Fill in the Blank

The curtains don’t open (there are no curtains) but the lights have dimmed. Still, a tiny bit of light leaks in from stage left, where three drapes hide the entrances to the black box. One dancer takes center stage as another crosses in the back and exits stage right. All of this the audience has agreed not to notice, as we sit waiting for an evening of work by Rosie Trump, Sugar Space’s artist-in-residence. Rosie Trump has traveled from Nevada with her dancers for this show, promising a work exploring the domestic, professional and political pressures surrounding the contemporary woman.

The lights slowly rise on a lone dancer, Laura Gutierrez, and a mechanical voice fills the space listing something not quite distinguishable. Gutierrez is garbed in ankle-length slacks, with a button-down top and a slim black tie. She starts with a simple nod which grows until her bobbing head seesaws back and forth, sternum rolling in response. The movement and sound stop. A new series of lists begins with a different small movement of the hand, growing larger until it involves the full body. This pattern repeats for the duration of the dance, at moments on the brink of predictability, then interrupted. In one such interruption, the mechanical voice resolves into “binders full of red women, binders full of yellow women,” echoing the title  ____ Full of Women. Gutierrez’ brief solo is listed as the first section of a three section evening of work, comprised of a series of vignettes. ____ Full of Women offers a strong statement of intent for the evening.

The dancers were clothed like a binder full of women, in various black, white and gray patterns of cheap-looking business casual outfits. I imagined these costumes were purchased from Target, as I’d just tried on shades of these ‘work’ outfits there the day before. I wonder about the significance of this costume choice. What does it means to purchase a business casual wardrobe on a modern dance budget? Costumes from H&M or Target are a common choice for independent artists in SLC, and in the context of this feminist-themed piece I wondered if Rosie was making an intentional comment on the way that women purchasing cheap clothes in the Global North results in unjust labor conditions in the Global South. Or, more likely, she was using the limited budget available. A third possibility struck me as a comment on the ill-fitting, androgynous aesthetic that is also common on the SLC stage. I questioned what kind of contemporary woman these Target-type clothes are made for, and similarly, who this evening of work was addressed toward. As a white, cis female, I feel like both were made for me.

The common choreographic motif of starting simply with a pedestrian movement which builds and develops into an aestheticized version of itself was especially effective in the vignette Chair Games. Three dancers (Ellen Duffy, Katie Jean Dahlaw, and Eve Allen), dance with two chairs. They start simply with walking patterns, placing the chairs down in different places around center stage, sitting and jumping off each others laps, gradually speeding up before adding text. “Please” to each other, “thank you” to the audience, a kind “yes,” sitting with legs crossed. Suddenly a dancer flips her chair, straddling it with a hearty “you’re welcome.” A moment of comedy, I laugh. At another moment in the evening a dancer rolls down in the beginning-of-dance class style and ends with her feet raised in imagined stirrups at the OB-GYN, another recognizable moment that was funny as a cameo among other ideas.

Rosie Trump bills her work as political, yet understated. Throughout the evening I considered the distinction between understating and under-physicalizing movement. Katie Jean Denlaw found a way to be both understated and fully physicalized as she threw her body to the floor in a harsh repeating pattern during 28 More or Less. At another moment in the same dance both Denlaw and her partner Eve Allen acted out a list of famous female choreographers at age 28, clutching their hands like Martha Graham and enacting Yvonne Rainer’s casual skips in a manner that had me chuckling. In Forming and Norming the entire cast found their eloquent understatements as they flowed through the space in a walking pattern, sensing each other’s lead, circling arms guiding the score. This flowing score transitioned into a jagged improvisation of starts and stops, reminiscent of break dancing.

At other moments in the evening, when the movement seemed under-physicalized, the content felt overstated. Such a moment occurred in Vampire, when the dancers emerged from the wings in shiny gold shortsuits to vamp for the audience. The dancing was sexy ironic featuring simple ball changes and circling butts, but I missed a comment beyond “women’s bodies are often sexualized.” Pushing the physical embodiment of the movement could yield a different or more ambiguous interpretation. I was similarly left with questions in the concluding dance, We are Women and We are Sorry. The dancers talked to the audience repeating all their sorries; “we are sorry for having opinions, we are sorry for saying sorry,” etc. The audience was laughing, it was a lovely light-hearted moment to end. Despite the lighthearted nature, this vignette and others addressed classic feminist issues that remain relevant today - abortion rights, the roles that women play in many arenas and social inequities in how female bodies enact these roles. While recognizing the continued relevance of these issues, I wonder how the dance could more clearly and directly consider the intersections of race, class, sexuality and nationality. Though the cast included a diverse group of women, the content of the text and movement felt directed towards a more narrow perspective of contemporary womanhood.

Fill in the Blank was the perfect kind of work to be in Sugar Space; theatrical yet intimate, accessible but filled with ambiguity. The vignette structure helped, keeping our attention engaged with a series of ideas around a bigger thought. The lighting designer Jonathon W. Taylor was pivotal as well, his efforts especially noticeable in The Two Body Problem, where two circles of warm light highlighted the dancers’ movement without overpowering the space. This section, one of my favorites, was also among the most abstract in terms of content. The Two Body Problem was a lovely duet between Laura Gutierrez and Ellen Duffy, to a driving club beat that had me tapping my heels in my seat. Alternating who moves first, it felt almost like a dance off, but with bodies close to each other like a deconstructed contact improvisation. When placed in the context of the other, more explicitly political vignettes of the evening, this was a refreshing moment that carried multiple meanings.

The line between understatement, overstatement, ambiguity, and content is truly challenging in political dance. It was one that Rosie Trump and her performers handled deftly, kudos to them for taking on charged content and exploring it in a strange city.

Liz Ivkovich is the editor of the printed edition of loveDANCEmore. She hails from Middle America and recently completed her MFA in Modern Dance at the U.

Myriad at Sugar Space

Myriad Dance, co-founded and -directed by Temria Airmet and Ashlee Vilos, debuted its evening-length show Doors at Sugar Space Arts Warehouse. The evening was divvied up amongst Myriad’s core choreographing members, resulting in three segments (Doorway I, Doorway II, and Doorway III). The name “Doorway” referenced the host of doors onstage that were hand-painted by local artists, and each one unfolded with varying degrees of completeness.

Doorway I, Airmet’s “Blame the Youth”, introduced the audience to the stage-scape of doors, the dancers clad in a spectrum of over-sized T-shirts. In a brief opening vignette, Kendall Fischer toyed with a collection of keys she pulled out of her shirt pocket. As she began dancing, the collection of keys flew, unacknowledged, out of her pocket and was left strewn about the stage. To the bombastic tune of Kanye West, dancers commenced a series of pedestrian repetitions, often returning to face the audience straight on while running in place. Here the piece did not dwell upon any postmodern sense of ironic juxtaposition, and quickly meandered onward.

Dancers muttered under their breath, wringing their hands. Fischer spoke of what was presumably an embarrassing monkey bar accident. The group pounded on the doors positioned around the stage, only to find them locked and unanswered, and then formed a human pyramid reflective of Fischer’s playground anecdote. “Blame the Youth” scratched at a wealth of personal experiences, but the patchwork of performative choices that feigned embarrassment, pleading, joy, and a host of other emotions diluted the more potent snippets of Fischer’s monologue. The sections involving dancing without heavy emotional directing felt the most genuine, such as a confident trio featuring elastic side leaps and the occasional smirk.

Doorway II, “The Theory of o-o*” (*a graphic representation of super-string theory), was a choreographic collaboration between past collaborative partners Ashley Creek and Symmer Andrews. Their costuming choice was odd (orange leggings with sky blue sarongs tied at the waist), but Creek and Andrews made more compelling use of the doors than had yet to be seen. Two dancers came bursting through a door in the split second before it was pushed away, a dancer shot through a doorway into a strong plank, a duet repeatedly slithered through a doorway and back again. A duet I could have seen over and over again featured Elle Johansen and another dancer who quickly chopped their arms through the air then dipped into an arabesque-turned-forward somersault. Happily, this short duet occurred twice, though I wanted more of these contributions to what could have been a richer choreographic fabric.

Doorway III, choreographed by Ashlee Vilos, was the program’s most substantial work. While the first two felt like fragments even at their conclusions, Vilos wove her thoughts more cohesively throughout three sub-sections (“Me and My Monster”, “Door to Death”, “Forgive You”). As its sub-titles could belie, Doorway III dealt with the idea of “skeletons in the closet” or in this case, a rickety, pieced-together mannequin torso. A trio in party dresses (some of the group’s most effective performers: Airmet, Andrews, and Creek) began timidly, regarding the closeted mannequin with apprehension before bringing it out center stage. Abruptly but with a convenient change in the music, the three began to happily dance with it. A new group of dancers went through the same progression, proceeding to dance while cradling its dismembered arms before shutting it back in the closet.

At a change in scene, Vilos made her way out of a doorway flanked by two cloaked, hooded figures. Drawing in audible, sharp breaths, Vilos contracted, spiralled, dropped suddenly, and liquidly snaked in the most visceral display of movement seen yet. A dynamically varied as well as emotionally engaging performer, Vilos radiated a passion-infused, emotionally-heightened drama that I had not previously found as convincing in the performances of some of her cohorts. Even when she sat, gesturing, on a torso upstage while a group danced fully in front of her, my eyes were drawn to Vilos and the conscious narrative found behind her gaze.

In one of the final scenes, Airmet was left with a lapful of dismembered mannequin parts, which she fumbled with while stumbling around to the group’s droning hums. Suddenly shouting, “None of these are mine!,” Airmet seemed to take even herself by surprise with her wild outburst. Airmet’s performance was specific and confident as she went around the stage returning limbs to their rightful owners and exchanging words about forgiveness with each one. A thrashing solo danced well by Charity Wilcox led into a final group unison section, throughout which I found myself both intently watching Vilos and also wondering why a gap existed between Vilos’ performance and those of many in the group.

While narrative content appeared high on the list of choreographic priorities, honing of performative specifics (what, why, how) could have contributed to more believable performances from the group as a whole. Throughout the evening, the music and voice-over narrations fed the audience a rollercoaster of feelings, but never fully explained themselves by way of the choreography or individual performances. I would be interested to see an iteration of Doors  that used all of its working parts more cohesively and more clearly mined its existing narrative ore. 

Amy Falls is the program coordinator for loveDANECmore. Additionally she is a choreographer and performer most recently seen in the Utah Opera's production of "Aida." 

The Final Hours at Sugar Space

Since creating the loveDANCEmore blog in 2010, I have shied away from writing about student work. When young artists are involved in a process of discovery alongside valued mentors, I don’t want to interrupt. But I have been there, carefully witnessing many student and faculty concerts on the Wasatch Front. About some I couldn’t help but offer my thoughts and about others I remained a happily curious observer. When watching Monica Campbell’s “The Final Hours,” at Sugar Space tonight I wavered between both feelings, having ideas to share about a well-crafted and engaging work and a desiring to insulate what was a magical experience for students. 

“The Final Hours,” was originally choreographed by Campbell as an artist-in-residence at Sugar Space in 2009. Through a new residency this year, the work has been deepened and co-presented with the Contemporary Dance Ensemble at Utah Valley University, which Campbell directs. Featuring eleven dancers spread among two casts, “The Final Hours,” explores The Hungarian Revolution in the 1950s.

Despite the inclusion of two monologues detailing experiences in Budapest related to the Soviet Occupation, a program note makes clear that the choreography will not retell the revolution through narrative. Instead the ensemble, frequently breaking into duets and trios, investigate ideas of hesitance, waiting and unrest.

Small groups weave in and out of ensemble dancing and all events take place in a sunken stage designed by Evan Ritter. Dancers can move on the perimeter, overseeing the action and adding solemnity to the often quiet moments accompanied by local percussionist Mason Aeschbacher, among others. The perimeter also periodically allows soloists to drift closer to the audience, taking advantage of the intimacy available in the warehouse theater.

It’s the space which offers a true degree of difference for UVU students. The BFA candidates typically perform works by faculty, guests and peers in a large university theater which doesn’t always simulate what their performance career might look like, particularly if they stay in town. Sugar Space bridges the divide, bringing the work of teaching artists like Campbell to a more public space and moving students into a shared community where they may work in the future.

In relationship to those ideas, the combined efforts of Campbell, Sugar Space and UVU allow for an effective use of resources to develop and a construct a set which amplifies the 2009 iteration of the work as well as employ musicians and sound editors that create an unquestionably thorough evening. An evening in which students take clear and deserved pride in sharing a complex subject matter through difficult partnering and weighted gesture.

Campbell is not alone in her identity as a professor who is also an artist, with many faculty members at area universities considering ways to move their work with students into more broad contexts. While this experiment worked on many levels, the audience did seem to be made up of the family and friends of the student cast, begging questions about whether or not the idea of changing spaces more radically informs young artists or their associated audiences.

Ashley Anderson directs loveDANCEmore programs as part of her 501c3, ashley anderson dances. The reviews on loveDANCEmore are shared on 15 BYTES, Utah’s Visual Art Magazine.

There are two more showtimes of "The Final Hours" at Sugar Space. 

ONE at Sugar Space

Entering the (relatively new) Sugar Space Arts Warehouse on Friday night was exciting for more than the fact that Norwegian choreographer, Kari Hoaas was performing her evening length work recognizing the continuous global struggle for women’s rights. The venue itself is spacious and filled with possibility and a separate studio on the property hosted an exhilarating dance and music jam with Porridge for Goldilocks before the show. The short sunset-­lit walk from studio to warehouse provided a nice palate cleanser between joyful group improvisation and a somber solo performance.

Hoaas and her collaborators set the scene with moderate fog and a piece of almost opaque plastic hanging from the forty foot high ceiling. There were also thousands of little styrofoam balls strewn across the stage with a purposeful pool near a narrow platform spanning the width of the upper panel of the stage, furthest from the audience, but close enough to see.

The piece began with a clicking sound that built continuously as one light slowly revealed Hoaas seated on the narrow platform. She began in a reclining pin-up girl position, head hanging back so as to appear separate from her body, which turned into a series of slow and anguished poses, similar to a Butoh performance. Her grey hoodie had an attached piece of black fabric covering her face and presenting her as an archetypal, yet contorted, female body. Her physicality was tender and beautiful to watch, but I found that the transitions between her poses were abrupt and lost the illusion of physical distortion.

The transitions throughout the piece, in fact, could have been smoothed because some of the energetic shifts in Hoaas’ careful movement were not supported by the durational nature of the piece. The composition evolved slowly with that repetitive sound of the clicking alternated with Philip Glass’ ubiquitous Metamorphoses. The latter piece of music is wonderful and contemplative but has been used so much that it felt like Hoaas used its power to be a tear jerker. Perhaps it was needed to find the state of sadness that she expressed with her anguished facial expression and trembling movement to present herself in context of the plight of women.

The piece was heartfelt and loaded with raw movement; however, Hoaas’ stated intention of seeking “to challenge the inherent restrictions of gender” was compromised by nervous representations of androcentric female posturing and an overly­ prolonged section which seemed to lack intention beyond the presentation of more typical dance movements.

The dramaturgy was artful and appropriate along with the sound score that supported much of the dance, but due perhaps to the length or an unintentionally awkward dynamic, I wasn’t permitted to feel like an active participant. That feeling aligns with the oppressed female experience, but was projected onto the audience rather than shared through empathetic response by the audience. Despite that, the piece was worth seeing to stir up ideas about feminism in the contemporary moment and to experience a foreign aesthetic that one would not normally encounter here.

Emma Wilson is a loveDANCEmore intern and is a student of dance and environmental studies at the University of Utah. This review, and others by loveDANCEmore are in collaboration with 15 BYTES.

Photo of Kari Hoass, courtesy of Sugar Space.

Sugar Space AIR Courtney Norris: Reminiscences and Whimsy

Local choreographer and Pilates instructor Courtney Norris has compiled a selection of reminiscences and whimsy for her current Artist-in-Residence program at Sugar Space. The show opened with Tis a Gift, a duet created and performed by Norris and Erica Womack. Norris and Womack were lit softly, as if at dusk, their shadows dancing on the wall behind them. They took turns supporting each other, tenderly and deliberately. The two swayed side by side, breathed together, dipped and lifted each other, and occasionally took a pause to place an arm carefully around the other’s shoulder. Norris and Womack maintained a similar relationship in Womack’s Dear Son. In a series of gestures taking place around the abdomen, the two moved together with the mutual understanding of two maternal beings. It is comforting to watch and they seem comfortable in their roles as matriarchs in both dances.

Fulcrum was a joint venture between Norris and local Bharatanatyam performer Srilatha Singh (of Chitrakaavya Dance). Norris and Singh took turns manipulating each other, moving each other’s arms, bending forward and side-to-side. The general feeling was exploratory, as they tested the waters of what each other could and would do. Singh’s hands and eyes began to come alive, in the riveting way singular to performers of Bharatanatyam. Their movements became more independent and branched into unison. Singh knelt in order to view Norris performing a solo, watching as a teacher gazes upon her pupil. Then, Singh began a solo of her own after Norris had ended her’s prostrate on the floor. Singh’s captivating hand gestures (or mudras), were punctuated with stomps and a gaze that told a story on its own. Norris and Singh walked side by side toward the lit candle upstage, as their exchange of knowledge came to conclusion.

Amy Freitas entranced the audience in Awakening Orbit, a solo co-choreographed with Norris and accompanied by percussionist Wachira Waigwa-Stone. Freitas’ arms breathed and grew like hungry vines as her knees propelled a giant silver orb across the stage. Freitas would reach to the highest imaginable place, only to collapse on the resilient orb in a reverberation of bounces, sometimes even diving forward onto it when the orb seemed just out of reach or still in motion. Always playful and radiating joy for the task at hand, Freitas demonstrated a beautiful understanding of her own being of which the galactic silver orb was an extension.

Courtney Norris has woven threads throughout a varied show– of motherhood, of remembering, of teaching, of learning, of exploring, of playing. To see this Artist-in-Residence program, visit Sugar Space Studio for the Arts tonight and tomorrow at 7:30 pm.

Amy Falls recently became the Mudson coordinator for loveDANCEmore. She has worked administratively for the arts here in the West and in New York City. She hold a BFA in Modern Dance from the University of Utah.