Myriad Dance Company: Perspective

Myriad Dance Company recently presented its winter offering, Perspective, at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA). The company’s first publicized performance under the artistic leadership of Kendall Fischer, Perspective lived up to its name by subverting expectations for the venue and format in which dances are presented.

If you’re not familiar with UMOCA, the downtown museum’s largest gallery space is one level below ground and surrounded by a glassed-in mezzanine. Fischer placed audience members behind the glass in two rows, one sitting and one standing. At last, a bird’s eye view, erasing all sightline issues! (Those who choreograph floorwork in small spaces with shallow risers, take heed.)

Myriad members, alongside a handful of guest dancers, entered the gallery floor from all sides, gazing up and around as they wove in and amongst each other. As they wandered in silence, I wondered if they were truly looking up at us, or if their gazes were oriented more internally. That gray area between connection with and separation from the performers below was a thread throughout, intensified by the layer of glass that wouldn’t normally come between a viewer and a dance.

Fischer choreographed two of the program’s five total movements, with others by Ashley Creek, Sierra Stauffer, and Fiona Nelson, all frequent Myriad performers themselves. Each movement featured an occasional signature marking a choreographer’s unique touch. As a whole, though, each dance was more similar to its companions than not - on the one hand, begging the question of why the program should require the billing of five separate dances, but on the other, making the case for a very cohesive program despite contributions from multiple voices.  

Transitions between each dance, so smooth as to become invisible at times, swept varying configurations of the evening’s performers in and out of the center of the gallery floor. Long, diaphanous, burnt orange-colored skirts accentuated the eddies and swirls of the dancers, taking on a life of their own, while sometimes appearing to get in the way of supported partner work (the skirts were later abandoned for a more practical choice of leggings, allowing greater visible freedom).

I did wish that choreographers had paid closer attention to the orientation of audience to dance - upright choreography did not always make the case for why the dance should be taking place below us; my eye was most satiated when a choreographer utilized all the dancers lying on the floor, marking out kaleidoscopic patterns layered on top of the wooden floor’s repetitive squares, taking advantage of the audience’s privileged, aerial view.

In these instances, the more was truly the merrier: with the complete cast of dancers, I was able to see the full flesh of the design in space and watch it expand on a larger scale across the cavernous room. Such was notably the case in a diagonal line from which dancers would peel out and sweep back in, finding a new position while traveling backwards in a grand flocking.

All of the program’s music was electronic and trance-y; with only a faintly discernible meter, one track could blend unnoticed into the next. Working in tandem throughout, as choreographic mimicked musical quality, both became a vessel for an overall effect that washed over the space - one overarching feeling, like a long thought train or an extended music video (thinking Andrew Winghart here, and his powerful swarms of contemporary yet Graham-inspired women). Changing it up toward the end, I believe in Nelson’s piece, a noticeable meter emerged, congealing some previously scattered choreographic unisons to stronger effect.

The evening provided a truly unique viewing experience and it was exciting to see Myriad shake things up from past performances in more intimate venues. There was great potential in the possibilities unlocked by Fischer’s choice of space, though with perhaps still a bit of room left for exploration. I would eagerly press my nose up against UMOCA’s mezzanine glass for Perspective, round two.

Amy Falls manages loveDANCEmore’s cadre of writers and edits its online content. She works full-time in development at Ballet West and still occasionally puts her BFA in modern dance to use, performing with Municipal Ballet Co. and other independent projects in SLC.

Myriad Dance: Lights

Myriad Dance Company presented “Lights” at The Downtown Artist Collective on Sunday night. Myriad donated all proceeds from the project, spearheaded by co-director Temria Airmet, to the Utah branch of Volunteers of America; the six performers and five musicians donated their time as well.

The Downtown Artist Collective is a small storefront on 100 South that offers handmade wares by local artists and artisans. For the show, store displays were pushed against the walls to make space for dancing; similar to other recent shows, such as those at Main Street gallery Art 270, the “stage” itself was fairly small and the audience sat right up to its edge.

“Lights” dealt - sometimes literally, sometimes indirectly - with the social and political climate that has come to a head in 2016, and I felt Myriad’s intent and hope from the moment I walked into the space. It was packed, with hardly a seat left in the house, but I was able to squeeze myself to the front and secure a (very good) seat on the floor. I noted my negotiation in and amongst a sea of people as a boon in a world where understanding and acceptance seem to occasionally take the back burner; “Lights” was not only Myriad Dance Company’s reaction to 2016, but a call to action.

The audience and I experienced physical closeness during our viewing of “Lights,” and were (gently) forced to be mindful and accommodating of both the space we ourselves take up and that which others take up around us - an idea whose easy extrapolation is how we coexist in the larger world.

The space featured a hodgepodge of lamps, occasionally turned on and off by the performers, that created a general tone of intimacy. Perhaps, we were not at a performance but instead sharing thoughts and conversation in someone’s living room. Additionally, live musicians both accompanied and were interspersed, salon-like, between the dancing numbers: a guitarist, a husky-voiced folk singer, a singing guitarist, a dancer-turned-vocalist, and my favorite musical performance of the evening, pianist Joseph Chang.

The dances in “Lights” featured different groupings of the six performers, including creator Airmet, and since no choreographic credits were mentioned in the program, I assume most were made collaboratively.

Two solos by Airmet bookended the show (except for a group finale) and were the most potent, searching works of the evening. Airmet always performs with unwavering conviction, and these solos were no exception. They featured poetry spoken, and presumably written, by Airmet and complemented her often-gestural and alternately soft and hard-hitting movement. The choreography could have been considered simple if unaccompanied, but in tandem with the words, it illuminated Airmet’s myriad (no pun intended) strengths as transporting performer, imaginative writer, and thoughtful human.

Throughout other sections, Airmet looked like she could be reciting poetry in her head as she danced - so specific were her expressions as they related to her movements. Intent manifested with varying degrees of maturity in other members of the group, but a general sense of personal investment in each dance was always clear.

Performer Ashley Creek exhibited compelling clarity, hers such that it travelled through and articulated her entire spine. Kendall Fischer radiated honesty and warmth in her sweet, short vignette with another dancer.

Seeing the performers’ unique identities onstage was a reminder that we all possess complex inner realms, though not all do or are able to express their hopes and concerns as openly as through performance. For me, “Lights” was a shared experience in vulnerability, empathy, and inclusivity, and a call to remember those things in our daily interactions.

Myriad implemented a wide range of choreographic choices given the limited space: tour jetes, slides to the floor, battements, and hitch-kicks, sometimes in groups of four, five, or even the whole company. I will posit that the dances, though earnest, could gain from indulging the expansiveness the choreography seemed to crave with either a larger space (though I recognize usable and affordable space is hard to come by, even in SLC) or by allowing more dances to have fewer participants; solos and duets usually offered the most breath and fullness.

The intimate setting at The Downtown Artist Collective uniquely drew focus onto individual performative arcs (differing, perhaps, from Myriad’s previous “Doors”), but the underlying concept for each dance, regardless of number of dancers, was group unity. I felt this net of unity cast not just over the performers, but also over members of the audience as we negotiated knees and coats.

Sometimes the net was cast directly from performer to audience, such as when Alyx Pitkin began to fall forward, only to then be caught by the group, suspended over the first row of audience members. I, too, felt kinesthetically involved, when I experienced wind from a leap across my face on several occasions.

Casual intimacy was a successful thread throughout the show. At one point, dancer Sierra Stauffer leaned against the piano, played again here by Chang, to sing; she oscillated between a contemplative, inward focus and sharing inviting smiles with audience members.

Less effective were moments when the dancers seemed to perform for an audience imagined farther away than actually the case. In my viewing of “Lights,” it was important that the performers acknowledge our proximity, a uniting factor over the course of the evening.

In her second solo, toward the show’s end, Airmet spoke, “My voice got quiet because the truth was hard.” Through “Lights,” she has found a voice, both for herself and Myriad, in movement, music, and performance. For the group’s finale, Airmet, who often invokes music by Kanye West in her work, used his 2016 song “Ultralight Beam”; it was her most effective invocation of West yet. The group found stillness in a tableau at the song’s conclusion, while still breathing heavily (“Father, this prayer is for everyone that feels they’re not good enough”), then, blinking their hands like twinkling lights, reached skyward.

Amy Falls is loveDANCEmore’s program coordinator and a regular contributor to the blog.