Of Meat & Marrow

SB Dance’s “Of Meat and Marrow” is one of the most creatively fun productions I’ve seen from any local Utah dance company. Two years in the making, it includes an impressive ten-person dance ensemble, live music provided by Totem and Taboo, and some of the most innovative, and at times terrifying, props I’ve ever seen.

Created by Stephen Brown (the SB in SB Dance), who refers to his carefully choreographed chaos as a “rock opera dance circus,” the production aims to provide a slightly naughty, slightly nude, sexy Halloween happening for adults.

The show opens with a “hellaciously” bad joke by head honcho “Bob Hopeless” (Jeffrey Berke) that catapults us straight to “that place down below” — the one reputed to have the fire and brimstone decor and wretched skiing.  There we find several corpses, including that of the sinuous Juan Carlos Claudio, curled on an autopsy table, being manhandled or broken by several of the other denizens. But these aren’t ordinary autopsy tables: they roll, spin, and dance seemingly of their own volition, often threatening to leave the netherworld’s inhabitants even more dead than they already appear to be.

Soon, Jane Q. Doe (Annie Kent) arrives, protesting, as one might expect, that some mistake has been made and she doesn’t belong here. However, after a brief quiz on her rather limited good deeds while alive, it appears her fate is sealed. More pertinent, however, is why anyone would choose to be eternally bored sitting on a cloud playing a harp when it’s just so much more fun in the underworld. Sure, there’s the occasional torture and the gut churning “food.” But how could anyone resist a fashion-forward Hades where even the dingy garb adheres to the current high-low fashion standard?

SB Dance knows how to make the most of every dancer and every prop. Autopsy tables become dance venues, menacing stalkers, and light reflectors. They also serve to “disembody” dancers who at times appear headless or missing other body parts. Mylar serves as costumes, hiding places, a giant monster, and another variant of light reflector. And the gigantic, heavy, whirling spinning “jack” of a steel sculpture would no doubt hold its own in a medieval torture museum. All this movement is accented by Stefanie Slade’s impressively eye-popping, precarious lighting. And then there’s the equally unusual and impressive live music, featuring the spookily lovely “Mad Meg” (Vanessa Angulo) whose voice, costume, and delivery fit the show perfectly.

Of particular note is that while “Of Meat and Marrow” is an intensely athletic show, requiring the type of acrobatic balance and split-second timing most often associated with the circus, several of the dancers are not youngsters, but rather alumni of some of Salt Lake’s better known professional companies, adding depth to the ongoing insanity.

So does Jane repent? Is she restored to the living, packed off to the pearly gates, or does she live a Persephone-like existence split between the underworld and life? To find out, you may just have to wait until next year’s show.  And that may well be the most devilish torture of all!

SB Dance returns in December with their WTF fundraiser, in January with “The Little Beast of SB Dance” and also sponsors “Cultural Confidential: conversations about art and society” and Sporty Yoga Monday nights.  For more information, see http://sbdance.com/.

Sarah Thompson is a retired physician and psychiatrist, as well as a writer and a fan of the arts.

Salt Lake City performs itself, with our without rehearsal

For curator and artist Kristina Lenzi, performance art is the antithesis of artifice. It is, she says, about “real people doing real things in real time.” She eschews work that smells rehearsed, presenting the kind of “performance art” that makes the presence of the word “performance” feel suspect. As hard as some of her rhetoric–– including claiming that “performance art” is not rehearsed–– is for me to swallow as someone who comes out of dance, perhaps her view is a grounding force in the era of performance celebs like Marina Abramovic. Performance art is a nebulous space– and that’s what makes it a generative one.

The opening work in Lenzi’s Salt Lake Performance Art Festival, which took place Friday and Saturday at the Salt Lake City Main Library, was Gretchen and Zoey Reynolds’ “Watching Ourselves Always for the Return of the Italian Puffies.” Ensconced behind the glass doors of the Library’s SHARE Space, an empty storefront within a row of shops, the mother and daughter enjoyed a two hour game of gin. Their objective throughout, was to cheat against each other, and this is what drew and kept an audience. It was a pleasure to see the two eyeing each other with the strange intimacy particular to a mother and daughter. Gretchen’s work is diverse, brave and never takes itself too seriously. I can’t wait to see more of it.

Shasta Lawton’s “Magic Circles,” which followed, also made use of the SHARE Space. I found this long mediation, which consisted of drawing ever larger circles on the glass, playing with nesting dolls and rifling through papers, completely impenetrable. That said, I enjoyed it as an opportunity to watch how the audience assembled searched the room and Lawton for meaning. Would that other audiences were so dedicated.

Next, in “Gifts,” Macie Hamblin, harvested her rainbow-dyed hair into color coded objets d’artwhich she rationed out to the audience like party favors. In contrast to earlier works, “Gifts” took place in the middle of the pedestrian traffic that fills the Library’s atrium. It was a pleasure to see another possibility offered by the strangers who traipse through this iconic space. Though Hamblin and her collaborator/head-shaver ignored the confused strangers, their fragmentary commentary of glance and shrugs lent the piece much needed playfulness.

Day two brought some works which spanned the Library’s entire operational day. The first time I got on the glass elevator with Jorge Rojas (who was dressed as some kind of bird), he was reading Rumi; four hours later, I was treated to Byron and another Romantic whose lines I didn’t recognize. It’s a pleasure to be read to. It’s even more fun when the intimate act is shared with strangers, who come and go like fellow travelers on a vertical subway. Here was something that really didn’t need much rehearsal, just a few well-chosen texts and a lot of patient work from the artist.

Marilyn Arsem of Boston, MA, whose work Making Time was seen last year at Nox Contemporary, performed “Lost Words” on the third floor. Armed with a hundred-year-old dictionary and dressed like some kind of time-traveling word monk, she opened each one-on-one interaction with a simple query. “Have you lost any words?” Whether or not you had, you came away with one, and with the charge to bring it back into common circulation. My favorite moment was watching her give my friend Luke Williams, a local performer of note himself, the word “pruinose.” Arsem deployed the word herself to describe the lightly frosted foothills above the city. Look it up.

Saturday’s other works spanned slightly shorter periods. Bryce Kauffman out of Colorado was a giant papier mâche ursine in “Bear Necessity.” I’m not sure what his piece was about, but it was a pleasure to watch small children rushing at him as he rocked back and forth holding a giant sculpture. You might notice a theme emerging–– the pleasures of this festival were as much in watching the diverse watchers as in watching the work proper.

Lenzi herself seemed aware of this in her elegant, simple “Fishing.” Standing on one of the walkways that overlook the atrium, she was dressed convincingly right up to a floppy khaki hat. All she did, and all she needed to do, was to taunt the stream of walkers with gummy worms. I watched for almost an hour.

Finally, Eugene Tachinni’s “String,” was very promising and somewhat underdeveloped–– a good representative of the tone of the festival. Basically an experiment in sewing strangers’ clothes together with thread, “String” suffered from a lack of amplified sound while Tachinni was interrogating each of his four victims on “what makes their life better?” The turning point, wherein the artist abandons his tied-together volunteers, came much too soon. The awkward interaction that followed was real and sweet, if not sufficiently suffused with tension. Like much of what I saw, it was a beginning without an ending, within a weekend that demonstrated the tremendous potential energy of artists, strangers, a unique building in a rising Western town–– itself unfinished, a work in progress.

Samuel Hanson regularly contributes to loveDANCEmore and SLUG magazine. This review is posted collaboratively with 15 BYTES.

RDT’s Legacy in review

On Thursday a receptive audience joined Repertory Dance Theatre (RDT) for Legacy, the opener of their fall season which will run through the weekend at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center.  RDT has recently gone through some big changes, and this weekend dance goers not only get to see the company performing Jose Limón’s iconic “Missa Brevis” for the  first time, they also get to see four new company members: Justin Bass, Efren Corado Garcia, Ursula Perry, and Alyssa Thompson.

The show opened with “For Betty,” an energetic romp choreographed by Bill Evans in 1970. This work, characteristic of ‘classical modern dance,’ is heavily structured and musical, the dancers entering and exiting with varied linear and curved shapes, frontal jumping sequences, and energy qualities that build and then morph into something new.  While not as flawlessly executed as the other pieces in the program, “For Betty” was a pleasant way to open the evening, and the dancers’ performed it with sincere enthusiasm and vigor.

Next came a series of solos in which each company member proved that when movement is fully embodied and deeply understood, it is irrelevant when in history it was choreographed.  Staging, movement motifs, musicality, and thematic material that can feel dated and un-relatable are suddenly infused with a second life and seem new again in these performances.  History and Modernity merge, and the audience can feel connected to what has gone before them.  In the solo “I Call Upon Thee, My Lord” (1940), choreographed by Ted Shawn, Efren Corado Garcia manages to shed the held tension that sometimes accompanies historic modern dances when performed by dancers with contemporary training.  He finds softness and a surrender that gives this solo an honest vulnerability.  Consistently breath-taking in all the work that she does, Rosy Goodman Tennant shines with clarity and precision in “Ariadne” (1985) choreographed by Ze’eva Cohen.

The evening culminated with “Missa Brevis” (1970), which called on dancers from UVU and BYU, all of whom merged seamlessly with the company.  This is a masterful work, choreographed by Limón after witnessing the devastation, as well as the hope and resilience that resided in the people of Poland after World War II.  Aaron Wood dances the part of the outsider, a man who is perhaps unable to shake the sadness, anger and loss of faith that can accompany the aftermath of war.  The rest of the company portrays individuals that are able to unite as a community with renewed faith and humanity.  All perform the work with maturity, and this is perhaps the must-see dance piece of the year.

Overall, RDT seems to be teeming with potential and growth and Legacy is a show worth braving these first chilly days of the season.

Erica Womack is an SLC based choreographer who is currently teaching at SLCC.

It was always something big — RW’s 50th Anniversary Season

This weekend, Ririe Woodbury opened their 50th season with “The Start of Something Big” at the Rose Wagner. The concert celebrates the work of Shirley Ririe and Joan Woodbury while welcoming the work of Daniel Charon, the company’s new artistic director. As a whole the evening is Ririe Woodbury’s celebration of dance, one that has employed numerous choreographic approaches over the last fifty years and will continue to play a vital role in the Salt Lake arts community.

The concert opens — and finds each dance interspersed — with excerpts from “Move It” a film by Stanley and Judith Hallet featuring early members of the company. As the film begins, Shirley Ririe climbs out of a sewer and onto the city streets. From that moment it becomes clear that these women have been everywhere and done it all in even zanier outfits than we might imagine. The magical nature of the film creates a situation where anything can happen and the audience is drawn into the action of what these women have been offering. It’s truly rare that something moves a concert along so quickly or creates such a unified investment in otherwise disparate aesthetics.

Many of the works on the program are formal in the way audiences might expect. The works of Shirley and Joan, and those by their choreographic mentors Alwin Nikolais and Murray Louis, feature a range of specific technical markers: clear lines, turning sequences, strong spatial formations and  complex partnering. The company looked incredible  and after a few seasons of watching them explore aggressive virtuosity, it was refreshing to see them dance with such clarity, and in some cases, softness.

Despite these unifying features the worlds of these choreographic works differ greatly. “Clouds” by Shirley initiated the company’s use of dance to explore concepts for children something RW’s now well known for. The dance takes place in a sweet and sincere space where science can become magic. In a sillier turn, “Affectionate Infirmities” by Joan, takes on the use of props popular in the NIkolais tradition. The dancers perform using colorful crutches and it’s clear that while humorous, there is a complex investigation of extending the limits of the body that was unique to a generation. The dance stands up against other light repertory the company frequently features and despite being less “contemporary” than Larry Keigwin’s “80s Night” for example, the dance seems to speak more and in a timeless way.

Also by Joan, “Play It As It Rings” is a highlight of the evening. Originally made in 1970 for Limon dancers Betty Jones and Fritz Ludin, the dance utilizes fractured vignettes that culminate in a domestic dispute among dancers Alex Bradshaw and Bashaun Williams. The dance demonstrates that the “stop, start then change your clothes” aesthetic popular today was being employed over forty years ago to great effect. The narrative is so fractured it’s hard to know where to begin; whether the robotic movements characterizing interrupted intimacy,  competitive delivery of text, tortured expressions playing out slowly on a bench, or the layers of theatrical costuming shuffling back and forth in space.

The one premiere on the concert, “Everything That Changes” by Daniel Charon seems to draw on the vastness explored by the rest of the program. Utilizing a series of connections that build and disintegrate in space, Charon seems to attempt synthesizing the momentum of this company while questioning the directions in which they may find themselves moving. While it’s easy to physically map Charon’s work in context of other choreographers he’s worked with (namely Doug Varone) it seems more important to say that the dance invites us to imagine where something new might be headed. The dance suggests it could be somewhere as imaginative as the locations in the earlier mentioned film —  on a gondola above the fall trees, outside a barn with some bulls, with in water and sand, together in a way that’s unyielding.

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

performance tomorrow!

Tomorrow is the performance of a collaboration between loveDANCEmore director Ashley Anderson and visual artist Mary Sinner.

As part of the Utah Heritage Foundation Cultural Series honoring 100 Years of the Ladies’ Literary Club the two will present “dead dog song” a performance which feature silhouettes and scenery designed by Mary and revisits choreography Ashley developed at the Workspace for Choreographers in Virginia and performed at venues including the Taubman Museum of Art.

The event includes performances by local dancers Alex Bradshaw, Tara McArthur, Ari Audd, Erica Womack, Alysia Ramos and Katie Meehan but also features a pre-show by Gretchen Reynolds, a visual artist and puppeteer as well as live figure drawing of the performers by Mary Sauer, an artist currently teaching at the University of Utah.

You can read more in the Tribune, 15 BYTES and City Weekly’s Essentials.

15 BYTES will also catch you up on some events we haven’t covered in the past few weeks. Daniel Charon’s show at UMOCA as well as details on his upcoming season as Artistic Director of Ririe Woodbury is featured in the edition and the Rose Exposed is discussed in the Daily BYTES. We’ll be, as usual, posting reviews of the shows previewed at the event and sharing them with 15 BYTES.