UtahPresents: Ann Carlson's Doggie Hamlet

Go see Doggie Hamlet. It’s a rare event, and one that exemplifies what dance has to offer our species. Last night, I drove down Provo Canyon, from a conference I was attending in Midway, to the Salt Lake County Equestrian Park. Just to watch this dance. It reminded me: viewing dance – the rarified act of looking at other bodies and identifying with them – is an irreplaceable way of knowing. 

Those incredible mountains I’d just driven through lay there on their sides, bathing in the sun. The lawn was eerily verdant and flat. We sat on bleachers – like you do at a high school football game – staring at an arbitrary rectangle of grass. Dominica Greene, who you may know from Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, climbed over a fence and a haystack to traipse casually across the long, heroic diagonal. She was wearing what looked like a wedding dress made of snakes. We never saw her again, but she was followed by Imre Hunter-To, who might have been a teenaged ranch hand. He waved toward a faraway road, and moments later several dozen sheep came bounding toward us from the inaudible distance. Dogs, a shepherd or two, and more dancers followed. 

Doggie Hamlet, the brainchild of choreographer Ann Carlson, is hard to describe because the action unfolds at a glacial pace – and yet there‘s always more to look at than you can really take in. You make choices. I spent a lot of time looking at Eph Jensen’s son, the middle-aged caretaker of his father’s flock, who stood still at the far corner of the field, an imposing icon with his cowboy hat, bright white shirt, and cane. (The program notes tell us that the Jensens are the only sheep outfit in Utah that still trails their ewes home each fall via a dedicated right-of-way in Box Elder County.)

Geese and airplanes cross the sky. The six human performers (including Diane Cox, the “onstage” shepherd) comprise a weather-beaten family.

One of many tableaux: the dancers call out for the dogs with a helpless enthusiasm. Their cries and useless flailing-of-limbs make the dogs’ connection with Cox seem like the epitome of ancient human-animal competence. Another image: our heroes dress up in sheep-drag and perform a gruesome Vaudeville number for their uninterested ungulate co-stars. As the night unfolds, the sheep themselves react very slowly to the rising temperature of inexplicable human behavior. The dogs do what dogs do. They labor to make sense of the social predicament. 

Ryan Tacata dances an entrancing solo with real or fake sign language that puts me in mind of the work of Francisca Benitez. Maniacal human-patriarch Peter Schmitz (more King Lear than Hamlet) invites us to sing. The dancers – yes! – but there’s always something else to look at. It’s not anthropology or narrative that lets us understand these humans, it’s what they look like next to the other animals who also run, leap, and stare. Periodically, we even find ourselves to be indifferent to the human concerns on display. We become like the sheep and the empty blue sky. 

Doggie Hamlet asks a lot of the audience. When we are not being sheep, we must work. We must accommodate several different frames, up to and including the valley in which we live. We must look at animals and people in various states of pain and confusion. A logic emerges, far outside of what a story can tell us. We learn something by imagining ourselves as a part of that grimy – dare I say, primitive – pack of humans. We learn something else through our aestheticized empathy with the dog who gets stepped on by a ewe. Another insight comes from watching how the flock acts as one slow-moving mind, but still makes room for the odd leaping soloist. The sun sets on all of us. The mountains turn azure and pink and the grass is still unnaturally green. 

Doggie Hamlet continues Saturday, September 14, at 6 p.m. at the Salt Lake County Equestrian Park.

Samuel Hanson is the editor and executive director of loveDANCEmore. 

Sugar Space presents Suite: Women Defining Space

This year’s performances of Suite: Women Defining Space showcased the work of Corinne Lohner, Haley Stassia, and Halie Bahr. The Suite series is dedicated to “support[ing] the creation and presentation of new work by women choreographers,” and is produced by Sugar Space Arts Warehouse through funding from Salt Lake County’s Zoo, Arts & Parks program. 

Corinne Lohner is a recent transplant to Salt Lake City via New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. In “The Schema of Pretense,” she had Eliza Tappan and Ali Lorenz perform games of discordant make-believe and wrestle wildly amidst a landscape of hobby horses, play telephones, and tubby plastic chairs. Conceits flashed from “here are sixty-something ways to mount a horse,” to “pretend I’m dead and you find me and we had a tenuous relationship so there are things left unsaid,” to “what if we got a divorce” and “pretend I’m lonely, and you’re lonely but not as lonely as me.” Tappan in particular is very good at theater games. Her face and voice contort elastically, with the kind of calculated improvisational ease that only comes from possession of precise comedic timing and being very well-practiced. 

These small fantasies wound down to a long moment of empty, languishing quiet before exploding. The two worked themselves into a frenzy, rolling into each other and all over the room, whispering and shrieking and laughing hysterically. They wrestled like children, like puppies, with anarchy and a caustic seamlessness between tenderness and competition. As my companion at this show put it, “hugging or fighting?” is a format/question that tends to crop up regularly to better (or worse) effect. This time, I really liked it. The window into their intense intimacy broke open towards the end with a drastic lighting change, and from then on Tappan and Lorenz’s escalating hysterics became more and more distant, and almost off-putting. A feeling settled over both myself and my companion akin to the faintly disgusted boredom of being the only sober one at the end of the night, the jokes and secret pacts of friends having become inscrutably dumb and out of reach. 

“Unmasked Vignettes” was a series of alternating solos and duets, and a final trio. It was immediately obvious that this was the piece choreographed by SALT Contemporary Dance company member Haley Stassia. The familiar and popular style of contemporary dance neatly checked all its boxes right away (trace a line to its points, push against something and then undulate away, sweep a leg, meaningfully place your hand on various body parts, etc.). I enjoyed Edromar Undag’s well-executed opening solo, but felt my attention wander as the piece progressed against a soundscape of varied solo piano waltzes, its keyed-in devotion to musicality dampened by the chaotic traces of Lohner’s piece. 

Halie Bahr is an MFA candidate at the University of Utah, and her piece began as Stassia’s ended, with a walking pattern, this time with a larger group and for a longer duration. Bahr’s five dancers transitioned from walking to an across-the-floor combination that could have come from any modern technique class. The combination was repeated many times, with slight variations in movement and facings. A few times, the lights dimmed suddenly and someone would hold up a bright cellphone-flashlight-like beam on a dancer, who would thrash their limbs with heightened intensity. The movement, effects, and intent of the piece were hard to parse and stay engaged with consistently. I’m not sure that the cumulative effect Bahr was reaching for ever coalesced for me, although the piece moved dynamically and was performed very well. 

Emily Snow is a Denver native who now calls Salt Lake City home. She has most recently been seen performing with Municipal Ballet Co. and with Durian Durian, an art band that combines electronic music and postmodern dance.

Bijayini Satpathy in Kalpana - The World of Imagination

I walked into the Leona Wagner Black Box for Kalpana - The World of Imagination (presented by Chitrakaavya Dance) excited to see a traditional Indian dance performance. Little did I know that I would witness magic on stage in the form of Odissi, a historic and sacred dance form from the state of Odisha, on India’s eastern coast. Furthermore, the evening’s soloist, Bijayini Satpathy, was one of the most beautiful technicians and performers to have ever graced a stage. 

After Satpathy took her final bow to a standing ovation, I craved more of her and, as a result, began to research. I was not surprised to learn that Mark Morris, who has attended her performances for the last twenty years, counts her easily among the top five dancers he’s seen in his lifetime. Additionally, I learned that Satpathy, who was born in Odisha, was the longtime star of premiere Indian classical dance company Nrityagram Dance Ensemble, until last year when she decided to push into new territory as a solo artist. 

But it does not take an Odissi practitioner, let alone a dancer, to be mesmerized by Satpathy. This was evidenced by the silence of the crowded theatre during short pauses in between pieces, and as I looked around me, many (myself included) sat on the edge of their seats at times, seemingly forgetting to blink or breathe. 

The combination of Satpathy’s perfectionist attention to detail, physical strength, musicality, ability to be simultaneously grounded and airy, her unwavering balance, and control at all times of every inch of her body would be admired by any dancer; but it is her facial expressions, and more specifically, the power of her gaze, which make her a truly compelling performer. 

In ninety minutes, we watched her transform into a deer, Mother Earth, a mourning woman, a demon, a mischievous five-year-old boy, a tormented milkmaid, a strong woman admiring her physical beauty, and both male and female lovers engaged in a passionate act, to name only a few. In a split second, Satpathy was able to embody a new character, often in a contrasting emotional state, and each time the expression in her eyes would initiate the transformation, her serpentine limbs following suit. 

Satpathy’s eyes had a way of making me feel like she was staring at me and only me, yet her expressive gaze also appeared directed inward, as if she was simultaneously staring into her own soul and internal anatomy, directing her muscles to move with her eyes. In fact, it could be argued that her eyes were all the audience needed to see in order to understand the array of characters and mythical and religious stories expressed on stage. 

It would be a disservice, however, not to reflect further on Satpathy’s remarkable technicality. The Odissi dance form’s theoretical base can be traced back to 500 CE in the Natya Sastra, the ancient Hindu Sanskrit text on the performing arts. The text states that two main dance forms comprise Odissi: nrita, or “pure dance,” which focuses on the perfection of detailed gestures and shapes of the hand; and nritya, the solo expressive dance which stresses the dancer’s ability to evoke and portray emotion. 

While all of the pieces in Kalpana told well-known Hindu stories, pure dance, or nrita, was also shown and celebrated. In the final piece, “Sun Maiyya,” the gesture of making a tight fist was repeated. This gesture is not necessarily new to either eastern or western dance, but here, Satpathy extended her wrist, her elbow gracefully bent with an ever-so-slight external rotation, and wrapped each finger inward so tightly that the audience could practically see air escaping from her palm.

The first piece, “Mangalacharan – An Invocation to the Mother Goddess,” was full of hand movements that a layperson might describe as miming. Instead, a more accurate description of the intricate gestures might be a form of poetic sign language. In each position of the hands, every finger breathed and quivered in tune with the raga music, as if each finger was playing its own musical instrument. 

The dramatic, saturated, red and green lighting by designer Sujay Saple, in tandem with meandering, mysterious, and heavy fog which filled the stage, only further transported the audience to an ethereal realm. Through watching Bijayini Satpathy move, we were all taken to her world of imagination.  

Bijayini Satpathy in Kalpana - The World of Imagination. Photo by Ravi Darbhamulla.

Joanna Emily Reed is a Salt Lake City native currently residing in Pittsburgh, PA. She identifies as an occupational therapist and dancer, and wholeheartedly believes that movement is the most fundamental aspect of life.

Sugar Space presents Sample Tracks

Sample Tracks, presented at Sugar Space Arts Warehouse, featured a compilation of varied artists from the community – just a bite of each. I attended Friday for the “B” program, which featured works by Sonali Loomba and Katie Sheen-Abbott, Fiona Nelson, Temria Airmet, and Aileen Norris. (Thursday night’s program highlighted the work of Cat + Fish Dances, Abbie Simpson, and Rebecca Webb.) 

A demonstration of Kathak and flamenco opened the program, the first form hailing from northern India, the second arising in the south of Spain. “Passion for Percussion” illustrated the common language of these two dance forms and their accompanying musical traditions by placing them side by side. Sonali Loomba and Katie Sheen-Abbott were joined by Abhishek Mukherjee (sitar), Debanjan Bhattacharjee (tabla), Jake Abbott (guitar and vocals), and Sandy Meek (guitar). The musicians were as central as the dancers, in keeping with the leveled partnership between song and dance in both traditions. They started the night with an incredible display of technique enmeshing the two styles, each soundscape a perfectly suited complement. 

Loomba and Sheen-Abbott didn’t fuse their styles as the musicians did, rather each performed their technique in turns, first to their music, then the reverse, before appearing together to perform nearly the same sequences side by side. It was an extremely effective demonstration. Twisting palms attached to undulating arms, twirling skirts, rhythms of the feet and the heels or bells to accentuate them, upper body held upright and forward, intensely expressive and directive eyes illuminating the surrounding space. Both dance styles are centered on expressive storytelling through codified imagery created by the upper limbs, while the feet keep a lighting-sharp and playful dialogue running with the musicians, whose instruments and compositions are uncannily alike. Or maybe not so uncannily – Jake Abbott briefly mentioned the historical development of flamenco out of Indian traditions, a relationship I hadn’t considered before that now seems a curious and obvious probability to look in to. 

The program note for “Semblance” by Fiona Nelson referenced “illuminated faces, phases of the moon, memory, duets in time and space” and a Mark Twain quote – “everyone.. has a dark side which he never shows...” These referents remained somewhat nebulous in relation to the choreography. Black costumes and stark, single-sourced lighting sort of invoked moonscapes, but my mind mostly wandered into aquariums and their dark neon-infused jellyfish rooms as I watched. Side to side, circling, rising, falling, pausing, passing, the dancers maintained a flatly dynamic liquidity suited to the circular twinkly drones of the music. Bright white and subtle green lights overhead reflected off drifting skin surfaces, the particulars of choreography becoming something passed over for the pleasant haze of a windmilling ebb and flow. 

Third on the program was a solo performance by Temria Airmet. As in previous works, Airmet took a very large bite at a contemporary political topic (this time, “the current societal movement of feminism” and #metoo), attempting to distill nuance and context to a pithy minute drama with an uplifting final cry. Spreading a large bolt of white tulle across the stage, Airmet began a monologue on her version of feminism, religious doctrine from her youth and its impact on her self-perception, personal traumatic experiences, and a quick list of some topical social and political crises. She shuffled around in the tulle, punctuating her story with interpretive gestures and two more dance-y interludes, the first to a glitching dream-pop track of unknown origin (for some reason Airmet’s was the only piece on the program to forgo musical credits) and the second to David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” The piece ended with the fist-shaking cry that “this revolution... is working.” Which is fine and good and perhaps true, sometimes, except that in many places and for many people, it is also not. 

The final work, by Aileen Norris and dancers Alexandra Barbier, Arin Lynn, and Emma Sargent, was “The Convoluted Love Ballad of V___.” Tracing something unseen, Sargent was soon joined by Barbier, Lynn sliding in unnoticed upstage. The three spiraled into each other, becoming entangled and entranced in turns. When the music turned to sloshing ocean sounds, they became isolated rocks in its currents, static and shifting in turns until Barbier and Lynn fused together. From there it got... convoluted. The three slid in and out of complicated loves and betrayals; the movement was loose, swinging, and easy. Smiles were a treasure, then a dagger. Nico crooned overhead in a track about a dangerous femme, and when the rushing water returned, all three were linked, pushing, pulling, pushing, pulling in the same direction. 

Photo of Temria Airmet at Sample Tracks by Laura De Backer.

Emily Snow is a Denver native who now calls Salt Lake City home. She has most recently been seen performing with Municipal Ballet Co. and with Durian Durian, an art band that combines electronic music and postmodern dance.  

Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival 2019: Alexandra Barbier

It is difficult to review something that by its nature seems to defy the expectations of viewership. Yes, while tickets were purchased, and a performance setting was defined, my relationship with Be My Guest Performer by Alexandra Barbier was ultimately one of participation, if not straight-forward collaboration. Barbier’s interest in developing this work is expressed as a desire to blur the audience-performer line. What does it mean to perform for an audience? What does it mean to be in attendance for someone else’s movement experience? My writing about this performance therefore has to be a reflection of myself as a performer as well. It was not a performance to be critiqued or analyzed, but rather a shared space with multiple voices and approaches.

From the beginning, Barbier crafted the space in one of The Gateway’s abandoned storefronts in a way that informed the participants that their bodies, their voices, and their experiences were just as important to the evening as Barbier’s were, if not more so. One of the biggest sources of discomfort in “audience participation” is the fear of participating against your wishes. Barbier offered a solution to this by directing (through projected text) the audience to put on a sticker expressing their level of desired involvement. Among varied discussions of audience consent in performance, I found this to be unexpectedly thoughtful. No one was put on the spot by being asked to relocate, being asked to verbalize their consent, or feeling any pressure from the performance itself. The power was in the audience’s hands throughout the evening.

I’m still intrigued by the premise of the evening, especially when it comes to questions of defining what a performance is. If audience and performer are in a shared space together, everyone is inherently participating by being present. So, why, not just for dance artists, but for anyone who makes a living on “stages,” is the meaning and the focus directed at those who have “choreographed” the evening? Barbier examined this principle by upending the “rules” at the beginning of the show. She spoke directly to us, encouraged us to leave our phones on and take pictures, and sat in the traditionally observational space.

Photo of Barbier’s Be My Guest Performer by Natalie Gotter.

The structure of the evening was fairly simple. Barbier presented a series of choreographic structures that the audience was invited to participate in. The most remarkable element of these structures was how removed Barbier felt as a performer. The piece was structured in a way that felt almost like a less-expositional, composition classroom, with Barbier guiding the experience as opposed to being a to-be-observed performer. She built a score through loop pedals that utilized audience voices, offered paper bags with movement directives, and taught a gestural phrase. But then she removed herself from the space and just allowed the audience to play. At one point, when speaking to the audience, she removed herself from the space by facing away and speaking into a camera that projected her image. Even though she was physically present the whole evening, by the end it truly felt like a dance improvisation with everyone in the room participating.

That said, even though the space was inhabited by dancers (mostly), it took a little bit of time to shed the notion of defined roles. To that end, I’d be curious to see how a longer experience could develop and be guided in varied ways. Knowing that this is Barbier’s MFA thesis research, I’m sure she will continue to grapple with these questions, but in the meantime, she created a safe exploratory space that felt fun rather than pressure-laden.

Be My Guest Performer continues Friday, August 9, at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, August 11, at 1:30 p.m. at the The Gateway - in a storefront on the east side of the fountain, near the north end of the mall. Tickets and details can be found on the Fringe Festival website.

Natalie Gotter is a dance performer, choreographer, instructor, filmmaker, and researcher. She holds an MFA in Modern Dance with emphasis on Gender Studies from the University of Utah. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance and Muhlenberg College.