co.da's Romance Novel

Last night co.da confirmed what I noticed at their first concert last year; they are a collective of strong women who know that if you want to be a dancer in this cultural climate you may just have to make the dances yourself. The cooperative company is made up of adept movers who are genuinely invested in the choreographic processes of their peers. But you do get the impression that on the whole, they just want to be dancing, a lot.

This comes across most in the guest work of Camille Litalien, assistant professor from Utah State. The dancers come alive, divergent approaches to performance presence notwithstanding, and show us that their primary focus is navigating the work of others.

But that’s not to say that Camille’s work has the most choreographic legitimacy. In fact, it’s the work of Ariane Audd and Shira Fagan that stand out for me as an audience member. Ariane fostered excellent performances by Jane Jackson & Emily Weaver who truly took risks within the expected structure of women dancing to Billie Holiday. Shira Fagan’s “The Breakup” also transformed the somewhat predictable dance where women act sad and find empowerment through a gestural phrase on a bench. But the choreography sticks to its idea really well and the dancers do too, so it doesn’t seem cheesy or one-off, “The Break-up” is both honest and interesting.

These two works suffered the least from an attempt to fit into the overall theme of the concert, Romance Novel. While a theme helped centralize audience expectations, and certainly elicited laughs as each co.da member narrated a passage from a particularly odd pirate romance between pieces, it also caused some dances to deviate from from their choreographic objectives.

Anne Marie Robson Smock shared her work in progress not too long ago and it began a really poetic system which challenged idioms found in backup-dancing and music videos. As the dance evolved the additions, including a cardboard fake boyfriend and lots of popular guilty pleasure music, began to take away from the bold spirit of the first iteration. She concluded on a high note with a sweet and sad dance to the Magnetic Fields where Temria Airmet is seen as simultaneously confident and vulnerable.

Annie’s work spoke to a larger concern I had about the program. There is an alternating pleasure I take in watching people joyously and humorously dance alongside a nagging feeling that maybe co.da could take themselves more seriously. That isn’t to say address deeper concepts or include more ambient music (please don’t! never!) but instead to follow their own instincts rather than try to create themes or jokes that they imagine the audience will respond to. Some of those instincts might be funny or include allusions to The Bachelor but I think others would not. I think that having a guest choreographer also downplays the exceptionally earnest efforts made by all co.da members to grow as choreographers and dancers.

Based on the enthusiasm of the audience for each work I would say my criticism may be an outlier, but it is something I look forward to investigating in the next iteration as the group comes even more into their own ways of making and doing.

Ashley Anderson directs loveDANCEmore as part of her non-profit, ashley anderson dances. 

RDT, I mean, Stephen Brown!

Stephen Brown’s SB Dance is presenting another of its “Beast” performances this weekend. I went tonight, and sat in a sold out house where everyone seemed eager to see the choreographer’s collaboration with local band Totem and Tattoo.

The piece opened with an energetic romp to the music of Art Blakey, which introduced the cast. This crew, some new faces, some old, flew through space to land on each other or on large tin foil cushions. They rushed to dress and change clothes amidst the chaos, as if to suggest that some of them had not been quite ready when the show started. It was dry, with a not-quite-slapstick clockwork. I found myself thinking an old RDT favorite many of us will have seen- Shapiro and Smith’s Dance with Army Blankets. These two works are similar in tone and matter-of-factness. They both offer opportunities for the dancers to reveal themselves in a simple, task oriented environment. The arc of the works comes from the increasing complexity of the tasks. Nothing more, nothing less.

After the first black out, actor Dan Larringa appeared alone, dressed as a cast member from the last piece. He panted and unbuttoned his shirt, expressing exhaustion while taking credit for dancing in the work that had just unfolded without him. After this ice-breaker, he proceeded to explain to us our program notes, which had many empty spaces in them. This was another opportunity to parade the dancers and learn their names. He then pointed out that naming the dances was up to us. For me this was a turning point in the evening. It lead me to expect that the program -an evidently disorganized grab-bag of short work- might turn out to be more carefully put together than it at first would appear.

What the organizing principle was here I didn’t quite figure out. If I had to guess, I would say that Brown chose these pieces, early studies of possible dances really, to show us just how lucky he was to have dancers like Rosy Goodman, Jenny Larsen and all the rest at his finger tips. (We are also lucky to have them around to dance for us.)

In one section, Christine Hasegawa stood impressively on different surfaces of Nathan Shaw’s body, while Dan Larringa, dressed in a trench coast, recited a psuedo-noir text about “a once honest stripper” turned into a drug addled urban power monger. Hasegawa’s aggression lead her through a violently sexual encounter that included repeatedly performing erotiziced chest compressions on Shaw’s helpless frame. Again I was reminded of RDT, and seeing Daniel Nagrin’s Strange Hero again recently during their 100 Years show. I wished for a little more context for how these tropes might inform a large work, but the little study was dissolved almost before it began.

Ursula Perry’s solo also put me in a historical mood, causing me to reflect on my ambivilence about how the Nikolais tradition in Utah continues to play out in choreography. Perry trudged across the space on all fours while wearing an SB Dance anti-fashion statement- a pair of tulle pants, a sports bra and oversize boots. She stopped along the way to pass through positions that looked lifted from a yoga or pilates video. At the end, the big boots gave way to tiny pink heels that had been hidden within all along. The big reveal was accomplished without much fanfare and Perry exited as she had entered, a fit, technical, if largely silent body in space.

The end of the show, which featured live music from Totem and Taboo, drew heavily on the gurney and other props from previous SB evenings. Once a spectre of the physical absurdity of human death, here the gurney seemed drained of all metaphoric value, as the dancers manipulated it with similar affect to that seen in the opening. These vignettes were also peppered with some of the inexplicable sexual agression of the Christina and Shaw’s duet mentioned above. Some of the show’s more interesting vocabulary  can be found here, and James Eccs dances it with a naturalist charm and understatedness very rare in Utah dance. But the collaboration is not to a point yet where it would be appropriate to try to give it real critical feedback. The band’s music is promising, but I think they need a real drummer for their encroachment into the dance space to feel real. The dance itself reads as series of unmediated choreographic ideas and dance verbiage.

In fact, I wonder if it is even appropriate to review a show like this, which is really in someways just a very formal, if somewhat scattered, high-stakes rehearsal with great lighting. That said, it’s clear that Brown wants us to take it seriously, and whatever you can say about the work, it sold out tonight and will probably sell out on Saturday. I’ll be interested to see what my peers think. I wonder how it compares to memories others might share with me of the earlier iterations of Utah’s self-proclaimed choreographer of the fringe.

Samuel Hanson is a dancer and choreographer living in Salt Lake City.

(cutie &) The Boxer

Tonight I had the great pleasure of seeing Ushio Shinohara perform at the new CUAC building near the corner of 2nd East and 2nd South. Recently re-located from Ephraim CUAC (pronounced Quack) is presenting Ushio’s work in conjunction with the screenings of Cutie and the Boxer at the Sundance Film Festival. While the exhibit of his work extends through March this was, to my knowledge, the only time he would be performing in Salt Lake City.

As the movie title suggests, Ushio boxes his paintings. Wearing gloves covered in foam pads, he dips them in paint and, always traveling from right to left, he aggressively maps out the terrain in flashes of color. While I’d seen online videos of his process, nothing could compare to the act of his live performance. Ushio, who turned 81 last week, is really boxing. He warms up, sharply shifting on his feet and forming attention at the canvas before him.  His translator tells me he is in a group of artists after WWII who each respond to their relationships with American culture. As he begins it’s like a comic book come to life. The POWs and BAMs are enacted through color and texture. I can make the connection to Jackson Pollock and also pop artists but it seems so much different because it’s designed for me to watch; it stems from (and embodies) the traditions of competition and violence inherent in boxing. I don’t only see the action taking place, I hear and feel the paint being arranged before him. Furthermore, I’m interested the whole way through.

I realize that this blog is about “dance”. But something about this performance awakened the audience. Everyone was hollering and noticeably gritting their teeth and his old hands connected with the wall. So many people were gathered in such a such space and with such energy that I was reminded of the vibrancy I so frequently lack at concert engagements. So often we, in modern dance, talk about the “visceral” relationship our work has with audiences; Ushio’s hands creating a landscape before me was the closest I’ve come to comprehending “visceral” in a long time. His performance was clear and expressive and singular in idea as well as form. It was repeated over and over without the expectation of change. It reminded me about what performance can be and how many people could be watching it, with bated breath and free expectation.

The Sugar Show

Now in its 5th incarnation, the 2013 Sugar Show featured choreography that was short and sweet and in my opinion the strongest collection of work in my three years of attending this event.  The panel discussion that followed, however, was unfortunately long and arduous. I feel like much of my frustration over the event is because I see so much potential in it for nurturing emerging choreographers and cultivating audiences of dance enthusiasts. Therefore, I applaud Brittany Reese and co-producer Stephen Brown for continuing to experiment with the format of the show.  While I don’t think they’ve landed on the exact right formula yet, I am glad to see that they are continuing to let the show evolve and adapt to best suit the needs of the local dance community.  I also want to acknowledge Reese in particular for her selfless contributions, of which the Sugar Show is just one, to dance in Salt Lake City.

The opening piece of the evening was a sumptuous duet entitled “Nightsong” by choreographer Monica Campbell. Largely inspired by performer Ismael Arriata’s original score, it explored the “haunting magnificence of the night” and the “ritualistic existence of two lonely vampires.”  In the velvety shadows of the stage, the adept pair enacted a rich language of fully embodied gesture.  I particularly enjoyed watching Mindy Houston’s performance as she flowed easily between attending to her partner and addressing the audience.  I have seen several pieces by Campbell over the years and this work stands out as a fresh choreographic exploration.

“Dance of the Greedy”, choreographed by TaCara De Tevis in collaboration with performers of local hula-hoop troupe Hula Hoopology, brought a unique genre of performance to the concert dance stage.  The piece began with the striking, albeit brief, image of nude bodies huddled in a pool of light.  I could have watched this shape morph and evolve for far longer, but the dancers soon broke apart to manipulate their individual hula-hoops.  As the program notes and title suggest, the theme of the piece addressed the human experience of greed.  The bulk of the dance vacillated between literal representations of greed and interesting collaborative shapes created by the connection of human bodies through multiple hula-hoops.  I think it is unfortunate that the panel discussion seemed to glance over this piece as I feel it stood to benefit the most from the constructive feedback process.  While clearly less choreographically sophisticated than some of the other works in the program, this dance opens up a new avenue of investigation for the fusion of hula hooping and concert dance and the earnest performers seemed eager to engage with feedback.

Tara McArthur’s work “Skewered”, in collaboration with Efren Corado Garcia, created a landscape of illumination and darkness through the use of several freestanding electric lights.  In the opening solo, McArthur highlights Corado’s mercurial flow via hand held work light.  The two proceed into a circular and egalitarian duet, each lifting the other in turn.  Simply put, I love to watch these two bodies move.  Watching them move together and mimic each other’s distinct movement styles?  Even better.  I also particularly enjoyed the bold colors and disjointed prints of the dancers’ costumes.  So often in modern dance costuming seems to be a game of avoiding the issue rather than a task of artistic choice.  It was refreshing not to see dance pants and tank tops in muted tones blending in with the backdrop.  As far as what the piece was about–I’m not sure and that doesn’t really bother me.  For me it was enough to relish in the images of golden light and waves of movement comprising McArthur and Corado’s intimate world.

The program concluded with the powerful all male ensemble “Sojourn” choreographed by Michelle Player and Tami Whatcott.  Men in khaki pants and black T-shirts flooded the stage alternating between moments of randomized, individual movement and unison.  Repeatedly, interesting ideas erupted and dissolved back into the group with an unsatisfying easiness.  I would have enjoyed seeing the choreography hold onto these potential moments of tension and select specific ideas to flesh out more fully.  Thus, the piece lacked a clear sense of progression and seemed like a soup chocked full of delicious ingredients that had not yet had the time to meld into a full-bodied flavor.  The connection between so many dancers sharing the stage, however, elicited a wonderful emotional response for many in the audience that reminds one of the role dance can play in bringing people together in community.

While I thoroughly enjoyed the creative presentations of the evening, the ensuing panel discussion was disappointing.  From the onset of the feedback process, facilitator Stephen Brown deferred to the “expert opinions” of the selected panel members.  It was nice to have several visiting guest artists included in the panel; however, three of the five were connected to Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company.  When asked a question regarding bias, Brown commented that Salt Lake is a small community, but I think that more of an effort could have been made to include artists of different backgrounds and aesthetic viewpoints.  Even more frustrating was Brown’s facilitation style.  After listening to multiple panelists speak in jargon ripe for a graduate-level composition class, he offhandedly invited the audience to contribute to the conversation as well.  All in all, the “discussion” seemed more didactic than engaging and it discouraged me from sharing my thoughts and opinions, of which I had many, on the works.  If I were an audience member with less dance experience, I can only imagine how much more uncomfortable I would have been to think for myself and connect with the work on a personal level.

In the end, the audience voted in favor of “Sojourn” and the panelists for “Skewered”.  Given the tie situation, producers Brown and Reese made the final call and awarded the $1,000 cash prize to Michelle Player and Tami Whatcott for “Sojourn”.  In last year’s Sugar Show, although a single choreographer was chosen as the winner, the award money was shared between several choreographers.  It seemed curious that given the tie situation, this year’s format could not accommodate the idea of financially supporting multiple artists in their future artistic endeavors.

My final thoughts on the evening are that the Sugar Show has a great amount of potential, but that the producers haven’t quite figured out what the goal of the show is yet and in turn, the format to best support this goal.  In spite of all of this, I look forward to seeing next year’s installment.  And hey, maybe they’ll read this review and invite me to be on the expert panel!

Elizabeth Stich is based in Salt Lake City. You might find her teaching at various universities, Aerial Arts of Utah or performing at venues all over town.

dog & pony

This past Friday and Saturday Samuel Hanson and Kitty Sailer presented their show dog & pony to a very respectable turn-out at the Rose Wagner Studio Theatre. The show was what one might call dance theatre, where the movement, text, song, and in this case, some berry flavored popsicles are all employed to create the desired affect. Throughout the hour long run-time two pieces where shown, the first choreographed by Sailer, and the second a collaborative duet between Sailer and Hanson.

honey cake pony begins with a group of bodies moving on an unlit stage, their self-absorbed undulations and body rolls only seen when another dancer switches on a small light that is moved up and down their bodies. It is a stunning, unexpected way to open the show. This small light that reveals or conceals the dancers experiencing somewhat intimate moments with themselves, making a voyeuristic moment in which the audience has been granted a quick peek.

Suddenly the dancers stop touching themselves and form a group stage left. The transition is abrupt and unapologetic, and sets the stage for a post-modern experience where anything can happen. The anything that happens is a bunch of random musings, problematic sore muscles, virtuoso tap solos, and child swimming pool games. These happenings are eventually taken into the audience, crashing and burning that once sacred fourth wall. Sailer and Hanson have a duet where Sailer requests a lap dance, and Hanson shows us a perfectly extended line. These two seem to be trying to get something just right, and have a start and stop, back and forth rhythm between them that feels fresh and unrehearsed, yet still investigated.

This was the second time that I have seen this work, and must admit that I enjoyed it’s previous showing at Daughters of Mudson. While the bones of the piece were the same, the first time was left more open with a subtle, mysterious, even ambiguous sexuality/sensuality. This latter showing was more bold and even confrontational in its sexual nature, with the dancers boldly touching themselves and indulging in charged cinematic kisses. I love that this work is being explored with different intentions and appreciate seeing different versions, but for me, the quieter version spoke more loudly.

dog & pony begins with Sailer and Hanson moving in perfect unison, relaxed yet specific, their two bodies orbiting the space and one another, yet never once colliding or merging. Both of these artists are extremely skilled at navigating between the world of I am a performer and I am a human being. They are able to causally speak to both one another and the audience, while moving or not, in a way that is organic, at times humorous, ironic and poignant, all while maintaining a performative sensibility. They also are skilled at shocking, or at least surprising, the audience, whether it be Kitty devouring the popsicle that was just down her skirt, or a naked Sam being guided by Kitty in a self exploration of his own body, popsicles in each obedient hand. These moments are successful not necessarily because of their shock value, but because they merge within the context of the work as a whole, and provide more clarity and depth. My only wish for this work was for the dancers to, at one point in the latter stages, break the unaffected start stop controlled structure and let pure physicality take over. Yes, I know it is old fashioned, even indulgent of me to want it, but I do. There was a lengthy Chopin section where I started to disengage and tire from the repetitive structure. Perhaps this was the intention, and I should learn more patience, but I would have loved to see remnants of the fluid, soft yet driven opening duet explored again.

The piece starts to finish with Sam reminding Kitty with what comes next, you don’t remember, do you?, and includes Sam putting on some clothes once again (Kitty’s shorts). The two eventually make their way over to the loading door, which they pull open. And then suddenly, we the audience, are left in the theatre, watching the two performers walk away into the real world; a snow covered freezing parking lot. Once again the stage life is blended with real life, and this time it is pure magic.

Erica Womack is a choreographer based in Salt Lake City. She teaches at SLCC.