Screendance in review

This Sunday and Monday saw the beginning of the University of Utah’s Ninth Annual International Screendance Festival. Sunday’s screening was a juried program of student  work from the US, the UK, South Africa and Rwanda. Last night’s was the collaborative work of real life partners Simon Fildes and Katrina McPherson. (You might remember her from her visit and workshop in 2011). We were treated to the world premiere of their new film the time it takes, a choreo-cinematic exploration of the Isle of South Uist, a strikingly wet landscape in the Outer Hebrides.

Ellen Bromberg, who directs the festival and the University’s screendance program, put it best as she was introducing Fildes, who’s teaching a workshop on editing. She suggested that the sense of immediacy which is usually the first thing lost in the transfer from live dance to the camera, is exactly what Fildes lends McPherson’s dancerly intelligence through his editing expertise. Their work also has a nuanced relation to environment from which Utah artists could learn a lot, despite the fact that lush Scotland couldn’t look any more different that the San Rafael Swell or the Salt Flats. They have clearly given a lot of thought to the politics of what it means to settle in a compelling location and to use it as the canvas for a body of work.

Sense of place was also crucial to many of the student works on Sunday. Abandon, by Virginia Commonwealth choreographer Charli Brissey was a droll structuralist experiment revealing as much about the quietly charged landscape of a Richmond neighborhood as it did about the woman who calmly walked toward the camera as it receded through the duration of the work. Haildance, by University of Oregon students Molly Everts and Robert Uehlin, rendered a similar formal brilliance out of a home movie of esctatic choroegraphic spontenaity in a suburban hailstorm played backward then forward. Vulnerability, directed by Ndoli Kayiranga Ezechiel and co-produced by the Kwetu Film Institute, won the small cash prize and deservedly so. This incredible film said more in it’s ninety seconds than most screendances manage in fifteen or twenty minutes. It owed much to the performance of Eugene Dushime, whose nervous energy lent the film’s depiction of Kigali, Rwanda; a striking claustrophobia.

Local choreographers/recent grads also made a strong showing. Wyn Pottratz’s Antarctica and Scotty Hardwig’s we walk blood earth explored Utah landscapes and Rachael L. Shaw’s Symbiosis depicted a handsome young couple sizing each other up in a rainy out-of-focus half-sleep in the sculpture next to Capitol Theater downtown. In the lobby before the show, other films were projected on the ground and on the walls, including Tanja London’s Imprint, which featured Katherine Adler and Amy Falls finding their cool in the woods. London and fellow student Claire Bagley should be commended for their hard work in helping Bromberg put all of this on.

This Friday, Fildes has curated an evening of notable screendances from Europe and Australia. It’s at the Post Theater at 7:30 and costs seven dollars, cash only. He’s also showing an installation, Crux, which deals with rock climbing and Laban notation. It’s on display at the Marriot Library on the first floor for the duration of the week. Both will be worth seeing.

Samuel Hanson makes dances, videos and coffees. He often writes for loveDANCEmore.

SUITE at Sugar Space

Along with loveDANCEmore’s Mudson, Sugar Space has become a “go-to” venue for seeing alternative and experimental dance, along with dance film. SUITE: Women Defining Space is another fine example.

Given that the number of female dancers in Utah far exceeds that of male dancers, one could legitimately ask what the rationale of a “women only” dance event is. But the quality of the choreography and dancers is remarkable enough to make SUITE a worthwhile “dance night out.”

The program begins with “Dust Rising” by Krista Di Lello of Body Logic Dance Company. The dance was inspired by Di Lello’s grandmother, who was prematurely put in a nursing home for dementia and drugged, leading to an untimely death. The title refers to dust rising from covered furniture in a no-longer lived-in home. The dance itself features three dancers in ivory gowns defining both themselves and the space they find themselves in through gestures that reflect the traditional feminine as well as the search for a lost self: looking in a mirror, brushing back hair, wrapping skirts into bundles and others.

Courtney Norris’s “Tis a Gift” is a deceptively simple dance set to traditional folk songs, and featuring Norris and Erica Womack. The dancers alternately dance with and without music, remaining intriguingly still while music plays, silently asking if stillness can be considered “dance,” and finish dancing unaccompanied. Womack’s lyricism lights up the dance, while Norris’s polished choreography demonstrates that it truly is “the gift to be simple.”

Aleisha Paspuel contributed two dance films to SUITE. The first, “Shadows,” features three women dancing and playing on the beach by a body of water.  While it explores the topic of defining space, it lacks focus and cohesiveness and was the weakest link in the program.

Paspuel’s second dance film of the evening, on the other hand, is a charming, unique, creative film featuring only the two dancers’ feet and legs, along with a few geese and ducks. In “”Footage” the feet wake up, walk, dance and play in the park, and ultimately tell a heartwarming story about friendship and love. Kimberly Campa and Kristine Keliiliki’s feet “act” better than many Hollywood actors and demonstrate that well-trained feet really can communicate.

Katherine Adler’s introduction as a professional choreographer, “From Walt, to you, from Us,” also explores not only women defining space but women defining themselves through their bodies and movements. Adler’s choreography is challenging and provocative, and her dancing shows a virtuosity and passion that I haven’t seen from her when dancing in others’ choreography.  This piece, which was originally conceived as a dance for one woman and one man, explores feminism from a viewpoint of women being different, but equal to, men. The piece is strong enough that the device of writing and drawing on paper taped to the wall included in the piece serves as more of a distraction than a support for this impressive debut.

SUITE is a wonderful, informal way to become acquainted (or better acquainted) with some of Utah’s best female dancers and choreographers outside of the major dance companies. It will be performed again Friday, June 6, and Saturday, June 7, at 8 pm, at Sugar Space. Visitwww.thesugarspace.com for more information and tickets.

Sarah Thompson is a retired physician and psychiatrist, as well as a writer and a fan of the arts. Her writing has been published in a variety of magazines and textbooks and she is currently working on a short story and a novel. This review is published in conjunction with 15 BYTES.

DEEP AEROBICS, MUDSON, JOURNAL, MORE

June is shaping up to be a huge month in SLC dance. When big companies go off contract and dance students leave for summer projects it has often become a time of small workshops. But perhaps a signal that the independent scene is flourishing there is more in June than ever before.

STARTING WITH DEEP AEROBICS

Miguel Gutierrez will take the Rose by storm with with work-out form Death Emo Electric Protest Aerobics.

At a top secret time next weekend at the Rose Wagner you can practice and become a master practitioner of this incredible form.

Details are coming soon but we’ve been working with SB Dance (thank you!) to find times that work the best.

Stay tuned.

CONTINUING WITH MUDSON APPS & JOURNAL SUBMISSIONS

Our extended Mudson applications are due tomorrow!

Selected choreographers receive $50 stipends and the opportunity to show their work-in-progress at the Masonic Temple.

Join the ranks of SLC choreographers who have tested out their work and gone on to present at local and national venues.

Volume 6. “Collaboration” is out and about featuring historical/theoretical essays alongside local reviews but we are already looking toward Volume 7.

Themed “Cycles” you can submit whatever it is you want. Whether it’s about somatic practice, performance trends, reflection on compositional strategies or pictures of you doing the same dance 85 times in a row you should send it to lovedancemore@gmail.com

Submissions will be collected through August 1st.

BUT ALSO INCLUDING TONS OF OTHER LOCAL DANCE PROJECTS

After you DEEP aerobics your troubles away you can check out SUITE at Sugar Space highlighting women choreographers. June 6-8, 8pm (Sarah Thompson reviewing).

Then SB Dance in the Jeanne Theater at the Rose for ONE NIGHT ONLY of a ramped up Of Meat & Marrow. June 15th, 8pm  (Ashley Anderson reviewing).

Followed by Daughters of Mudson, curated by our prez Ishmael Houston-Jones and featuring completed works which premiered at Mudson in 2012. June 22 @ 8pm and June 23 @ 2pm in the Rose Wagner Studio Theater

Ballet West's Innovations

Because I’m invested in watching the choreographic process unfold, Innovations has always been one of my favorite Salt Lake City concerts. I find it significant that Ballet West supports the emergence of new methods in dance-making by creating a format for company members to develop new works and it’s a format I wish other companies would take up. Other than “Momentum” a Ririe-Woodbury alumni concert which has been absent for two years, Salt Lake organizations often form clear boundaries between choreographer and performer.

For Ballet West, “Innovations” is a time to break down those distinctions and offer a glimpse into the way each performer is engaged with choreography as well as their ability to propose concepts and a budget to the company. For six years the results have been varied and the past two weeks were no exception. On one immaculate white floor and with complex lighting by Nicholas Cavallaro, patrons could see works by Christopher Ruud, Easton Smith, Christopher Anderson, Adrian Fry and one guest artist, Jodie Gates.

Two highlights were Ruud’s revival of “Trapped” and Easton Smith’s premiere of “Mechanism”. When I first saw “Trapped” in 2011 I felt it was overwhelmed by the score despite an interesting use of space where solos and duets emerged from a confining group structure. This iteration was much more clearly realized but with the same freshness exhibited in the premiere. It was nice to watch him make choices about the work over time and find brevity as well as precision.

Smith’s premiere exceeded his efforts from his last year’s “With You”. Through the two dances his interest in drama was clear but this year the scope of his choreography extended to staging and beyond performance presence. Bringing the lighting structures onto the stage and having the transitions of the dancers take place in the audience space was bold. His choice of costuming was not as clear and much like Adrian Fry’s use of props in “Spun” it revealed that, as with “Trapped” there is work to do beyond these first performances.

While a guest artist, Jodie Gates began her career as most of these choreographers did, while dancing for professional companies. The dancers engage in her rapidly shifting “Mercurial Landscape” with sheer enthusiasm and the dance provides a great cap to the evening with lively partnering, fluid use of space and deep musicality.

Jodie’s work did have me asking where the women of Ballet West were in the choreographic ranks. In past years Emily Adams’ works have been some of the audience favorites but the overarching lack of women’s choreographic ideas speaks to formal traditions of ballet and how there is still much work to do when it comes to modes of representation. Whether it’s coincidence that there were no women in the company interested, it’s worth mentioning that last week at New York’s Danspace Project Katy Pyle tackled these issues and more with her premiere of Ballez, while the BYU Museum of Art showcased women choreographers and Sugar Space prepares their fourth SUITE, a program exclusively for women choreographers.

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

HereAfterHere

Tandy Beal’s HereAfterHere: A Self-Guided Tour of Eternity aims to engage the audience in a conversation about death.  However, the performance is so full of the joy of life, music, movement and creativity that at times death is left in the wings, although still close enough to remind the audience to appreciate all that’s being offered.

The concert is a multi-arts event incorporating dance, video, music, spoken word, theater, magic, humor, and more.  It uses a variety of very creative and effective devices to convey the ephemeral quality of life.  One of the most striking is the use of two levels of “shadow boxes” in which performers appear, then disappear.  These are covered with a transparent screen onto which video can be projected, allowing a mixture of live and video performances.

The choreography, by Beal, who also dances and serves as a guide to the many layers of activity, is excellent, and evokes the wide variety of religions and cultures whose views on death form the backbone of the event.  The dancers are refreshingly diverse, with a variety of ethnicities, body types and ages represented.  Of particular note are a stunning solo by Chien Ying-Wang and the ensemble, all dressed in white, performing a longer, more complex final piece.

The video is a bit predictable, with scenes of stars, galaxies, and someone swimming towards the light.  However, the videos of ordinary people talking about what they believe will happen after death are at times humorous and at times deeply moving.

While humor can be helpful at breaking the ice, communicating things indirectly, and lightening a topic some people find distressing, it is at times distracting.  The show would also benefit from some newer humor instead of tired old jokes we’ve all read online too many times.

The soundscape, by Jon Scoville, is effective and provides subtle openings into the topics using a variety of motifs including the voices of children and babies, thunder, and even subway noises to represent the underworld.  Unfortunately, it sometimes drowned out the voices of the actors.

The performance, which runs about an hour and 45 minutes could use some tightening and a slightly faster pace.

Despite these quibbles, HereAfterHere is an effective, thoughtful, well-conceived, extremely creative look at an unusual topic that is rarely discussed in the arts.  And Beal, through her words and choreography, invites us to explore death and what may follow with open hearts and open minds.

Sarah Thompson is a retired physician and psychiatrist, as well as a writer and a fan of the arts. Her writing has been published in a variety of magazines and textbooks and she is currently working on a short story and a novel.