with SBDance, Municipal Ballet Co, La Rouge Entertainment, and Voodoo Productions, among others.