Molly Heller + Moth Closet: HEARTLAND + Dance Party

The Heart is Already Whole.

At the end of HEARTLAND, Molly Heller addressed the crowd, thanking us for exploring the many experiences of the heart together. "We entered into this time with the understanding that the heart is already whole,” she said. In this brief moment, Heller acknowledged the completeness of each person inside of our complex and, at times, confusing hearts. Her current work, HEARTLAND, does just this: It affirms and teases out the complexities of the heart, offering no definitive answers but creating space for performers and audience members to increase the dynamic range inside their hearts. The part-performance, part-pop-up-dance-party organized by Heller was just one iteration of her ongoing body of research on the idioms, sensations, and experiences of the heart.

HEARTLAND (+ Dance Party) blurred the lines of performer and audience member, inviting the audience to participate in Heller's research, HEARTLAND, through a dance party at The Beehive in downtown Salt Lake City. The venue’s dark interior was covered in at least 100 pink balloons that varied in hue and size; the overlapping forms made me wonder if we had stepped inside a heart. I showed up barely on time, covered in snow, ready to dance it out on the dance floor, and curious as to how the performance would integrate with a dance party. Heller had described the evening as a complete experiment, and a “dance within a dance.”

Before the dance party started, Heller opened with the most formal portion of the evening. Formal is not quite the right word here, though, as the whole evening defied the conventions of a formal modern dance performance. Dancers Brian Gerke and Marissa Mooney joined Heller on “stage”; the two have been working with Heller on her HEARTLAND practice since fall 2018. Composer Mike Wall accompanied throughout the evening, both making music live and acting as DJ. With the audience watching from all four sides of the room, the three dancers took their space between four pillars in the center, with minimal distinction between dancer and audience. They did, however, wear shiny red and gold clothes that stood out in the low light. The three worked through their practice, moving in and out of trios, solos, and duets. They constructed a boxing ring of sorts with party streamers, just one of many pink party favors floating around The Beehive. Think: pink construction-paper hearts, pink sunglasses, heart candies, etc.

Heller has a distinct physical quality that manifests in HEARTLAND. She alternates between working with highly dense space around her, as if she's processing something unseen to the audience, and with a light, bright, carefree freedom. Gerke moved with his classic ease, but with a sense of effort and struggle inside of the articulation. It looked as if he was trying to move his shoulder blades and ribcage up around his heart. Mooney brought a bouncy, casual quality to the trio. All three moved with birdlike quirks and quick, leggy weight shifts. As they wrapped up their opening trio, Heller stood with her heart open to the sky for a long time. A low, pulsating bounce filled the room, and we all began to pulse with it. It was undeniable, the bass and tactile energy demanding that all who were present be affected by the music, by the dance. Thus began the blurring of lines and the most freeing dance party of my life.

Throughout the next hour and a half, the whole room bounced, flung, snaked, and dug deep within themselves; it was a safe space. One attendee remarked that she hadn't felt this free to dance in public in a long time. The performers danced the entire evening, mingling with all the other bodies. They occasionally danced on the benches around the room or climbed onto the stage where Wall was curating the music. Those who took dance breaks or chose not to dance bopped their heads, grooving in their own way on the sides. Almost everyone had a larger-than-life grin that only disappeared due to extreme focus on the dance.

As my quadriceps grew tired and my heart rate increased, I could not shake the sensation of unspeakable joy. There was something intoxicating about exhausting myself, moving and moving and moving and moving to the music, surrounded by other bodies. Based on my conversations with Heller, this is what she hoped HEARTLAND might offer: a way of locating oneself inside the noise. It is finding resistance and endurance, finding lightness when your chest feels heavy. It is honoring the weight of the body, the weight of the heart.

For those who stayed until the very end, Heller performed a tender yet defiant solo after the dance floor had cleared. She moved as if her arms and legs were attached to her sternum, as if they were extensions of her heart. She skipped and floated, claimed her power and fought for balance. In a final farewell, all three dancers performed a delicate score seated on the edge of the stage in front of Wall as he sang “Fade into You” by Mazzy Star.

Heller has promised more pop-up dance parties, and more iterations of HEARTLAND. She has another one coming up already at 12 Minutes Max this Sunday (February 17 at 2 p.m., in the main auditorium of the downtown Salt Lake City Library). HEARTLAND will also continue to develop beyond this: There is a film in the works, and the practice continues to reveal itself. Read more about the origins of HEARTLAND here and here, and follow its future developments here.

From left to right: Mike Wall, Molly Heller, Marissa Mooney, and Brian Gerke in HEARTLAND + Dance Party. Photo by Tori Duhaime.

Originally from the Midwest, Hannah Fischer is currently pursuing her MFA at the University of Utah. She received an Individual Artist Grant through the Indiana Arts Commission in 2017 and was an Associate Artist-in-Residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in 2014.

OSBA presents Jessica Lang Dance

"Anything is possible once enough human beings realize that the whole of the human future is at stake." The words of Norman Cousins, American activist and peacemaker, echoed over and over in Jessica Lang's “us/we.” A farewell piece for her company Jessica Lang Dance (which is currently on its final tour following an eight-year run), “us/we” was the first on a diverse program presented by the Ogden Symphony Ballet Association at the Val. A Browning Center this weekend.

A delicious visual experience, “us/we” was a series of snapshots that zoomed in and out on Brooklyn, New York. The piece, created with visual artist Jose Parla, featured colorful projections that filled a screen upstage, framing the dancers and at times covering them with projected light. In a phone interview last week, Lang spoke with this writer about the "layering patchwork" of “us/we.” "It's all tied together," she said, which became clear throughout the driving work.

The set included three large pieces of fabric hanging upstage, each piece mapped for specific images. In the first section of “us/we,” the dancers wore costumes made from cloth used by Parla during his painting process, which was captured on camera and then integrated into the visual design. Still images of his completed works were also used. Costume designer Moriah Black constructed a second set of costumes by piecing together graphic-heavy items found at thrift stores from all over the world.

“us/we” spoke to a sense of unity by joining different people, places, and histories, and resonated through the dancers, who didn’t spend much time standing still as they moved between club scenes, busking scenes, and many literal tableaus, and incorporated gestural movement resembling American Sign Language. Notably, the piece coordinated large groups for impressive, multi-person partnering that had a flair for the dramatic, blending ballet and cinema.

The snapshots of “us/we” moved quickly, transitions almost nonexistent between a dance scene set to Ram Jam’s “Black Betty” and a moodier contemporary sequence. Quick changes of pace, glimpses into relationships, and hints at iconic moments recreated the feeling of riding public transportation: I remembered visiting New York for the first time, and the thrill of watching the city rush by on the subway as my face pressed against the window.

After speaking to Lang about “us/we” and then experiencing it, I see it as a love letter to the company: It is the last piece Lang will have made with the dancers, before all move on to the next stage of their respective careers. Near the end of the piece, the dancers appropriately sang “Can't Help Falling in Love.” With crescendos and brief moments of quietude, “us/we” was a lovely symphony of New York, and by extension, the world.

As a presenter, I would have opted to complete the concert with “us/we,” leaving the audience with a sense of connection and desire for more, instead of ending as the show did with “This Thing Called Love.” In contrast to the rest of the program, the fun, swingy Tony Bennett tribute paled in comparison in both content and complexity. The superimposed emotional content of “This Thing Called Love” was also amplified by its placement on the program following “Thousand Yard Stare” and “The Calling.”

Arguably Lang's most recognizable work, “The Calling” is a beautifully clear haiku of isolation and longing. Julie Fiorenza performed it with articulate grace and a length that defied that of her actual limbs.

“Thousand Yard Stare” always catches my breath. There is something about the way the dancers need each other that speaks to more than just the grit and grief of war. It also speaks to a cultural grappling with loss.

When the dancers moved through the exposed stage, the wings and scrim removed, they were in clear relationship to one another, coming in and out of unison, their contact characterized by dependence. They reached, fell, and collided, moving through space as if it was dense with fog and resistance.

Compositionally, “Thousand Yard Stare” was the most readable of Lang's work on the program. In it, she repeated and recreated scenes spatially as well as gesturally, making it easy to telecast personal or imagined relationships onto the dancers. There was a moving moment when a dancer was left out of the fold, powerful because the dancers were rarely alone throughout the piece. Their mass of overlapping bodies quickly pulled her back in, lifted her over their heads, and, surprisingly, tucked her in between them as if placing a baby bird back in its nest.

It is easy to imagine why “Thousand Yard Stare” is one of the company’s most performed pieces. Set to Beethoven's String Quartet No. 15, Op. 132, its music and movement swim together in hope despite the inevitability of death.

The dancers moved as a unit, offering the audience a sense of humanity and redemption. It would be easy to make a dance that captures the brutality of war, but for “Thousand Yard Stare,” Lang was interested in a different approach. ”We still have to carry hope," she says. She chose the music in part because Beethoven wrote the piece while he was dying, looking at the end of his life. Lang’s care and empathy are visible throughout it, and it’s a piece that does for me what I aspire to do for others through my own dance-making: It softens me, nudging me toward an understanding of the things I do not know.

I inquired about Lang’s plans for the future, now that Jessica Lang Dance is completing its final season, and why she is dissolving the company: She intends to keep creating work independently. Managing a company required her to spend less and less time working in the studio, and more time performing administrative tasks.

It’s clear that working with the same group of dancers for nine years has given Lang the freedom to push the boundaries of her aesthetic. I admire her choice to dissolve what many may think of as the pinnacle of success in order to continue pursuing the complexity of her craft. Now, she will take what she has gathered from Jessica Lang Dance and move forward, making new dances with new collaborators. “There are other things I want to try,” Lang says, and her decision reminds me that we can always change paths, make new choices, and dig deeper into that which inspires us.

Originally from the Midwest, Hannah Fischer is currently pursuing her MFA at the University of Utah. She received an Individual Artist Grant through the Indiana Arts Commission in 2017 and was an Associate Artist-in-Residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in 2014.

Ririe-Woodbury: the live creature and ethereal things

Anyone who enjoys being hugged, or enjoys giving great hugs, knows that friendship is as much felt as spoken. In the newest production by Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, a collaboration with Flying Bobcat Theatrical Laboratory inspired by the Red Fred Project, this is made abundantly clear. Words intermingle with choreography and music to generate a rich environment that reminds us that movement can be as powerful as spoken language when it comes to conveying emotions and ideas.

Called the live creature and ethereal things, this performance is a flight through relationships, challenges, and discoveries told by the six dancers of Ririe-Woodbury who are joined on stage by actor Robert Scott Smith. The music by John Paul Hayward and costumes by Jared Gold add to the vibrancy of the production. As an interdisciplinary endeavor, a project that combines storytelling with music and dancing, live creature amplifies the synergies between narrative, character, and choreography.

In the first scene of the performance, a solo by dancer Melissa Rochelle Younker, the bird-like nods of her head and wing-like movement of her arms transform a person into an avian creature. When Smith walks on stage and opens a book that he is carrying, it transforms into a magical totem, lighting up the stage and sending more bird-like characters into the production. This idea that books can animate our environs finds an apt parallel in the ways the dancers become a flock of creatures or morph into mischievous playmates.

Throughout the production, the direction and dramaturgy of Smith and Alexandra Harbold, as well as choreography by Daniel Charon, sustain a perfect balance between fantasy and realism. Unison phrases of movement are used to convey a sense of solidarity and camaraderie among the bird-like dancers. Songs sung by Smith express the subtleties and nuances within relationships. Bashaun Williams stands out as a particularly compelling and charismatic part of the cast, as gifted an actor as he is a dancer.

Some elements in the production reveal that the target audience may be a lot younger than the adults who filled the seats on Friday night, such as the scenes that ask for audience participation and encourage us to repeat the simpler steps performed by the dancers. In some ways these moments connect to a theme of the show: our movements say a lot about our personalities and our attitudes, and perhaps by dancing together we can feel a sense of connection and belonging.

There are similar messages conveyed in the stories: “If you trust yourself, it will be okay in the end.” Or, “You can do anything you put your mind to.” Such statements of perseverance and hope reinforce the sense of dedication and joy communicated by the dancers. Their partnering sequences involve cartwheels and daredevil lifts, revealing how much trust and balance––physical and mental––goes into dancing. Their flocking conveys feelings of bonding and interdependence.

Other moments are hilarious, such as part of the book called “Running on the Wind,” by Dallas Graham and Meghan Waldron: “Sure I’m small, but so are poison dart frogs.” An added delight is listening to parts of this story in Spanish while projections on the screen share excerpts in English.

The final image of the dancers onstage as colorful pages from books flutter down from the sky evokes a feeling of wonder and magic: just as we can learn about people and places from the pages we read, we can also discover new relationships and ideas by engaging with one another.

Several times throughout the performance Smith asks the audience, “If you could tell the world a story, what story would you tell?” Like the performance itself, this question opens up possibilities to reframe and to animate aspects of our lives and our imaginations. And this may be an especially important message for younger audiences who come to see the production. The shenanigans of the dancers span from humorous to poignant, and like the authors who share their stories through the Red Fred Project, they are heartfelt, personal, and inspiring.

the live creature and ethereal things continues today, Saturday, February 2, at 1 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. at the Janet Quinney Lawson Capitol Theatre.

Kate Mattingly is an assistant professor of dance at the University of Utah. She has a doctoral degree in performance studies from UC Berkeley, and has had writing published in The New York Times, The Village Voice, Dance Research Journal, Dance magazine, and Pointe magazine, among others.

Repertory Dance Theatre: Emerge

Repertory Dance Theatre’s Emerge, which opened last night, is a series of little experiments, the stuff of which all good dances are made. Exemplary of a sense of play is company dancer Jaclyn Brown’s Trifle, in which she partners her non-dancer husband, Terry Brown. I didn’t see Jaclyn’s earlier work with her children, but I’ve seen many dances in this vein, from David Dorfman’s Family Project to Victoria Marks’ work with veterans. This trope can sometimes reframe the trained dancer, making them more interesting to watch. Occasionally, the tables are turned, and the so-called professionals are given a run for their money. 

Luckily both Browns are compelling performers and are even more compelling as a pair. Terry has a presence and talent unusual in the context of this shtick. Paired with Jaclyn’s comedic timing, this makes the piece worth watching both as pure choreography and as a study in what a dancer is or isn’t. The sharing of weight in Trifle evinces the listening required in a real life marriage. It’s refreshing to watch Jaclyn try to catch her husband off balance, and the simple motif of Terry squatting down as he mirrors his wife in traveling steps is humorous, endearing, and well-developed. For once, it’s the man who’s doing everything backwards, if not in heels.

MASC (part 2), by Dan Higgins, is perhaps the most ambitious piece of the evening, at least in terms of length. As the lights come up, painted white and corseted in gold, Higgins, Kaya Wolsey, and Micah Burkhardt swing their hips to a series of clubby tracks that mix electronic sounds, Afro-Latin drumming, and a disconcerting text about conquerors on the beach, pockets full of sand, and casual drug use. Is the commentary here meant to be about the history of colonization? (The performers appear to be white as well as being painted so.) Is some idea of sexual liberation at stake? What is all the unison about? MASC is amply rehearsed, but like its score, feels full of mixed messages.

In both MASC and artistic associate Nicholas Cendese’s Tsvey Fun a Min, I feel like the choreographers are trying to communicate something very specific with their costuming choices. And sadly, in both cases, that something totally eludes me. Cendese’s piece makes use of boisterous Yiddish songs by the Barry Sisters, whose music you might recognize from the TV series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. A fifties-era, ostensibly heterosexual couple gambols amiably around the stage in period garb. The man (Daniel Do) is in a dress and the woman (Megan O’Brien) is in a boyish pair of overalls. Here the reversal is straightforward. In MASC, all the make-up, latex, and swooping limbs of a Gaga dancer lost at Burning Man amount to a big question mark. In neither case can I figure out what the choice to queer the obvious costuming is supposed to do to the choreography. 

The highlight of the evening is Navigation, RDT artistic director Linda Smith’s solo for retiring dancer Efren Corado. Smith pieced together the solo with movement from some of the dozens of roles Corado has performed over the last six years. Corado nimbly samples the hairpin weight shifts of Limón and Cunningham, the exuberant footwork of Bill Evans, and much more that I couldn’t immediately place. All the while he navigates a grid of white Styrofoam boxes that cover the black marley floor. What we end up seeing is Corado’s nuance and endless reservoir of characters. He jumps, turns, and skitters, never once upsetting the take-out delivery boxes that mark out the arena. Rarely have I seen a solo so lovingly made for a specific performer. I’m not sure I could imagine anyone but Efren performing this dance. Like the chairs in Pina Bausch’s Cafe Müller, the boxes add a special absurdity to Corado’s gambit through the thousand and one choreographers. It’s like watching your favorite fictional detective (for me, Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect) give a final soliloquy while driving her car through an obstacle course. And the end, well, I won’t spoil it for you if you haven’t seen it yet…

Repertory Dance Theatre’s Emerge continues today, Saturday, January 5, with a matinee at 2 p.m. and a final evening performance at 7:30 p.m.

Samuel Hanson was born in Salt Lake City in 1988. His recent work has been seen in NYC at Triskelion, the Reckless Theater, Weis Acres, Green Space, Danspace through the Movement Research Festival, and in Utah at the Rose Wagner Center and in the Mudson performance series. He has performed for an eclectic mix of artists including Isabel Lewis, Yvonne Meier, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Mina Nishimura, Alexandra Pirici, Ashley Anderson, Diana Crum, and Yve Laris Cohen.

Ballet West: The Nutcracker

Ballet West’s The Nutcracker is the first and longest-running full-length version of the ballet in the United States, created by company founder Willam Christensen in 1944 for the San Francisco Ballet. Legacy still features heavily in decisions made regarding the production and how it is marketed, and the continuity of the popular holiday classic is a point of pride for Ballet West (yet also somewhat of a sticking point). A costly overhaul of the production’s sets and costumes premiered last season with the firm reassurance that the choreography would go unchanged, and the resulting renovation has been well-received.

Tradition and historical precedent are often inescapable factors in the presentation of classical art forms. However, while familiarity and tradition may draw crowds to The Nutcracker whose sizes far surpass those at other productions, changes may be necessary to support the ballet’s continuation. In Ballet West’s production, a dramatic and deeply necessary alteration of the Chinese divertissement was made in 2013, although it was more cagily framed at the time and lacked clarity as to the nature of the need for change. Through the lens of 2018, however, the new Chinese dance is now just one on a wonderful and growing list of alterations made explicitly to end racial stereotypes in ballet. The Nutcracker, a major source of revenue for Ballet West and most ballet (and other) companies, provides the greatest visibility and exposure for an art form that struggles to be current and accessible. This means that the manner in which The Nutcracker represents ballet is even more critical.

The overture to Tchaikovsky’s suite creates an immediate wave of nostalgia the moment it begins. After a pleasant duration, lighting effects new to the 2017 version tastefully transitioned the audience into the theater experience by slowly and perfectly illuminating each of three ornaments depicting dancers that adorned the curtain. The matinee I attended was full of families with young children, who were audibly delighted by this display. Following the curtain’s rise, three successive orders of scale (the snowy town outside Dr. Drosselmeyer’s shop, the street outside the Stahlbaums’ manor, and the Stahlbaums’ front hall) were cleared before Act I began in earnest within the Stahlbaums’ home. As might be said of the entire first act, this felt somewhat tedious, but elements of traditional stagecraft helped relieve the protracted score. Additionally, a great degree of the charm throughout the first act’s party scene was imparted by the impressively well-rehearsed cast of children.

The endless social dances and toy-laden whirling were punctuated throughout the party scene by the convincingly precise and thoughtfully costumed Doll, danced by Kimberly Ballard, and the bombastic presence of Dr. Drosselmeyer. Drosselmeyer, portrayed by Trevor Naumann, was all sweeping iconic pantomime, sight gags, and emotive displays and his presence is critical to the enlivenment of Act I. Rather than the mysterious creepy uncle found in almost every other Nutcracker, Christensen’s flamboyant Drosselmeyer reminds me of the classic trope of the Eccentric Mentor. However, no amount of actorly interpretation could make his cape-swirling, clock-inhabiting presence less than sinister as a sleeping Clara begins to dream the battle scene. The Christmas tree grew in a very effective swirl of light, the battle ended after many alternations between cowering and saber-rattling, and Clara and the now life-size Nutcracker Prince were whisked off to take in the snow scene. The corps de ballet of Snowflakes was sharp, though anyone seated anywhere off center would have missed much of the clarity in their formations. The pas de deux was the first refreshing moment in the ballet to watch less than a full cast’s worth of dancers on stage and was a nice bit of classical partnering in its own right.

Following intermission, through some charming old-school puppetry, Clara and her escort arrived in the land of the Sugar Plum Fairy. The backdrop included an array of iconic world architectures, a kind of visual esperanto that brands universal goodwill. The intention was sweet but naively relativistic, the result troubling as ever given how these cultures are represented later in the second act. The welcoming Pages, danced by students of the Ballet West Academy, were amazing; they executed sequential double pirouettes and grand allegro jumps with confidence and skill. Their counterparts in the Ladies-in-Waiting were disappointingly mere stage-dressing, and overdressed at that, bearing cumbersome decorative staves and overwrought headdresses. All of which was very Old-World European in aspect… until the arrival of the costumed monkeys, dressed in fezzes and vests, who were cast-listed as “Servants” and whose mode of movement was a too-familiar servile, half-bowing trot. Act II had just begun and already I found myself questioning this young German girl’s grasp of the nuances of the Global Village and its neocolonial entanglements, herself and her worldly reverie poised on the cusp of the Second Industrial Revolution.

The entrance of the Sugar Plum Fairy was dramatic, a vision of beauty, strength, and composure. I could have done without the butterfly wings affixed temporarily to her back, but I could also see how the kids in the audience might have enjoyed them. Emily Adams was completely stunning in her Sugar Plum variation, articulating every inch of the iconic solo and the final pas de deux. The series of divertissements that preceded her were largely enjoyable. The Spanish divertissement was a fun and lively trio, the Mirlitons found ease in a technical ensemble, and the Russian dance was both crowd-pleasing and reflective of a folk dance tradition. The Waltz of the Flowers was busy yet lovely, and I would gladly watch Katherine Lawrence as the lead flower do beautiful battement battu down the diagonal at the expense of the many pressed high lifts, which were less exciting than her incredible execution.

Mother Buffoon was a delightfully overblown archetype of the “pantomime dame,” in the music hall mimesis drag tradition. I think more could be done with the role to honor that tradition, as was achieved so well in last season’s production of Sir Frederick Ashton’s Cinderella. Mother Buffoon’s divergent torso and borrowed pair of legs make for fantastic vaudeville and are great technical costuming at that. The tiny bumblebees’ costumes looked rather cheap in comparison, and it is anyone’s guess as to why they are in and out of her skirts, but there exists both historical and local precedent: the 1892 premiere of Petipa and Ivanov’s Nutcracker ended with a hive of dancing bees, and Christensen’s production now lives on in the Beehive State. The bees are also super cute.

The Chinese and Arabian dances were more troublesome than enjoyable for me. The Chinese dance formerly exemplified racist caricature and now, following its 2013 reworking, is a skillful display with an element of cultural celebration. The alteration was deeply necessary and I am appreciative of Artistic Director Adam Sklute’s initiative in making the change. I also appreciate his commentary on it, which appears in the Final Bow For Yellowface, an initiative spearheaded by the incredible New York City Ballet soloist and “rogue ballerina” Georgina Pazcoguin. The new Chinese Warrior dance was imported from an old San Francisco Ballet version, choreographed by Willam Christensen’s brother Lew, and thus historically tied to Ballet West’s production. However, despite this retroactive commitment to end yellowface, we saw quite a bit of it still in Ballet West’s performance of Stanton Welch’s Madame Butterfly in 2016.

I am concerned that, without a similar such alternative, the Arabian Dance will not get the reworking that it too absolutely needs. The admission that many of the divertissements are caricature and stereotype, but to varying degrees of insult, is worrisome. The Arabian dance includes the same sexist servility found in the former Chinese dance, with the Arabian female lead also utterly sexualized and exoticized, flailing her arms and gyrating in a way that is needlessly outside of keeping with the rest of the dance and utterly divergent from any national or ethnic folk dance tradition. Ballet West has recently exemplified commitment to representing diversity in ballet, supporting female choreographers, and engaging in cultural ambassadorship as a touring company. I am grateful to support a company that actively progresses ballet in the twenty-first century. I hope I can count on Ballet West to do no less than excise the remaining blithe racism in their historical production of The Nutcracker.

Nora Price is a Milwaukee native living and working in Salt Lake City. She can be seen performing with Municipal Ballet Co. and with Durian Durian, an art band that combines post-punk music and contemporary dance.