Call for Submissions

Call for Essays & Photos on the theme “Dancing Ecologically”

Submission Date: September 15, 2016

“Nowadays, we’re used to wondering what a [dance] says about race or gender, even if the [dance] makes no explicit mention of race or gender. We will soon be accustomed to wondering what any [dance] says about the environment even if no animals or trees or mountains appear in it.” - Timothy Morton

Utah is located at the heart of public lands debate. With our many state and national parks and monuments, our issue with air quality, our water scarcities, our huge (growing) urban sprawl (and its accompanying social & environmental impacts), and our love for outdoor recreation. Alongside all of these, I see the passion of many local dancemakers to present work outside of the proscenium and build dances on ideas of ‘natural’ body movement. In this time of climate change, ecocide, and environmental racism, in this place, what does it mean to dance about the environment? What does it mean to construct a ‘natural’ body, if anything? From my basement office in Glendale, the environment and dance is a crucial issue to address at this moment. Following the lead of the environmental justice movement, I want to expand the definition of ‘environment’ for this issue to include not just Wild Utah, but also all the places that people live, work, play, dance, and learn here.

Questions addressed could include:

• When are we dancing about (or with) the environment?
• Why is site-specific work such a local passion? What does that passion tell us about the environment broadly, and/or the artist’s relationship with it? What is/is there an ethical responsibility when dancing on site?
• What, if any, is the relationship between site-specific work and environmental issues?
• What do our dances teach us about our environment? About ecology?
• What does ecology teach us about our dances?
• How does popular ideology about nature (e.g. ‘the environment’) create assumptions about ‘natural bodies’? How does the relationship of these ideas impact training and creative work?

Send submissions c/o Editor Liz Ivkovich; liz@lovedancemore.org.

All lengths, styles, and even works-in-progress desired!

Performance Art Festival & notes on reviews

Below are some photos Winston Inoway shared of the annual Performance Art Festival at the Main Library earlier this month. A review of the 2014 festival can be found here. Although no one wrote about the PAF this year please consider commenting on the thread below if you saw the works presented and want to share your thoughts.

Because we are a peer based blog and performance journal most readers know that we rely on interested writers to reach out with performances they want to cover. The same goes for the previews and profiles we share with 15 BYTES. As our organization has grown, we also have a new reliance on artists sending press material about their work so we can make sure to cover it.

Since loveDANCEmore programs began in 2010 the number of reviews we post annually has almost doubled with every passing year. This trend of consistent shows by independent artists and their creation of larger collaboratives is incredible. But that trend also means the freelance nature of our peer reviews has to shift. Artists with upcoming shows, please submit a press release to admin@lovedancemore.org at least two weeks prior to your show. We want to continue covering the diverse range of performances across the Wasatch Front; if there is something we missed we hope our readers can help fill in the gaps.