SUITE

Sugar Space’s most recent event, SUITE: Women Defining Space, was an odds and ends compilation of three choreographer’s works. The show lacked a through-line, but the individual pieces were also unclear in their purpose, making the performance confusing and ultimately frustrating.

With a purpose as lofty as presenting some of Salt Lake’s “emerging women choreographers”, facilitators of SUITE might have made sure that the choreographers commissioned for the show were representative of Salt Lake’s dance scene, which has its brilliant moments. The choreography was a display of apathy; little development of ideas and uninteresting movement were features of all five pieces in the show (choreographed by three women, Joan Mann, Emily Haygeman and Elise Woodruff).

Joan Mann describes her piece kills as an exploration on “80’s gore karate films and experiments with ocular orgasms”. I would describe kills as a stationary study on inactivity. Dancers Caitlin Warren and Chutta walk onto the stage seductively, but immediately separate with passive indifference. Warren is a shining statuesque figure, due mostly to the gold glitter covering her body (full disclosure: I attend the University of Utah and am in the same class as Warren). Chutta is a splayed body on the floor. A projection of a field of golden poppies displayed on the back wall fills in the space between the dancers. If only images could make a dance. Warren’s feet are virtually glued to the floor, with upper body movements that stay close to the torso; occasionally a flick of the wrists sends glitter into the air. Mann may have been aiming for a minimal aesthetic in kills, but the piece is flat—a nice painting, maybe. Mann may have an eye for one dimensional art, but dance is inherently 3-D.

Haygeman’s Rites and Returns was an unassuming piece which got lost within the glaring muddle of the rest of the show. The most memorable part of the dance was a sense of fear I felt each time dancers climbed onto a wobbling platform which threatened to topple. The platforms themselves were innovative, playing with Sugar Space’s awkward theater that hides any movement on the floor from much of the audience, so that elevated figures were more visible. It is regretful that Nell Suttles performed in this piece. A performer who I looked up to as a freshman at the U (she was an upperclassman in the Modern Dance department) Nell’s confident gaze and gentle movements were not utilized in the repetitive choreography in Rites and Returns.

I relaxed into my seat when the arresting image of Chelsea Rowe’s back slowly became illuminated in the Haygeman’s duetRendering 2 (with Michael Watkiss). However, I soon was leaning forward to be able to discern what was happening onstage; what might be deemed “mysteriously dark” lighting actually just left the audience squinting to see what could have been a beautiful image- Rowe standing on a platform with an exaggeratedly long skirt flowing to the floor, her bare back exposed to the audience. The extended lines made by the costume would have been interesting, had Rowe not stepped out of the skirt by the time the lights had lifted. The rest of the dance was an uneventful exploration of back muscles. Yes, backs are beautiful. Yes, muscles ripple.  But if rippling and shrugging of the shoulders are dancing, then what are dancers training for? Any layman could do that (albeit with less muscle tone). Haygeman kept Rowe’s face hidden for the entire dance, distancing the audience from the performer. I was disappointed by the casualness of the choreography, and by how easily Haygeman seems to be distracted from a potentially interesting idea.

Choreographer Elise Williams tried her hand at humor in both Denial and Ode To The Restaurant Business, with little success. Relying heavily on pantomime and props, both dances were mimicries of stereotypical characters. Ode To The Restaurant was a lengthy dance, but the time and effort put into it was wasted due to lack of any kind of editing or self- criticism. The seemingly endless piece takes place in a restaurant. You can tell it’s a restaurant because there is a chef with a chef’s hat on, chopping plastic vegetables with her hands. Or maybe you can tell by the two waiters tying their ties in the mirror as a manager spanks them naughtily on their asses that tip you off. (Interestingly, SUITE claims that the show “addresses the misconception that men make dances and women perform them”. This may be, but when a woman choreographs misogyny into a dance, is it any better than if a man had?) A pointless story of diners dining and women flirting ensues. You can tell they are eating and flirting because they literally eat and flirt. No subtlety or metaphors for Williams. Dancing is almost solely used as a way to travel across the space; apparently, people travel with random jetes now. Slapped on smiles (which wavered into a grimace with any teetering pirouette) and an incredible panoply of props (cardboard cars! silverware and trays and plastic food!) attempted to distract the audience from a lack of dancing and an abundance of bad acting, to no avail.

Choreographers for SUITE were young artists, and this performance may have been their first foray in presenting work for a more diverse audience. These dances seemed like sketches, skeletons of what they might become. No work in the show was satisfying as a whole, but some moments glimpsed at interesting artistry. I wish that “emerging women choreographers” of Salt Lake had been represented by more mature audiences, but perhaps now we can watch these three women grow.

Sofia Strempek is a student at the University of Utah who regularly writes for the Chronicle.

5 days new at urban lounge

Wednesday night I went to Urban Lounge to see Five Days New. As the name suggests, everything in this group show was supposedly made in the first five days of 2011. Erin Haley, a local artist and provacatuer, gathered about ten artists for the experiment. They were mostly musicians, a few illustrators and a few dancers.

The greatest thrill of the evening for me was Juan Aldape’s solo performance. Aldape explored his own relationship to Mexico, as an identity, a possible home, a foil to America, a place to go or not to go. Set to a score that sounded to me like sampling from local Mexican radio stations, a lot happened in this solo that couldn’t have been more than ten minutes long. There was a beer-fueled Tarot reading, a deconstructed Macarena that reminded me of early Trisha Brown, and a rearranged version of Ginsberg’s “Howl”, addressed not to Moloch or America, but to Mexico, where the artist was born.

I wish Aldape would post his performance text on the internet so you could read it and I could read it again. There was humor and urgency as he mused on the Mexico’s problems and broached his desire to one day live there with his wife. He also noted that the couple were about to go not to Mexico but to Europe instead. He promised to bring Mexico back secret knowledge from the 400-year-old city of Belgrade. Although he was quoting Howl, the experience was really a lot more like another Ginsburg poem “America”, part love-song, part appeal. The joking and the witty referential humor was rife, but there was an undertone of seriousness, a sense that these were things that Aldape needed to find a way to say these things out loud to this particular audience.

I’ve been watching Aldape’s dancing for many years now, since we were both in high school. I also saw his acclaimed show last year at the Sugar Show. In this five day old solo, Aldape found something I’ve never seen in his dancing or choreography before. There was this tremendous informality about the way he carried his body, a kind of sexy, skinny sloppiness that reminded me of James Dean. He’s embraced this great sense of comic timing that he’s always had that has sometimes been subdued within his more formalist dancing. Aldape was also playing to effect on the simultaneous familiarity and exoticism that Mexican pop music has for white boys from Salt Lake like me, who comprise the mainstay audience of a place like Urban Lounge. In short, his dancing offered an excellent, thought-provoking beginning of a self-portrait.

There was another, less successful integration of music, spoken word and dance that included University of Utah trained Ashley Creek and Bayeshan Cooper and another woman who I didn’t recognize (anyone know her name?). The dancing was strong, but suffered at the hand of bad Beat-era nostalgic text offered by the musicians. Also worth mention from a live performance perspective was Alison Martin’s musical performance “She”, a haunting evocation of a dead family member that for me became a sort of hyper-honest musical-spectacle. Martin’s emotion on stage was refreshing, and while I wasn’t sure how much of it was real and how much was put on, I found her way of approaching that dichotomy to be quite interesting to watch.

I’m looking forward to seeing Haley’s next curatorial endeavor. Sometime in February she’ll be lighting a fire under a few more local procrastinators to make something for an evening at Kilby Court. Let’s hope dance is represented as well at that event as it was at this one.

Sam Hanson is finishing his B.U.S. at the University of Utah

three sweet years -- the sugar show

Without really trying to sound like a pseudo-intellectual college sophomore trying to impress my study partner at a finals late night study session, I honestly and non-rhetorically ask the question “What is the purpose of dance and who defines what dance is anyway?” Now, now, do not assume we are about to embark on a mishmash of convoluted “artsy” speak. It is a more down to earth and practical question that is asked on a daily basis, whether they are aware of it or not, by the masses that purchase tickets to see a performance.

One such cluster of people are those who attend the Sugar Show every year. I am not going to go into the history of the event, we are capable of finding out this information on our own at the Sugar Space Studio for the Arts website. Give their site some digital traffic, better yet start a Wikipedia entry. The basic premise of the event, now in its third year, is to provide the opportunity for emerging artists to show works in progress, give those artists feedback  and to build audiences. I have had the wonderful opportunity to be a part of the Sugar Show since its debut. In those three years, I have gone from finalist to winner (alongside my friend and collaborator Molly Heller) to now panelist. For these past three years I have witness the budding of this program. My most recent participation with this program has left me in a quandary.

I felt a bit overwhelmed preparing for my panelist position because I knew I was going into this event with specific aesthetic prejudices. Though the goal of the judge is to be as objective as possible, there’s still a sense of subjectivity. The overarching idea of this show is to highlight new, emerging voices- in a way to see the future of dance in this city. No matter how I prepared for the event, there was a sense of inevitable failure in my unbiased decision making. I tried my best to stay away from looking reviews and comments made about the two preliminaries leading up this year’s final. I wanted to see it on a blank canvas. Having been a winner in 2009, I know there’s a lot riding on the final results. It is the difference between spending yet another year tirelessly developing work when you have spare time or being supported financially and administratively to produce a full show, as was the case for Molly and I.

I am not sure what the other panelists wanted to see that night. I knew what I was seeking. I craved new movement styles and experimental ideas. For someone to truly push the envelope.Though we had the POEM rubric (Potential, Originality, Execution and Merit, **this rubric was devised by Neta Pulvermacher, developer of the first A.W.A.R.D. show in NY**) and several questions to ponder as we watched the performance  to assist ours and the audience’s evaluation, it still came down to how I was feeling at that moment in time.  I am completely aware of problematics of performance assessment. Peter Eversmann’s work, at Universiteit van Amsterdam, has observed and written brilliantly about the incorporation of societal and personal developments in theatrical events. His book Theatrical Events. Borders, Dynamics and Frames highlights the significance of “understanding theatre performances as aesthetic-communicative encounters of a wide range of agents and aspects. The Theatrical Event concept means not only that performers and spectators meet, but also that the specific mental sets, backgrounds and cultural contexts they bring in, strongly contribute to the character of a particular event.”

In the case of the Sugar Show, how does each of the panelists personal experiences and the way that the contest is organized as a whole shape the outcome of the event? For example, halfway through the second piece as I am hunched over frantically taking notes, I was filled with anxiety about the possibility of breaking the lead on my pencil. If this tragic event had occurred, I would have surely lost pace in a race to take constructive notes and would have ultimately felt disgruntled. It’s rather important to take good notes and give them to the choreographers. After I received my notes, the first two years, I read them diligently. I wanted to hear the feedback- this included comments like ” I didn’t like the piece with the chicken movement because it was weird”. Over all, feedback from the audience is extremely helpful. Interestingly, if you read the directions in the sheets handed out you found in the fine print that you were encouraged to Tweet any feedback to the artists during the pauses between pieces. A rather puzzling way to incorporate micro-feedback in the face of traditional performance etiquette, where you are instructed to turn off your phone.

If I didn’t have the time to write acute comments, would I eventually choose the winner by the last impression made on me? The bigger question then becomes, is the winner chosen simply by the imprint left on the panelists’ emotions? Of course this is not a novel question. It has been asked several times and we are all aware of it. During the post-performance discussion, a conversation ensued about how our ultimate experience in a performance event is a culmination of personal preferences and affinities towards conceptual or entertainment performances and the effect the work being presented has on us.

So what was my experience and how did it shape my decision? This year I noticed a considerable difference in the audience. Primarily that it was larger since the final night occurred at the Rose Wagner, which can sit +100 ticket buyers. The house was full. Not sold out, but close. Luminaries from the dance community were in the house.  The first two years of the program, solely at the Sugar Space, I could hardly remember more than one professor from the University of Utah. This night, however,  I noticed in attendance Linda Smith (Director of Repertory Dance Theater) and about three other professors from the University of Utah. This might not appear monumental, but it is a testament to Brittany Reese’s diligent work in developing and directing the program. In Salt Lake, though small, it’s challenging to regularly draw directors of companies and university professors to attend shows with emerging artists. The Sugar Show’s programming is gradually moving away from the fringes of the dance community to the center of the arts district. This is an excellent addition. The program will grow and, I am certain, one day have a $10,000 reward like the New York A.W.A.R.D Show it sprouted from. With Brittany Reese’s vision in tack, initial ground work and now SB Dance on board, the show will continue to be a great springboard for many emerging artists as well as a vital component of the local arts scene.

What of the work being presented? I feel as though the past three years of the Sugar Show have brought out the disambiguation of the purpose and future of emerging dance artists in Salt Lake. The presenting artists all had different movement styles and approaches to solving the age old question, “How do I make a dance?” If there’s anything that is certain, Salt Lake City does have a place for “cult” conceptual art. This is the term an audience member used to described his  impressions for reason the audience and majority of panelists voted the way they did. He explained that Salt Lake City does like experimental and conceptual work. Which might hint in which direction my vote went, but because I was too busy trying to keep my short pencil from falling down as I took notes, in the end I just wanted some good ole’ effective entertainment coupled with athleticism and strong technique.

So what is the purpose of dance? It is whatever you want it to be and what it needs to be for you at any given moment. It just so happens that at the Sugar Show there are consequences to your wants and needs. It’s empowering and exciting to know that you took part in helping an emerging artist establish their name. Consequently, the other three choreographers go home dismissing the audience (including the panelists) for not having a true artistic aesthetic. It’s a normal reaction. There are emotions, time, money and futures involved. The makings of a great drama. For that select group of audience members that gathers once a year, they define dance.

Juan M. Aldape

yellow

I just viewed Diana Crum’s site-specific work, yellow, at the Main Library here in Salt Lake City. I was particularly excited about this performance due my recent interest in how environments affect our behavior, our interactions with spaces, and our interactions with others.

For those not familiar with the main library, the entrance is an expansive vestibule with small shops on one side and the library on the other. When you walk in and look up, you see up at least three stories and then out skylights into the sky.

The performers were eye-catching in their unseasonable bright yellow costumes—a great contrast to the huge windows and skylights in the main area of the library, which cast a grey shadow with the rainy, cool weather.

The performance began with the dancers being seemingly blown in—traversing the long space between the two sets of entrance doors at either end of the space. Eventually ending in a long line across the vast space of the vestibule, the dancers began a slow, leaning, and backward descent into the floor.

For me, this section was the most engaging. I was drawn in by the spotted contrast of the yellow costumes to the grayness seen through the windows, the grayness of the steel beams, and the stone floors. They dancers were like beams of light in an otherwise desolate landscape, the landscape of the library.

Part of the reason I was drawn to this section was that it allowed me to view how the people using the library (hereafter referred to as the “people of the library”) interacted with the dancers. Many of them wove a curvilinear path that avoided the dancers without ever acknowledging their presence. It was as if the dancers conflicted with the people of the library’s sense of who or what “belonged” in the vestibule, and they choose to pretend that the dancers didn’t exist. Instead of investigating what was happening, these “onlookers” chose to continue on their way—even though the very nature of their changed path was as a result of the encumbrance of the dancers in the space. Why?

When we enter a library, we expect certain things: books, quiet, and people looking at books or studying. We certainly don’t expect to see dancers in yellow slowly falling to the ground or being blown by an invisible wind.

This piece challenged the people of the library to question their assumptions of the use of the library space. What else don’t we do in this space? And why not? If nothing else, it made the people of the library go out of their way for a moment—change their pattern. It would be interesting to do a study on this kind of work and catalog how many different kinds of behaviors a piece like this might elicit—from ignoring, to a side-ways glance, to standing to watch. And—I wonder if there is any way to motivate more people toward the standing to watch end. Or would that even be preferable?

Thoughts?

Rachael Shaw is a VCU alum & current MFA Candidate at the University of Utah

Raw Moves: Story of Eight reprise

Raw Moves’ The Story of Eight opens with all eight of its props waiting on stage, arranged in a careful pile and under a dim pool of light. Pillows, jackets, a ladder, a very fake looking bouquet of roses, an oversized mattress, a washing basin, some rope, and a few small chairs sit as if posed for use by the school photographer. They ominously await the spooky action that will ensue- an alternately boring and disturbing parade of underdeveloped images of sex and violence mixed with sequences of disappointingly predictable groupthink dance.

One of the first striking images we see is of a man suffocating a woman with a pillow. He smothers her just long enough for us to recognize the image and then gives up on it, moving on to some other quick and dirty partnering around the mattress. This will be a recurrent theme in Eight, a little abuse, nonchalant and then back to the dancing. Eileen Rojas jokingly flirts with suicide (jacket and rope). Nathan Shaw and Ursula Perry will perform what looks like Dancin’ with the Stars’ answer to interracial sex. You guessed it- the rope is alternately a noose, a whip and a lasso. Karin Fenn, the oldest performer, will chase a bouquet tied to a string. And finally, at intermission, they’ll tie Jennifer Beaumont to a chair and leave here there smiling while the lights come on in the house.

At the risk of being compared to Arlene Croce, at this point I must make a confession. At intermission last night I snuck out the back door of the Rose and stole away into the night with my companion. I couldn’t take it any more. I felt like I was watching a pale imitation of what RDT tries to pass off as contemporary with slap stick scenes of racism and sexism added to give the work a controversial flair. In my defense, I had watched the whole thing in January when it premiered, and found it about as satisfying an experience as this review indicates. After seeing the first half last night, I could tell things hadn’t changed much since then.

If I was reading this review I might find myself thinking that the person who wrote it was just uncomfortable with what he was seeing. Everyone in Eight is actually very talented and they care a lot about what they do, and so I owe it to them be clear here. What annoyed me was that all of these very real societal issues were raised in a such brief slap-stick scenes and then dropped like hot potatoes so that they can get back to the real dancing (which wasn’t a tenth of what they’re capable of anyway). But what disturbed me was listening to the audience laughing at all of this. Again, let me make it clear, I love the offensive. I am not even uninterested in the idea of “offensive” humor. But what is there to laugh at when we tie a woman to a chair for no apparent reason, or make a middle aged woman jump up and down for a fake (wedding) bouquet? Where’s the joke? Did I blink and miss something?

I fear the joke is on all of us in the dance community if this kind of work is the best we can do. There a crushing irony when a young company like Raw Moves can only seem to use the reality of their performer’s identities in such a cheap way. It almost makes me long to return to the oblivion of Nikolais where all the bodies on stage are infinitely replaceable, neutered, raceless creatures who emerged from the womb in nude unitards. I hope that we are laughing and crying and standing up to applaud at The Story of Eight because of the very real discomfort I felt. I hope we don’t really think that The Story of Eight is funny or poignant, because it’s neither. I hope we know how bad the music is and how derivative the movement is. I almost can’t blame the dancers, it’s hard to see something you’re inside of for what it is. But I’m having a harder time forgiving the audience or the choreographers. We should know better.

Sam Hanson is a BUS student in Performance & Media at the University of Utah