In one of her smaller black boxes, The Rose Wagner provided a cool, air-conditioned escape from Salt Lake’s summer heat on Saturday, June 16. People gradually filled the chairs for “Daughters of Mudson” in the intimate space, and theatre workers pulled out extra chairs for last-minute concert-goers, which had already seemed especially replete with spectators for the production by loveDANCEmore (a division of the local non-profit, “ashley anderson dances”). The chitchat amongst the audience evinced a sense of community between attending dancers and reinforced camaraderie between the audience- and performers-to-be that evening. Ashley Anderson introduced Daughters of Mudson and the Mudson series at large, explaining how the “ashley anderson dances” Board President, Ishmael Houston Jones, selected five Mudson works-in-progress by five different women choreographers, who would show their completed pieces that evening.
As Anderson wrapped up her introduction to the showcase Rachael L. Shaw’s “Chrysalis” ensued. The piece begins with a woman in a yellow dress pacing along the perimeter of the stage, moving toward upstage left. She approaches the center of the space and begins a pattern of movement involving deep, harrowing breaths, twirling, and then an excruciatingly slow ascent of her forearms that cross in front of her face. She reinstates this pattern with another twirl, with her arms positioned as if she’s a ‘little tea pot,’ then knocks her arm in vertical, 360-degree swing. For me, the positioning of her crossed wrists in front of her face indicates a narcissistic mania caused by self-movement, a disconcerted acquiescence of a previously unfelt state that is to come, but is alien nevertheless. The unease of chrysalis, a transitional state, makes its presence felt as a second dancer follows the same path onstage—again, in a yellow summer dress—drawing out the length of the path that the piece must traverse. As she enters, the first dancer begins to flop around violently, like a rag doll, and plummets from her slow, calculated movement to chaotic flailing that communicates a delirium onset by change without clear resolution. The second performer’s motions involve the raising of her arms (the first dancer kicks up her legs, laying down, then exits). The lone dancer left onstage continues her pattern, just as steady as her predecessor. As a third yellow-dressed pacer enters, the second dancer increases her speed and begins lapse into disarray as well. The third dancer never arrives at her movement niche, as the lights cut out before she can attempt her dance to complete the triptych. Thus, “Chrysalis” evinces a Laocoon-esque quality, but without leaving any foresight as to how the situation will resolve—it leaves me forever in a state of deferment, without expectations, foreboding.
Leah Nelson then took the stage, jogging in place to Edith Piaf, her arms erect in the air, waving them back and forth to begin “Wow, Utah.” The first snippet of her monologue explains why she chooses this limb predicament—because she’s been told that she has prominent shoulders. The performer goes on to section off areas of the stage where she sidles into ‘dancy-dance’ phrases and makes deliberate, angular shapes with her arms and bends her legs, almost as if she’s perverting aerobics workout videos. She seems to begin and end as to strike a pose, so to speak, because she’s all that’s there for us to behold—why not? As she moves about, she goes on to say that there is a lot of space in New York City, referring back to the initial skyscraper she formed with her arms pointed vertically; she subsequently elucidates that, because of this, all the available space has been taken up by people (hence her shoulders). She continues to try out different areas of the stage and how she fits into and around them. She continues her eroded soliloquy by commenting on how the piece feels different than the first time she performed it, as she has been away from her NY friends longer. She then examines the different reactions she witnessed, from New Yorkers and Salt Lakers alike, to her move, still surprised that there can be “opinionated questions.” ‘Oh, are you going for work?’ In a way, she seems to say, as parses through the stage, now in Utah. ‘It’s beautiful there.’ It’s beautiful because I’m here, is what I almost hear, as she moves. She responds to all of the comments and questions by moving. She is about 20 feet away from me, from the front row, and she has the space she needs to articulate herself without me getting all up in her business, without her having to get too close for comfort. Her loose, paisley-esque pants reflect the earthy styles around these parts—she appears to be one who values comfort. Some people, she says, responded with a “Wow … Utah.” She’s all over the stage—Wow! Utah! seems to be the retort. She ends her speech by illustrating how somebody who was already here felt selfishly glad that the dancer would be coming here, as they would in the same city; this person, however, implored the performer to reconsider. Nelson comments on how this person’s words were chosen carefully because they were conveyed via email, and the lights shut off. Ah, carefully chosen words then a slumber paced between another’s work—no more hustle, no more bustle till tomorrow.
A couple ad-hoc stagehands set up a square structure for Emily Haygeman’s ode to her grandmother, “For Dorothy.” It could be an easel. It could be a window or picture frame. A woman enters wearing a blue dress, tearing out sheets of paper and strewing them about the stage, away from the frame. Another woman, Dorothy, comes over the speakers and begins the tale of her daughter’s passage into the world. Dorothy was a Catholic girl, and there was no sex talk in her family’s household. She had had a one-night stand with a boy, and was well into her pregnancy when her parents finally relegated her to a before-unknown couple’s house to have her child then bequeath it to the government. The woman in blue continues the sheet-tearing, and hops to the occasional piece of paper like an island. She twists atop it, almost tortured, but silent in her task. Dorothy continues: She tried to get her baby back from the State of California, but her parents and a priest stopped her, and let her know that what she had done was disgraceful enough. The dancer tears the sheets out—they’re everywhere—and they crinkle beneath her footsteps. Dorothy ends by stating her retroactive gratitude that it all happened so that her daughter would call her and instill her with glee in their reuniting phone conversation. But it also forced her to relive the treachery of her loss of someone she wanted to love face-to-face. Dorothy bids Emily farewell. The dancer sits in a chair behind the frame, like she’s trapped at one side of the structure, but not within. A second performer enters, and a Mama Jungle song plays. The newcomer collects the pages and tapes them up along the frame as the song plays. When the song stops, the blue woman dances, oftentimes to the edge of the frame, just craning her neck out of its confines. The song restarts, and she sits back down, the second woman taping up the pages all the while. Sometimes the song stops abruptly, and the blue performer starts up again until the song restarts, and she begins to appear as a silhouette behind the reassembled pages. She never had the chance to read them in the way they were meant, but can now see them as a pallet. The story seems completed, but it is bittersweet—the two dancers have brought their stories to the other, but remain separated by a re-appropriation of their respective pasts, characterized by scission and the lack of an in-person experience of each other’s journeys. The two part ways in the darkness.
Members of Movement Forum, a local improvisation group, began Ashley Anderson’s piece, all holding hands toward the back in a line, wearing an assortment of clothes—one man wears a brown vest over a blue long-sleeve that lends him a beatnik-like vibe, and one of the women wears a white leather jacket, which Joan Jett would drool over. Five of the seven dancers move to the front, toward the audience in a casual groove to an Elvis Presley classic, “Don’t Be Cruel,” which is eponymous with the piece at hand. The troupe eases into languorous poses, which evince a sense of teenage angst and apathy set forth by the rock n’ roll revolution. Two of the front line occasionally dip onto the floor and emulate a top in its final stages of its spin, a dilapidated (hip hop) windmill that segues into another rendition of “Don’t Be Cruel.” Two in the back synchronize arabesques. Dancers in the front engage in flow-y arm movements like they’re dancing to the music in a nonchalant way, like they came to have fun, but are reticent and don’t want to talk to anybody at the dance party, like contact improv would result in an awkward push away from the pursuer. Anderson seems to take what she thinks it would be like to dance to pop music from the ’50s onward if Soul Train had never happened. Another version of the song plays through, and the dancers continue their patterns of movement. It almost says, I don’t need narrative to dance. In light of what I’ve seen that’s been hip over in NYC for the last couple years, Anderson seems to answer back with a cold shoulder to being bawdy to be bawdy, or injecting her work with mono/dialogues to add a ‘performance’ aspect to the piece. She’s like the girl you try to grind on at the club that turns away and simply says, “I just want to dance,” and finds her swagger through the music that she likes, then gets a drink when she isn’t feelin’ the track.
Kitty Sailer’s gaggle entered in the dark for “Honey Cake Pony,” the final dance of the evening. Of course, knowing Sailer, the entrance isn’t typical, as rude audience members scuffle into the front row, loudly whispering “excuse me” and pointing distracting flashlights to find their seats, and asking each other boisterously if the others are to dance, or if they themselves are to dance. I have known it’s part of the performance all along, but Sailer has inducted me and those around me into her piece; she lets the fine line between audience and performer bleed into an ambiguous space, where she paradoxically inducts us into her work by sending her dance birds to squawk amongst us. As the lights come on, the giddy ebbs and flow of Sailer’s piece go on as she goes to her hands and knees in front of a male performer, Samuel Hanson, who then makes a phone call using her bare, calloused dancer foot. I am privileged enough, at one point, to have Sailer and Amy Falls play kitty cat at my shins and calves, and Sailer lifts my legs up with her back (I tell the two, “I hope I don’t have swass …”). The women she has contracted to be in and out of the piece dance in almost a can-can line in front of Hanson and Sailer, then retreat up to the back corner with the audience, farthest away from me. Sailer forces Hanson’s hand onto her left breast, and then they continue the tele-foot game until Hanson says, “Have you ever had a cat?” They both play a seductive cat in front of each other. Hanson begins a sing-along with the women in the audience—a church-choir-like tune. They begin to file down and the lights go off, and the flashlights come back on. Hanson and the women stand around Sailer, who sits in a chair at the forefront of the stage. Each takes a turn having a make-out sesh with her then sit in front of the kissing orgy to start up the previous song, and the flashlights turn off. Some may say that Sailer doesn’t necessarily take herself ‘seriously.’ They are wrong. Sailer is like a punk rock screamer who holds the mic out to the audience to sing along, foregoing any distance for the audience to make a high-brow judgment that we would normally make with another performance of a Graham piece. She’s weird, but remains enigmatic and without explicit use of the latest Nicki Minaj hit. She masks what this is ‘about’ without having to be Lydia Lunch.
Daughters of Mudson was a success. Plain and simple. I didn’t have to endure the stuffy atmosphere of academia. I saw a showcase with real artists, but didn’t have to fly where I can’t use a public restroom without buying something. I felt scared, and I laughed and I was engaged. I felt that people had made an effort to reinstate the element of danger.
Alexander Ortega is a freelance writer and musician about town. He also works for SLUG.
alexander.r.ortega@gmail.com