Step Afrika!

Step Afrika!, which performed this past Saturday at Kingsbury Hall, is the first professional dance company dedicated to the practice to stepping. Step-dancing uses the body as an instrument to create complex, percussive rhythms. I could go into detail about the structure of each individual piece, or talk about how talented the dancers in this company are, with their high energy and flawless technique. What was more important about this performance was how Step Afrika! made a 2,000-person theater feel as intimate as a small black box. This nine member dance company was able to bring every audience member into their community. You felt like you were at home and like the dancers were your friends.

In the opening work, Tribute, Step Afrika! paid homage to the roots of stepping. This African-American dance form was birthed in East Coast college sororities and fraternities. Introducing this history was vital in bringing the audience in. Dressed in matching fraternity sweaters and performing unison choreography and simple, readable rhythms; they broke the wall of intimidation that’s often felt in dance performances in the United States. Everyone started having fun right away.

Throughout the performance I never noticed a transition between dances. Everything was seamlessly blended together. The audience was as awake and energetic as the dancers themselves.

During the second half, Step Afrika! took audience involvement to a new level. They brought up about twenty volunteers and taught them a short step combination. As an audience member, you felt like it was you on stage learning the combination. It developed a huge sense of community. The volunteers not only stayed on stage for about ten minutes, learning and quickly performing the combination, but the performers used them as a backdrop during Indlamu, a Zulu dance that refers to the company’s origins— Step Afrika! began during an exchange program twenty years ago that brought American students to visit the Soweto Dance Theatre in Johannesburg. They had the audience volunteers sit in a semi-circle around a pile of drums and watch the piece from the stage. This made the sense of community even stronger because the audience felt like it completed the circle around the dancers. Everyone was clapping and cheering along as Step Afrika payed a tribute to the Zulu people of South Africa.

I think there’s a risk involved with putting traditional dance forms such as these onstage in a concert venue. You can lose the context and the initial motivation behind the movement. However, Step Afrika! was very successful in introducing the audience to history. They made it all entertaining and they kept the sense of community that comes with stepping alive.

Temria Airmet is a choreographer and dancer based in SLC. She’s recently been seen in the work of Ashlee Vilos, Shira Fagan, Ching-I Chang and Anne Marie Robson. She works administratively at Millennium Dance.

RDT’s Portal

Duets abound in Repertory Dance Theatre’s fall season, Portal, in which four choreographers’ voices configure and reconfigure a company in transition. (RDT has four new dancers: Jaclyn Brown, Lauren Curley, Dan Higgins and Lacie Scott.) The evening is quite a curatorial feat, uniting four diverse pieces that have just enough in common; three from the company’s archive and one new commission. The thread is the idea of the duet. These are dances in which the performers are constantly pairing off, demonstrating how changeable each can be just by standing next to a new partner.

The first half of the evening seems to take place in shadows. In Zvi Gotheiner’s Duets to Brazilian-Indian Music and in Steve Koester’s Fever Sleep there’s often barely enough light to see what’s happening. In Gotheiner’s Duets, the movement is also shrouded by the sensuous drama of the first three sections’ vocals (in all three women dance with men). Somewhere during the fourth duet (Tyler Orcutt and Efren Corado) a fog seems to lift, and by the time Ursula Perry and Jaclyn Brown pair off, there’s rich clearness. Luminous lines propel themselves through space–– gestures that will be fractured by dementia, confusion and plain silliness in Koester’s Where’s-Waldo-costumed nervous breakdown for four.

After intermission, our eyes don’t have to work quite so hard. For Viola Farber’s 1970 Passengers, the wings are flown out, the lighting is more straightforward and the entire company games on equal footing. Passengers is a highly structured improvisation, using chance procedures, name-calling and other Cage-ian devices. It takes a minute, but eventually the company is engaged in a concentrated activity that is an odd mixture of free play and deconstructed dance formalism. It’s a pleasure to watch, even if, at times, it feels like a lecture-demonstration.

Finally, we arrive at the evening’s main attraction, By the Snake, made by Noa Zuk with original music by spouse Ohad Fishof. There is one indelible picture in this work: three pairs of men and women–– the entire cast–– stand facing us, hand in hand. They seem to wait for a change in the room. The center pair come forward and all pause together, breathe, and pause again, before descending into wildness.

I wonder if how I recall this recurring image has more to do with the power of this particular dance’s structure or with the totality of everything leading up to Zuk’s piece. I’ve seen so many couplings already this evening, both hetero-normative and otherwise, that I’m a little shocked to be so moved by an image that seems so predictable, so banal, so overdone. RDT has accomplished something here, they’ve made me see a new possibility for how men and women might be together on stage.

Perhaps it is Zuk’s choreography after all. These couples move with a sense of abandon that’s wonderfully at odds with the redolent forms they’re constructing and destroying together. As they swing  recklessly, lofting of off each other’s cliffs and valleys, they eschew either male dominance or politically-correct pseudo-Contact Improvisation–– this isn’t a dance where the number of male versus female lifts could ever be counted. And yes, I think these are largely heterosexual couplings–– but only in the most fleeting, provisional and at times ironic sense invoked by the explosion of a certain kind of social dance idiom.

There are heady, heightened moments like these, in which Fishof’s score lends understated, goofy humor to a party vibe. The three couples act out a double’s version of one of the frenetic trios from Koester’s work. There are also calmer scenes, where the cold, metallic noises that create the dance’s skeleton slowly take on the comforting appeal of one’s own refrigerator’s unique hum. Things seem not to happen more than once, but there is a constant sense of cycling. The work really is as Zuk describes it, “a fabricat[ed] folk dance…with different forms and values”. When By the Snake ends, right after it’s second great group conglomeration, it feels both perfect and all too soon.

Samuel Hanson’s formative dance training was with Hilary Carrier and at Tanner Dance. His recent work has been seen at the New Media Wing, the Rose Wagner Center, the Mudson Performance series, in Montana, California, Tennessee, Florida, Mexico and New York. He’s recently performed in the work of Yvonne Meier.

Dylan Dances & UMOCA

Below is a two-for-one review of a couple of the many dance performances this past weekend in Salt Lake City. The works discussed below share having been produced outside of theater spaces. First, Emma Wilson tackles Two Boots’Dylan Dances. Below, Breeanne Saxton discusses NOW-ID at the UMOCA.

Dylan Dances… in an alleyway, donning denim, naturally

Katherine Adler and Samantha Matsukawa’s artistic collaboration, Two Boots, presented this late-night show, Dylan Dances, for which Bob Dylan’s music scored most of the show. Upon entering the dimly-lit alleyway where the performance was held, I felt the unexpected buzz of human bustle and finally found the warmly lit alcove next to a high-rise parking lot where the dancing was to be held. I was asked for my ID and a donation by Amy Freitas of Porridge for Goldilocks, and was then nudged further into the alcove, handed a plastic cup of beer, and encouraged to mingle amongst hanging lights and happy people. Matsukawa and Adler know how to create a serene environment; I was ready to metaphorically train hop with them anywhere. These two blooming choreographers describe their work and goals on their facebook page in a whimsical yet succinct way that mirrors their choreographic style. Here’s their statement:

With clean hands and dirty paws we are human beings doing human things, modern day troubadours who aim to connect the dots and trace the red strings between us all, transcending time and place. We tell stories of familiar voices in an unforgiving age under the guise of dance and movement. Preserving verses and twisting tales, we invite our audience to be open to enlightenment or confusion, fact and fiction, and always empathy. We act as pied pipers opening interpretation to short truths.

Adler and Matsukawa, both University of Utah graduates with BFAs in Modern Dance, worked primarily with people who are affiliated with that program, so I was curious about attendance at the show. Would it be a typical performance with the usual audience of dance-minded people? No. There were many “family members” of the University modern dance department, but the show’s prime placement within Gallery Stroll, in an alleyway near up-and-coming venue Diabolical Records— and Two Boots’ collaboration with local musicians— made the show accessible and intriguing for passersby and other people who wouldn’t normally go to a dance performance.

There were moments when the action was lost amongst the equally alluring sounds of bumping dance music across the alleyway and a band jamming at Diabolical Records. Some audience members standing behind me drifted away during a duet between Adler and Matsukawa. The number necessitated a certain kind of voyeurism on the audience’s part that I think they just couldn’t relate to. One section in the duet involved repetitious solos juxtaposed against each other. These simultaneous solos took the pair from upstage to downstage in a tidal way that was mesmerizing, but perhaps alienating for some. Matsukawa had another, equally mesmerizing solo that contained many angular positions interrupted with spirals and precarious balances that she weaved through effortlessly. It also perhaps lost attention because of downcast eyes and an introspective nature.   

Matsukawa and Adler were loyal to their artistic integrity, prompting me to ponder the issue of how to make dance more accessible for non-dancers. One way is to perform with complete conviction— here, most of the time, everyone did. An extremely dynamic duet between Sterling Anderson and Natalie Border involved satisfying eye contact with one another and with the audience. There was also a section in which all of the denim clad dancers and musicians stripped down to their underwear and frantically traded denim variations, provoking thoughts about identity and individuality. We’re all different, but really the same, and everyone looks good in denim, dancing to Dylan.

Another moment: Eliza Tappan coached Molly Heller to shotgun a Pabst while straddling the newly opened box of beer. Then the rest of the beer was distributed to the audience. A brief intermission followed allowing for general conviviality. The show ended not with another recorded Bob Dylan song, but with the three musicians playing “Wagon Wheel” while the dancers executed a phrase in a circle around them. At first, the song choice seemed like a non-sequitur because I had only heard it sung by contemporary musicians, but I later discovered that Dylan was actually the first to sketch out the song, though he never officially released it. The choice to circle the musicians felt much too sentimental, but I was won over by the memory of all that came before that scene and the quintessentially folksy nature of the song.

Many dance artists and performers feel entitled to the audience’s attention because they know how much work they put into their performance. The audience does not always know this. They can mentally or physically check out at any time unless they are engaged in some way. I do not know exactly how many audience members checked out of this performance, but I do know that there was quite a crowd of non-dancers after the show, excited to commend and discuss what they had just witnessed. In that respect, the first evening with Two Boots was a success. Adler and Matsukawa managed to produce a performance in an alternative space, create a unique treatise on the romanticism and adventure found in many Bob Dylan songs, and attract a diverse audience. Dylan Dances had an unmistakable and multi-faceted personality whether anyone liked it or not. Two Boots is a collaboration worth watching.

Charlotte Boye-Christensen’s NOW-ID at UMOCA

The Utah Museum of Contemporary Art’s current exhibit, Bikuben, features contemporary Danish artwork that explores a diverse variety of themes. It was a real pleasure to meander through the exhibit. The work was surprisingly interactive. One piece was a large book with a progression of very simple and minimalist prints that evolved as I turned the pages. I also climbed up a small white tunnel barely big enough for one, which led me to a soft place when one could lie down and peer up through a small square cut out.

In the same gallery, Charlotte Boye-Christensen presented a duet for dancers Jo Blake and Kate Crews Linsley. Christensen commissioned an Icelandic composer and opera singers from her hometown, Copenhagen. The piece took place in front of a large wall of fastidiously placed pictures of craters. The downstage-right corner was filled with white shapes that reminded me of hollowed out tree trunks. The space created by the visual artists was cavernous and inorganic, and the performers brought it little sense of the organic. They entered with rigid spines, their chests taking shallow breaths as they slowly approached one another head first. A contemporary pas de deux evolved with as little life as the photographs in the background. Crews Linsley projected her performance far beyond the audience, who were in fact in very close proximity. In other words, Crews Linsley lacked the subtle performance awareness necessary to engage a more intimate space. The choreographic relationship to this captivating space was unclear, as was the performers’ relation to each other.

Having viewed much of Boye-Christensen’s work with Ririe-Woodbury before, this duet felt so familiar that I quickly lost interest. The pas de deux was followed by solos for each of the two dancers. Blake’s solo was the highlight choreographically and performatively. His limbs flew with a forceful momentum that was nearly out of his control, but would always arrive in a place of precision and accuracy. Blake allowed himself to have a subtlety that invited the audience as well as impressing us with virtuosity and athleticism.

Emma Wilson serves as the loveDANCEmore intern and performs and choreographs regularly, having shown work several times at Mudson and at other venues in SLC. Breeanne Saxton is a dance major at the University of Utah.

Ririe-Woodbury’s Fall Season

Featuring the work of three male choreographers, Ririe-Woodbury’s season opener this last weekend had no particular through-line, except perhaps in its attempt to stake a claim for the group on being “contemporary”. The strongest work in the evening, artistic director Daniel Charon’s, was arguably the least au courant, harkening toward solidly twentieth-century modern dance traditions.

Charon’s “Storm” began with a rush of orchestral sound— the score was by Michael Nyman. The entire company tumbled out onto the stage and continued to enter and exit rapidly in dazzling patterns of thick, athletic gusts. It was the sort of piece where the scale, both in time and space seem to extend far beyond the arbitrary frames of proscenium and curtain cues. Recalling the lush ensembles of José Limón, Doug Varone or Carolyn Carlson, “Storm” felt like a kinesthetic extension of the score’s three movements. It’s loud, cinematic grandeur had me thinking “if Terrance Malick had made dances, they might have looked a lot like this.” The void of the theatre felt charged, like a sliver of a long expanse of flat land cut by a setting sun. It seemed that the six company members were dancing in a much larger space than that circumscribed by the building we occupied.

The entire ensemble participated, but the work seemed to hinge on the company’s men: Yebel Gallegos, Brad Beaks and Bashaun Williams. All three were shown off for their ballon, but also engaged in intimate duets and musical, self-elaborating solos. There were a few little details amiss, such as costumes that didn’t quite fit the movement, but as a vehicle for ecstatic dancing, Charon’s work was a great success. He is very lucky to have inherited this iteration of Ririe-Woodbury, which even after the departure of Tara McArthur seems to have maintained a unique sense of palpable friendship. New dancer Melissa Younker held her own throughout and looked like she’d been with them for years.

Where Charon successfully channeled the efforts of his company, the out-of-towner offerings felt like they left the dancers squandered. Jonah Bokaer’s “fragments” looked like a a composition class conducted in the middle of a light sculpture (there was a large triangle made of halogen bulbs on the floor and mirrors hanging in a patchwork pattern throughout the space). Many of the performers had intriguing passages of movement, but the moments of true visual pleasure– such as Mary Lyn Graves seeming to lose her feet when she stepped into the dark center of the triangle– felt accidental and were all too infrequent. “fragments” was almost worth watching for Alex Bradshaw’s rich, internal solo, but ultimately had nothing to say.

“one hundred thousand” by German choreographer Johannes Wieland, was equally lacking in direction, though somewhat more playful. Yebel Gallegos’ comic timing as he sang in a blonde wig almost saved the work from it’s ponderousness. It’s interesting to note that while all of this is repeatedly referred to as “contemporary dance” in advertising, its the work of three males largely reiterating modern dance traditions of which they are contemporary exponents. At this, Charon was very successful. Bokaer (who’s past is Cunningham) and Wieland (who refers to Western European dance theatre) felt like less sure of how to carry on the torch.

Samuel Hanson is a dance writer here and at SLUG Magazine and 15BYTES.

Rhythm Migration, in response

In the short time loveDANCEmore has posted dance criticism there have been only a handful of shows which generated significant dialogue. As a site that shares primarily peer reviews it’s difficult enough to get a writer willing to offer opinion, let alone many commenting voices. Most frequently the dialogue generated asserts an alternative point-of-view but one that simply disparages the critique without presenting a new way of looking at the issues presented. With this in mind, I was thrilled to see Kim Strunk’s commentary about “Rhythm Migration,” an RDT Link project; not because I agree with one point of view or another (I couldn’t see the show, it was sold out) but because it respectfully engages with potent considerations of presenting cultural forms in Salt Lake — she contextualizes her work within the community and provides a new opinion from within “Rhythm Migration” itself. With her permission I re-print her comments here as a way of furthering conversation but also in the hope that more artists with new points-of-view find themselves willing to write reviews and comments about what they see on stage.

loveDANCEmore provides a great site and innovative open forum for sharing and supporting Utah dance. I recently discovered loveDANCEmore when I heard there was a review of Rhythm Migration posted. I commend Ashley Anderson for opening the space for responses and respectfully submit the following feedback on Yasin A. Fairley’s review of Rhythm Migration, An Evening of African Dance, Drum and Song with Rogine and Friends.

Mr. Fairley begins with a vibrant tone that matches the energy of the evening and uses some nice images to bring the event to life for the reader. However, his tone and direction take an abrupt 180 degree turn in the third paragraph where he begins with a blatant accusation of cultural appropriation without any articulable basis. Mr. Fairley continues with a litany of allegations and concerns, which placed the event in a very negative light.

As an established dance artist/educator, as well as a participant in Rhythm Migration, I am shocked by the reviewer’s accusation of cultural appropriation in the show. Although Mr. Fairley hurled the allegation of appropriation at an entire community of teachers, artists, dancers and students, (referenced as “the show”) I personally take great offense. I am deeply rooted in the community that came together for Rhythm Migration and have garnered a positive reputation among my colleagues for promoting West and Central African dance and culture in Utah and beyond. Understandably, I cannot take this unfounded accusation lightly. I believe Mr. Fairley needed to give his loaded comment considerably more thought before publishing in a public arena.

Cultural appropriation refers to taking or stealing aspects of another culture, such as dance and music, and exploiting them for one’s own benefit without permission and/or without giving appropriate credit. That being said, what transpired in Rhythm Migration reflected a profound cultural appreciation, not appropriation.

It seems the reviewer conducted little to no research on the community of dancers, teachers, and choreographers that came together for Rhythm Migration, including Fara Tolno. This African dance community profoundly values, respects and promotes awareness of various African cultures.

Salt Lake City’s African dance community has gathered for over 20 years and extends well beyond Utah. The configuration of participants includes teachers from Congo, Guinea, Ghana, Mali, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Zimbabwe, as well as students from across the Western United States. Many members of the community travel regularly to Africa to conduct humanitarian work and research in the dance, music, and culture of a particular region.

No one involved in the show represented the dances and music of West and Central Africa as their own, except of course Fara Tolno from Guinea, West Africa. Quite the contrary, the cultural sharing that took place gave obvious and respectful reference to the rhythms, songs, and dances of West and Central Africa. Additionally, all participants were supported, encouraged, and mentored by their teachers.

Although predominantly white, as Mr. Fairley points out, our community came together Saturday August 23rd to celebrate, not exploit or appropriate, West and Central African dance and music.

Yet another concern of the reviewer revolved around what he perceived to be a lack of the “aesthetic of the cool” in the dancer’s performance. “Coolness” represents an incredibly nuanced and complex organizing principal of African dance. It resides in many realms including the village or community, the individual, the ancestors, and the spiritual. I will venture to guess that had the dancers exhibited an “aesthetic of the cool” the reviewer would still have been offended, possibly even more so.

Drawing upon the idea of “coolness” was the responsibility of the choreographers, not the dancers, and the aesthetic was not necessary or appropriate in the context of this show. I wonder if the fundamental issue for this reviewer stems from the fact that the performers were mostly white, which is clearly implied in the following comments:

“It seemed like the dancers were “dressing up” without critically looking at their position, as an overwhelmingly white cast…”

“It seemed that this show catered to an overwhelmingly white audience with the intention of providing a PBS version of African Dance in culture that lacked deep awareness and empathy for African bodies in concert dance. It was too pre- packaged and relied heavily on Modern Dance vocabulary to tell its story.”

Yes, we live in Utah where whites constitute the majority of the population. According to the 2010 census, only 2.7% of Salt Lake City’s population are black. That being said, I find the allegation that the show catered to a white audience absurd and absolutely false. In fact, the only thing catered in the evening was the food.

The open forum and lovely reception following the concert could have provided rich opportunities for Mr. Fairley, a social researcher, to interview Producer, Director, and major contributor to the show, Rosie Banchero-Adcock,(who was not once mentioned in the review) as well as, participants and audience members; thereby garnering more accurate information regarding the intent of the evening and make-up of the community.

I am equally perplexed by the reviewer’s comparison of the “evening to a PBS version of African dance…” Normally, I would consider his comment a compliment, however in this case, I can only assume a negative comparison and regard it as somewhat of an insult to PBS, which is quite bold. The statement about lacking deep awareness and empathy is completely out of place in this context and also unfounded. Additionally the description of the evening as “pre-packaged” leaves me baffled.

Furthermore, I completely disagree with Mr. Fairley’s statement that the show “relied heavily on Modern dance vocabulary to tell its story” Only one piece fused the genres of Modern, Contemporary and African. If Mr. Fairley observed Modern dance vocabulary throughout then I can only assume he isn’t familiar with the wide range of African dance styles that permeate each region of Africa. As a long time student and teacher of West and Central African dance forms, I understand the substantial influence African dance had and still has on Modern choreographers, starting with Martha Graham’s contract and release. I am also of the opinion that Post-Modern dance was heavily influenced by the “aesthetic of the cool.” The examples are endless.

In my cultural immersions in Africa, most recently the Republic of Congo in 2010, I had the opportunity to observe countless performances and rehearsals in formal and informal venues. Some were traditional, some contemporary, modern, hip-hop and theatrical. I discovered that African artists want to maintain their traditional dances, however, they do not want to be constrained by them.

Mr. Fairley concludes his review by admonishing us to “look deeply at our own biases, privileges and disparities when we are placing a non-Western culture at the center of the stage, and to appreciate it on it’s own terms, not ours” My advise to the reviewer as an Associate Professor with a research emphasis in cultural dance forms is to take his words to heart and look deeply and critically at his own biases so he can come to terms with how they affect his writing and research.

Shrouded in personal biases and unfair allegations and assumptions, Mr. Fairley’s review comes off as accusatory and somewhat angry in it’s tone. This kind of diatribe does not seem in the spirit of loveDANCEmore.

Notwithstanding the fact that I hold a deep awareness of the importance of the issues brought forward by the reviewer, I am utterly “overwhelmed” with the negative tone and endless litany of bold,unfounded accusations made by Mr. Fairley and am completely “underwhelmed” with his review.

Kim Strunk is an Associate Professor of Dance (UVU 2002-2014) She danced professionally with Repertory Dance Theatre (1984-1996) and holds an MFA in Modern Dance from the University of Utah (2002). In 1996, she founded RDT’s Community School African dance class. Kim Strunk now lives abroad and continues her research and teaching as an Independent Dance Artist/Educator/Scholar.