the very BEaST

 

In anticipation of attending last night’s concert, I imagined the VERY BEaST of SB DANCE to be a unicorn—a mythical beast of which I had heard fantastic stories, but had yet to see with my own eyes.  Since moving to Salt Lake City in 2008, well-intending people have suggested on more than one occasion that I should check out SB Dance.  Three years later, here was my chance.

The VERY BEaST of SB DANCE is a sampling of the company’s greatest hits from 1997-2006, including one hit from each of the selected 10 years.  As excerpts of longer works, each piece offered a glimpse of what SB Dance must have been like in its glory days.  Through the use of his adept dancers, props, and lighting (kudos to Glen Linder), Stephen Brown creates an entire world in a matter of moments.  He is a choreographic master of images.

Like catching a glimpse of a unicorn through shadowy evening mist, I see Juan Adalpe’s shining face staring into a silver bucket that seems to glow from within.  I see Nathan Shaw and Jenny Larsen gliding across an eerie green stage via an industrial kitchen table on wheels.  I see Stevan Novakovich dressed in a long flowing blue skirt, tumbling in the wind of an upstage corridor of light.

Other moments were less like glimpsing a unicorn–Corinne Penka sporting a ball gag and Nathan Shaw baring all–but I presume Brown’s world must include some dark magic as well (perhaps this is the “adult themed content” I was warned of at the box office).  In fact the last three pieces centered on the theme of nudity, which I found to be a bit of an overkill.  However, Shaw’s full-frontal in the final piece of the evening, Waltz of the Dog-faced Boy, offered a cheeky discussion of the use of nudity onstage that reminded me of Dorothy and her gang venturing behind the curtain at the climax of the Wizard of Oz.

In the program notes, Brown writes, “SB Dance’s funding has drooped to a 10-year low.”  I wonder, which came first, the chicken or the egg?  Has the company not made any new work in the last five years because of low funding or is it the other way around?  Either way, my guess is that The VERY BEaST of SB DANCE is a call to galvanize SB Dance supporters for new work to come.  Overall the evening was a wonderful tease, like a series of decadent hor’dourves with no entrée to follow.  Now that I have seen the magic Brown can create in a moment, I am hungry to see how he sustains that over an hour.

Elizabeth Stich completed her MFA at the University of Utah

Two SaltDanceFest Reviews

What Just Happened?

A review of the Guest Artist Concert Series for SaltDanceFest 2011

There are lots of new performers in town right now, as part of the University of Utah’s SaltDanceFest, a first annual for the Department of Modern Dance. It is wonderful. I hope it comes back next year. The artists (three sets of married couples!) are teaching masterful classes for a wide variety of local and from-afar participants. This past weekend, each couple presented work in the Concert Series at the Marriott Center for Dance.

Sign of the Sparrow, performed Friday night by esteemed improvisers Chris Aiken and Angie Hauser, may be a harbinger of things to come, but only if nothing much is coming. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Aiken and Hauser are poised and quietly graceful, and if they do not bring fireworks then perhaps explosions are not the point. I was never nervous for them, which speaks to their palpable confidence, though I did suffer in moments of lift-off which never quite managed to soar. Throughout the 50 minute improvisational evening, which they shared with a musical collaborator, the fabulous Jesse Manno, the dancers walked, they stood, they looked, they sat, they left and they came back. With finesse, they probed the thing that they were making, and with measured glances they probed us as well. Perhaps they did not find what they were looking for. In the end, I felt that the greatest risk they took was to arrive. Sometimes that’s enough.

Eiko & Koma opened Saturday evening with Duet, premiered in 2004. Time stood still. A window was opened. I was reminded of grandparents, fishing villages, and crumpled tissues on the floor by the couch. The performers, with their fierceness and their fragility, threatened to expose every part of a love story that you don’t want to see. When she bowed forward, I waited a year for Eiko’s rough hair to finally drop towards the floor. She breathed, and I saw every bone and sinew in her back pull taut. How much of the power of this duo rests upon her proud shoulders, although she is skinny as a plucked chicken and seems ready to blow away in the dust?

Duet was 20 minutes long, and I just barely had enough time to think all the things that I wanted to think about it. It is incredible that their characteristically glacial timing could hold so much suspense. In the last moment, finally the two are together, and they begin to recline backwards towards the floor. Their faces drop out of sight, like the sun setting behind a hill, making us wait for the end like a lingering twilight on a long evening in summer.

The final couple, Teri and Oliver Steele, take the stage with their formidable dancers in Still Waters Run, which was premiered in 2002. It starts in quiet, but the flouncy yellow dress gives us a hint of the coming rumpus. There will be rap music, a trampoline, and lots of smeared lipstick, but the strongest moments are in the beginning between these two veteran performers. The delicacy of an articulated foot, and an expertly paired counterpoint phrase give us a sense of the quality in the Steele partnership. This promise is not often fulfilled by the deluge of dancing to come. The younger dancers, though sweaty, are not quite vibrant. Everyone seems to be in a different piece, and when the piece hangs on group theatrics, the humor falls flat. Everywhere there are three dance moves when one would do. Occasionally, the speed and strength result in a stirring momentum. There is some tricky work with some lyrics which happen to be from my favorite song from 1991. It’s clever, but when the catchy riff comes on, shouldn’t something happen?

Kitty Sailer in a M.F.A. candidate at the University of Utah

_______________________

The first annual SaltDanceFest has so far been a surprisingly rich experience. The coupled artists including Chris Aiken & Angie Hauser, Eiko & Koma, and Teri & Oliver Steele all bring unique talents and artistic views on movement, dance, and performance. It is a treat to be able to stay in Utah for the summer and have such notable artists come to the Marriot Center for Dance. The festival is small and intimate, which has allowed more space and time to interact and cultivate deeper relationships with visiting participants, artists, as well as with my own research. In particular I am savoring the afternoon performance improvisation intensive class from Aiken and Hauser titled, What Just Happened? Piggybacking the classes the festival included two evenings of performances sharing the work of the featured artists.

Performance improvisation is a fragile act—a vulnerable endeavor. I can’t help but think of this reality as I’m viewing the piece Sign of the Sparrow by Chris Aiken and Angie Hauser. What is “good” performance improvisation and how do we look at it as audience members when it straddles the ravine between the known and the unknown?  Aiken and Hauser both seasoned performers in dance improvisation previewed a workshop of a piece that highlighted the complexity of their field. Admittedly, I feel torn by my respect for them inside the workshop and having a soft heart for the bravery required to do their work, but still have to say I found myself absent from the specific content/product of the show. Maybe it was the wall and the formality created by the proscenium stage? Instead I was drawn in by my own interest in the technicalities of the process. Would I have looked at the dance differently if I didn’t know it was improvised?

The duet is a project inspired by visual artist Joseph Cornell, featuring live music by Jesse Manno, a short textured film, and 60 minutes of what they claim to be 99% un-scored improvised movement. Due to my heightened state of awareness of choice making during the performance I felt engaged by the shifting landscapes on stage and hoping for new information. What is going to happen next? They share the stage with intimate gestures and the soft catching of limbs or body parts, as if it is a translucent appearance of their off stage relationship. Manno’s vocal undulations along with his accordion accompaniment are bold, brilliant and swell the empty space while occasional shadow boxes appear for the dancers to enter.  Their silhouettes adjust from small to big adding an element of spatial perspective taking.

At once their vibrating arms synchronize while they face upstage to reveal the video, which appears to be grains of salt slowly descending. The tension of many moments were built, but lost. I could barely latch on to the substance or communication of the movement then the next impromptu lighting cue would send the dancers into a new direction.

I do have to say it is refreshing to watch improvisation where I don’t cringe or feel nervous for the performers. Both Angie and Chris can hold their own. Aiken bounds his small-framed body into many effortless inversions, while Hauser is enticing with her occasional outward gaze, confidence and easeful flowing joints. The most powerful image was her solo downstage. Her white draped costume glowed blue like a sylph as she glided across the space; light, peaceful, and calm. The physical contact section of the piece displayed their comfortablilty in playing with weight sharing while their bodies flung over, around, and on top of each; smooth like butter. But I kept asking and torturing myself…but why?

All in all, I have an enormous amount of respect for the work that they do and how eloquently they speak about and guide the process of improvisation. It’s a training that is a remarkable journey. One to love and one to hate. And when it comes to watching these kinds performances it can feel the same way. So to answer what is “good” performance improvisation is very complex, because it stands somewhere in the middle of honoring both process and product.  But what I’ll take away from this work is an introspective look at my own improvised life. What is memorable? How can I constantly re-invest myself to create those moments? I would be interested to see how this piece develops in the future as they are planning on evolving the performance under the title ‘Utopia Parkway which premieres in Chicago sometime next week.

The workshop will culminate in a panel discussion with the guests artists on Wednesday 6/8, 8PM @ the MCD and another improvisational performance with festival participants on Friday 6/10, 8PM @ MCD. I would encourage the dance community to come, ask questions and take advantage of their knowledge.

Belle Baggs holds her M.F.A. from the University of Utah

What Type are You at the Rose Est.

“WHAT TYPE ARE YOU?” brought together talented local choreographers Juan Aldape and Sofia Gorder at the Rose Establishment in downtown SLC.  Each choreographer created a work, with a 10-minute intermission in between to absorb the material and grab a cup of coffee.  The two works have in common a thread of social commentary, and the evening’s name is aptly presented in the form of a question, as each piece begs of the audience a certain degree of introspection about their own role in the surrounding society and culture.

A Comic Hero of Two Cultures by Juan M Aldape/DANZAFUERZA examined the relationship between México and the United States as seen through the lens of one individual straddling the two worlds.  Juan integrated text and movement, a difficult thing to do successfully in a performance.  The text, both live and recorded, was one of the strongest aspects of this piece.  The opening text was recorded, and sounded mechanical, detached, as it asked intimate questions about marriage, in the form of a naturalization interview.  As an audience member it was impossible not to begin to examine one’s own relationships with a lens as wide as Big Brother’s.  “What do you like most about her?  What do you like least about her?  If you had cancer, do you think she’d stay with you?”

Comic Hero illuminated the experience of an individual oscillating between marginalization and thriving, living in a place in which the surrounding culture makes up only one-half of his cultural identity.  Emotionality and empathy were elicited in the last section, in which the recorded voice impassively described what was clearly a very charged experience for Juan, an experience described as a “racial bike drive-by.”  Juan’s clever wording of the material and earnest execution of the movement helped the piece to not feel too heavy, while still maintaining its integrity.  The text provided poignant messages about identity, self-realization, culture and love over a backdrop of piñatas, Lucha Libre masks and more.  Perhaps a lot to pack in to one evening’s work, but it felt cohesive.

At one point,  Reggaeton-inspired movements gave way to more traditional modern dance-inspired cadences as the music transitioned to a droning rendition of the Star Spangled Banner.  The metaphor here was most likely clear to the dancers in the audience, but I found myself wondering if there was another way to express this thought in a more accessible way.

When She Becomes Un-Easy by Sofia Gorder opened with three women wearing cutoff jean shorts, printed aprons and colorful tops.  The three created a mosaic of bright plastic smiles to a soundtrack of an old record talking about how to “gain an appreciation of your role as a homemaker.”  The soundtrack provided a humorous backdrop to the frenzied movement of the dancers as they baked, pressed, cleaned and prepared.  Their smiling exteriors and increasingly anxious actions conjured images of the Stepford Wives.  True to this form, the three collapsed by the end, apparently overtaken by their efforts to maintain the perfect household.

Following the collapse, the rest of the dancers entered the performance area as a crew, efficiently maneuvering those that had “failed” off the stage.  The remaining six took turns dancing out of a line, and being helped and adjusted by the other women.  Eventually, each dancer was painted with permanent marker, in a clear allusion to plastic surgery.  The zombie-like expressions of the performers indicated acquiescence, if anything.

The most intriguing section was actually the most difficult for me to watch as an audience member.  All nine women huddled close to the middle of the performance space, and began to dance when one yelled out “yes!”  A Brittany Spears song then played while the women took turns dancing in the middle of the stage, in a way much like “Brittany” probably would.  The others yelled, in fierce support or defensiveness of what was taking place.  Eventually they all collapsed.  The through-line became clear here, and the point that even though we as women may feel liberated from the “stifling” past in which we were expected to cook and clean and please “our men,” overt societal expectations still abound, which we actively endorse.

Gorder proved to be an effective communicator regarding women’s perceived role in society, and was able to raise significant questions regarding whether certain expectations remain relevant, or even more so, in the current social context.  Her movement vocabulary was succinct and well-executed by the talented cast of women involved.  While the issues raised here by Gorder are important to consider in any social context, the piece at times seemed quick to revisit already familiar territory, rather than to consider the material in an innovative way.

About halfway through A Comic Hero of Two Cultures, Juan spoke the words, “All writers only ever write one story- their own.”  This is true of all art, and was well-reflected in “WHAT TYPE ARE YOU?”  Both Sofia and Juan drew on their personal stories to create their art; Sofia’s, of being a woman, a mother, and a provider for her family, and Juan’s, of being a man who identifies with two cultures, in two places nearby in geographical proximity but perhaps worlds away in reality.  I much appreciated being able to listen to these stories.

Emily Haygeman is a graduate of the University of Utah dance department and a graduate student in psychology. She regularly choreographs and performs in SLC.

RDT's Green Map

Repertory Dance Theater is as much an educational resource as it is a dance company. By facilitating dance workshops in elementary schools and using informal performances to reach the community, the company strives to align the arts and education in order to reveal their symbiotic relationship. RDT’s new work, entitled Place: Dancing The Green Map make use of the growing interest that Salt Lake residents have in environmental issues. A collaboration with the Green Map© Project, Place is a dance concert inspired by Green Map © icons that are located throughout a community to label a location’s relationship with the environment. RDT “mean(s) to raise consciousness and concern about the health of our community” by taking the icons and translating them into “movement essays”.

It is not often that a review of a dance performance will open with comments about the musical accompaniment. However, Scott Killian’s dated sound scores were distracting enough to command my attention more times than I would have liked. Killian’s synthesized pop beats and simple melodic progressions call to mind a PBS Public Service Announcement. “Mass Transit,” is winningly performed by Toni Lugo. This piece solidifies the premise that Place is a made-for-PBS special. In “Mass Transit,” Lugo performs a lengthy rap illustrating the benefits of buses and “UTA-Trax,” and the plights of our transit system. Getting funky, Lugo gamely hip-hops her way through the decidedly PG performance, which would have made a lovely educational segment for PBS’s Sesame Street.

Paired with one minute dances in which dancers embody the environmental icon related to that piece— for example, “Solar Energy” was danced by a sweat-swiping, sun-basking Aaron Wood— the affect was that of a long string of short commercials. The music, which alternated between evoking moods of sadness and sexiness, also had trouble correlating with the dancers’ intent, often dictating the style of dance. “Wind Energy Site”: sexy. “Oil and Gas Site”: sad. “Solar Energy”: sexy. “Recycling”: sad. Often times the mood inspired by the music’s attributes diverge from the content of the dance. Since when is recycling an emotionally wrought subject? In “Recycling,” the dancers lean listlessly on one another, their faces torque with despair. The emotions displayed by the dancers are at all times correlated with the music, which sometimes left the movement’s purpose behind.

Zvi Gotheiner essentially created a full length dance performance (although Gotheiner credits dancers as collaborating choreographers). Such singular choreography credit is rare in the modern dance world, where productions are often comprised of multiple choreographers with multiple inspirations and aesthetics. The singularity of choreographic intent in Place, merging environmentalism and dance, was an organizing and unifying device for the performance. The seamlessness of Place was also its’ Achilles heel, though, lulling the audience into passivity. With such a strong through-line required by collaboration with the Green Map©, Place might have benefited from using multiple musical artists or choreographers. In Place, we saw the same interpretation of the icons and environmental issues over and over. Ellen Bromberg, a Salt Lake resident and multimedia artist, provided simple projections of sky-line or waste-sight to add another level of visual stimulation and interpretation of the icon for each dance. With collaboration being a key-focus of the project, inviting even more artist community members could have enlivened the performance.

In the opening mini-documentary projected onto the screen onstage, Chara Huckins-Malaret says that in her experience teaching elementary students as part of RDT’s educational program, “the boys shine a bit more” than the girls do as dancers. Apparently, talent evens out between males and females during maturity, because both sexes performed equally well this weekend. Nathan Shaw transformed his solidly muscular arms into snaking rivulets of oil in “Oil and Gas Site”. On the girl’s team, M. Colleen Hoelscher dissolved into hilarious belly-laughing in her duet with Christopher Peddecord in “Water Pollution”. Glimpses of physical beauty appeared onstage as fleetingly gleams of filmy oil on the surface of the ocean might attract your attention. On the sea, the unnaturally colored water which tells of contamination is unwelcome. In Place, the moments of brilliance were too far and few between, a result of choreographic simplicity rather than physical and artistic inability.

RDT’s dancers brought all of their strength and humility and honest performing voices to Place, and were sometimes met with choreography that seemed only half-hearted. A marathon compilation of 24 dances, the brevity of each piece was at times startlingly incomplete; in “Diverse Neighborhood,” two dancers sit in a pool of light and take a bite of noodles, only to walk off before they have even had time to swallow. Pleasingly, some short dances display all of their intent with quick completion, often aided by literal gestures that allow the audience to grasp the connection between the icon and the dancer. When gestures or literal images are not easily deciphered though, mystification and befuddlement cloud understanding.

As is often the case in performance with lofty aspirations, some goals are met while others fall short. RDT has and continues to collaborate with the community and youth in the educational system with a commitment and energy that cannot fail to inspire a love of dance in others. The recent partnership with Green Map© is no doubt successful when implemented as an educational program. However, bringing education and environmentalism to the stage is difficult to do without acquiring a preaching voice. Humor and RDT’s powerful performers helped to alleviate the educational feel of Place, but leaving the theater I immediately started craving for more dancing, less learning. Luckily, RDT is planning a full day of free dance in May, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. It’s an informal showcase of 45 pieces of RDT’s repertory that will more than assuage my appetite.

Sofia Strempek is a University of Utah BFA candidate and a regular contributor to the Daily Chronicle.

dance-dance review

Dance, in its video form, comes across as tyrannical and forceful, a selective service. loveDANCEmore’s dance dance illuminates an investment that viewers make in order to experience the luster of a piece, whether they contort their own body to see it, or sit hypnotically after gleaning the last leg of the piece in order to faithfully imbibe the entire video. Dance for the camera implores us to give ourselves to its respective States, to situate us in its hierarchy.

“Blue in Tunisia/Dance in a Window,” by Andrea E. Woods, displays a woman in a white dress who dances playfully with the musical accompaniment, in a window frame. As she works within the confines of the frame, the camera-angle subtly induces me into my own verisimilar, uncomfortable confinement: I see the frame at a tilted angle where the dancer’s relationship to my sense of gravity is skewed, and I either acknowledge this discomfort, or perhaps crane my neck to comply with the screen’s logic. If I meander away from this large projector, the section in closet-like areas called “some other things” offers a chance to submit to the physical placement that each dance mandates—Adrienne Westwood’s “small films” casts me as the croucher above the stage as I peep inside a box. This microcosm ensconces two women who rearrange a table, chairs, and a rug atop pavement then switches to a clip of a woman on a hill whose skirt blows in the wind. Once I retract from the footage, I see transpositions of the furniture segment all in single instant of time in front of me in the form of five flip books that lay in front of me. I flip through each one in order to experience the dancer’s precise repetition of their rearrangement-movements; the dance’s structure tricks me into believing that I enable its five repetitions of movement to occur—yet, I only can because I’ve submitted to my role in its structure.

dance dance entertains the illusion of my privilege further: “NOBODY’S DARLING,” by Marta Renzi, depicts a man and a woman in an intimate dance with each other. Though sexually charged dance is commonplace, the setting generates a heightened sense of closeness between me and the dancers: Their sterile, rehearsal-like room simulates an actual rehearsal in a studio at which I am not present, physically. As the dancers caress each other with their movements, the woman in her sports bra, the man in his underwear, I experience the simultaneous sexual tension and comfortability that can (and often) occur between dancers who prepare for a piece, the foreplay that becomes the epilogue for a dance. In this way, the dance beckons my investment in it in the same way as pornography—I internalize its private sensuality through a conceptual, non-physical bridge. I can choose to watch, but “NOBODY’S DARLING” directs the ebbs and flow of my faculties once I do.

Karinne Keithley Syers’ piece, “Untitled (Perth Dickinson),” fabricates the fiction of soccer action figures dancing through the technique of stop action filming. The headless of the two highlights the absurdist nature of the piece, a dance of the paralyzed and the dead; it sections off a pure dancing lexicon, devoid of the act and performance of dance, yet stands, unequivocally, as dance—a poem on paper, the absolute word. Additionally, Betty Skeen perpetuates video dance’s absolutism with her piece, “Eidolon.” Although this video exhibits a real dancer, Skeen’s reversal of the dancer’s slides and rolls in a concrete skate park, in contrast to the forward motion in the piece, indicate the dance’s materialization of the impossible and its ability to dictate the fallibility of my own logic. Despite that, in historical reality, the work is comprised of different, forward-moving clips that Skeen has manufactured to move backwards, the piece nonetheless directs my viewing through and around the dimension of time. Thus, the components where the dancer’s feet lead her to slide up a cement quarter pipe momentarily jerk me to and fro in linear reality, where I am at the mercy of “Eidolon”’s world of mirrors that mandate one visual-temporal perception.

Alexander Ortega is a contributor to SLUG magazine as well as a musician about town.