The Final Hours at Sugar Space

Since creating the loveDANCEmore blog in 2010, I have shied away from writing about student work. When young artists are involved in a process of discovery alongside valued mentors, I don’t want to interrupt. But I have been there, carefully witnessing many student and faculty concerts on the Wasatch Front. About some I couldn’t help but offer my thoughts and about others I remained a happily curious observer. When watching Monica Campbell’s “The Final Hours,” at Sugar Space tonight I wavered between both feelings, having ideas to share about a well-crafted and engaging work and a desiring to insulate what was a magical experience for students. 

“The Final Hours,” was originally choreographed by Campbell as an artist-in-residence at Sugar Space in 2009. Through a new residency this year, the work has been deepened and co-presented with the Contemporary Dance Ensemble at Utah Valley University, which Campbell directs. Featuring eleven dancers spread among two casts, “The Final Hours,” explores The Hungarian Revolution in the 1950s.

Despite the inclusion of two monologues detailing experiences in Budapest related to the Soviet Occupation, a program note makes clear that the choreography will not retell the revolution through narrative. Instead the ensemble, frequently breaking into duets and trios, investigate ideas of hesitance, waiting and unrest.

Small groups weave in and out of ensemble dancing and all events take place in a sunken stage designed by Evan Ritter. Dancers can move on the perimeter, overseeing the action and adding solemnity to the often quiet moments accompanied by local percussionist Mason Aeschbacher, among others. The perimeter also periodically allows soloists to drift closer to the audience, taking advantage of the intimacy available in the warehouse theater.

It’s the space which offers a true degree of difference for UVU students. The BFA candidates typically perform works by faculty, guests and peers in a large university theater which doesn’t always simulate what their performance career might look like, particularly if they stay in town. Sugar Space bridges the divide, bringing the work of teaching artists like Campbell to a more public space and moving students into a shared community where they may work in the future.

In relationship to those ideas, the combined efforts of Campbell, Sugar Space and UVU allow for an effective use of resources to develop and a construct a set which amplifies the 2009 iteration of the work as well as employ musicians and sound editors that create an unquestionably thorough evening. An evening in which students take clear and deserved pride in sharing a complex subject matter through difficult partnering and weighted gesture.

Campbell is not alone in her identity as a professor who is also an artist, with many faculty members at area universities considering ways to move their work with students into more broad contexts. While this experiment worked on many levels, the audience did seem to be made up of the family and friends of the student cast, begging questions about whether or not the idea of changing spaces more radically informs young artists or their associated audiences.

Ashley Anderson directs loveDANCEmore programs as part of her 501c3, ashley anderson dances. The reviews on loveDANCEmore are shared on 15 BYTES, Utah’s Visual Art Magazine.

There are two more showtimes of "The Final Hours" at Sugar Space. 

Grupo Corpo Blends Classical and Brazilian Popular Forms

Grupo Corpo hails from from Belo Horizonte in Minas Gerais, Brazil, and returned to the Eccles Center Saturday night after more than 10 years since their last Park City appearance. The company presented two recent commissions, both of which premiered in 2015: Suite Branca (White Suite) by Cassi Abranches, a young choreographer from Sao Paulo and a former dancer with Grupo Corpo; and Danca Sinfonica (Symphonic Dance) by Rodrigo Pederneiras, also a former dancer with the company who transitioned to the role of choreographer full-time in 1981.

Another notable name on the evening’s program was Paulo Pederneiras: Pederneiras (unclear whether he is of relation to choreographer Rodrigo Pederneiras) is not only Grupo Corpo’s artistic director and a choreographer, but also designs the sets and lighting for much of the company’s repertory - including Suite Branca and Danca Sinfonica.

Also notable are Grupo Corpo’s extensive musical collaborations: Suite Branca features music by Samuel Rosa, lead vocalist and guitarist with the Brazilian rock band Skank; Danca Sinfonica was created to music by Marco Antonio Guimaraes made up of themes from scores he has composed previously for Grupo Corpo with new musical bridges by Guimaraes’ group Uakti, and was originally performed by a 90-piece orchestra (though for obvious reasons, they performed to recorded music at Eccles).

Abranches’ Suite Branca featured all-white everything: backdrop, floor, many layers of clothing articles, and jazz boots. Resembling the “Wonkavision” room, Abranches’ stagescape was choreographically, as well as visually, striking. The dancers gestured and gyrated with their hips and pelvises while maintaining a relaxed carriage of the arms. Quick movements and torso isolations capitalized on the strengths of their cores, especially as their legs sliced rapidly into arabesques.

One favorite moment featured all the dancers leaning forward off center and running to catch their balance, while weaving in between each other. Another had several men repeatedly executing a jump that resembled a bicycling running man. The dancers’ performance felt rather removed; they did not engage much with the audience or with each other, and the all-white surroundings were starkly clinical. However, watching the dancers’ bodies reason from one movement to the next, with few transitions in between, was engaging on its own.

Pederneiras’ Danca Sinfonica was choreographed for Grupo Corpo’s 40th anniversary. The recording of the piece’s score included the sounds of the orchestra tuning their instruments, which recreated for the audience that period of anticipation before the music and dance truly begin. The drops for the wings had been changed to deep red, which was mirrored in the women’s red velvet biketards (the men were in all black). Jazz boots were once more the footwear of choice (and why are they not a choice more companies make in place of socks?).

Danca Sinfonica was rich with fast footwork, resembling a modernized petite allegro - classically disciplined, bombastic legs with shimmying torsos and shown-off hips. While the dancers individually possessed a similar casualness in their upper bodies as in the first piece, they moved incredibly well as a unit when dancing in unison. “Grupo Corpo” literally translates to “Body Group” in English, and the company has both individually nimble bodies and moves well together as a singular body.

Unlike in Suite Branca, a narrative element was introduced to Danca Sinfonica when a female dancer appeared wearing a nude-colored biketard, in contrast with the others’ red and black. The female in nude was often held in a fetal position by her male partner, and also danced a pas de deux-like duet in which she went en pointe in her jazz boots - a testament to very strong legs and ankles, if not a little out of place in the piece’s context. The connection of the female in nude to the rest of the group was not ultimately made clear, but her dancing role did provide an even stronger case for the company’s classically-rooted strength and clarity of line.

Grupo Corpo’s company website cites the aesthetic they have honed as a “contemporary re-reading of popular Brazilian dance forms”. Having little knowledge of those dance forms myself, I feel that this observation provides interesting context for the body part isolations and gyrations found in the evening’s choreography. Giving credence to the company’s ability to simultaneously straddle and blur the line between popular and classical forms, critic Rui Fontana Lopes said Grupo Corpo has found “the most precise translation of the word ballet into the [Brazilian] mother tongue” (also cited on the company’s website). The translation was definitely precise.

Amy Falls is the program coordinator for loveDANCEmore. She also dances for various projects in Salt Lake City, most recently appearing as a dancer in the Utah Opera’s production of “Aida”.

Complexions at BYU

Desmond Richardson and Dwight Rhoden’s New York based company, Complexions Contemporary Ballet, took a trip to Provo on March 4th for a one-night-only guest performance. Featured in the de Jong Concert Hall on Brigham Young University’s campus, the Complexions dancers demonstrated the intricate nuances between structured ballet technique and fluid contemporary movement, while exploring concepts of love, loneliness, and relationships. 

The company performed an excerpt from “Cryin’ to Cry Out”, choreographed by resident choreographer Dwight Rhoden. The duet featured a man and woman standing in spotlights on opposite sides of the stage. The two danced simultaneously, but not together. They remained on their opposite sides, signifying separation. Focusing internally, they expressed emotions that were desperate to come out but they had to bear them alone. 

“Gone” told the story of three hopeless, lonely, and destitute men that found camaraderie in each other. Smoky lighting kept the men in hazy silhouettes for the entirety of the dance, giving an ominous, hopeless feeling. The shadowy figures repeated forceful arm movements to rhythmic clapping and gospel vocals. As the men danced individually, this repetitive motion was the thread that tied them all together in a strengthening brotherhood—a sign of belonging and survival. 

The show wrapped-up with Rhoden’s 30-minute “Ballad Unto…” that just had its Complexions premier in October of last year. Performed by all 13 members of the company, “Ballad Unto…” was a powerful note to end on. The bold piece demonstrated the explosive movement of seven couples. The choreography alternated between women and men group movement and then explored pas de deux work. The audience witnessed how the couples came together in an “intimate abstraction of love” (program excerpt). 

Complexions Contemporary Ballet put on an exhilarating hour-long show with original and creative movement that never stopped pushing boundaries and always gave the audience something new to see. 

Chloe Stacey is an undergraduate student at BYU. 

Bill T. Jones at the Eccles Center

Six panels of white marley hang in front of the traveler at the back of the stage.
They begin to skim the floor and cover a central space without quite reaching the lip.
Interlocking foam shapes lay waiting.
So does a small white table with carefully placed microphones.   
The physical and electronic instruments of Nick Hallett and Emily Manzo are to the right. Company members are invisible, preparing and bracing for a dance in new altitude.

"Analogy/Dora: Tramontane" photographed by Paul B. Goode

It was a dream for Park City Institute Director Teri Orr as she stood before the Eccles Center sharing the many attempts that got Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company to Park City. As the show began, Bill took the stage to introduce “Analogy/Dora: Tramontane.” More disarming than a descriptive program, a choreographer inviting you to share in material is an excellent way to begin.

In his introduction Bill described how he came to interview Dora Amelan about her experiences in World War II. Dora's son, Bjorn Amelan, is the decor designer for "Analogy/Dora" and recently married to Bill; in Bill’s re-telling, Bjorn began to notice that as Dora aged, new stories emerged conversationally. Bill is no stranger to telling stories, particularly those of individuals moving through trial or tragedy. His body of work existing very much in relationship to broad social histories.*

“Analogy/Dora…” began with dancers creating tableaus by manipulating the interlocking foam pieces. The foam shapes formed windows, doorways, roofs, and other boundaries. Some of these tableaus could have been lifted from Jones’ other works, many including the same sizeable narrative arcs and containing equally abstract, precise and formal movement.

As the dance went on, the foam pieces continued intermittent transitions but were accompanied by interview texts. For an avid dance-goer it’s easy to recount a handful of pieces in this vein, most accompanied by a muffled recording or a singular and heavy monologue. Bill’s strategy was different, and more compelling: the dancers traded roles of Dora and Bill allowing her storytelling to ripple among the cast. This method of delivery also simulated the architecture on stage, reaching the audience in a collective way. When the story is displaced from its origins (a single Jewish teenager in France) the diversity of the cast in both race and physicality contributes to the concept of a shared narrative. The company make-up also lends itself toward the second and third installments of “Analogy,” which is a proposed trilogy exploring different personal histories.

Both the content and shared telling are at times didactic but at other times revelatory as the audience assigns how a narrative unfolds given our own assumptions and experiences. For example, one may bristle depending on which company member is the Gestapo, which is Dora’s sister in the hospital after a failed abortion, which is a parent, or which is Dora herself. The architecture also crossed into potential pedanticism because the pieces could have been, although they were not, placed in the form of a swastika. This line between instructive and illuminating is one Bill’s work often straddles whether for better or worse.

Throughout “Analogy,” a live score included traditional French and German songs and periodically interrupted the text with electronic music, allowing Bill’s signature movements to take center stage. These solely moving sections were striking as they exacerbated tension through full bodied vibrations and dispelled the same tension through sweeping yet distilled phrase material.

Met with a standing ovation, “Analogy/Dora” clearly reached its audience. As I exited through the expansive theater I remained curious not just about the work itself but also about the mode of presentation on the Wasatch Front. Most of my peers were ambling to their cars and heading back to Salt Lake or Utah County. The Eccles Theatre beautifully framed the work, but I wonder how vital dances by iconic choreographers could be more effectively presented by participation between additional arts partners.

Ashley Anderson directs loveDANCEmore programs as part of her 501c3 “ashley anderson dances.”

Most reviews on loveDANCEmore are also shared on 15 BYTES. 

*Most recently the company tackled the history of Lincoln which, along with another earlier take on “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” has been documented by PBS extending their documentation to broad audiences. The company has also created numerous works exploring the AIDS epidemic and terminal illness including “Still/Here,” which sparked a “victim art” debate after New Yorker critic Arlene Croce refused to review the piece.

Capturing on Camera

The third annual Utah Dance Film Festival, held at Utah Valley University, showcases much more than just Utah County filmmakers. Rapidly growing each year, the festival showcased 40 dance films representing 12 different countries, all demonstrating a wide range of cinematography and creativity.

The films shown at the 1:30 afternoon screening proved that dance can have a different definition and interpretation depending on the filmmaker. The showing began with “The Postman” by Big Door (the winner of the 24-Hour Film Competition). In this film, happy-go-lucky turned creepy, and dance was never the main focus. Rather, the creators incorporated the idea of movement as they followed a day in the life of postman volunteer, Reggie—an avid speed walker. The film opened with a rotund, mustached man, clad in a Polo and khakis, cheerily delivering mail. A recording from his updated audio journal read in the background: “Today was a good one, just like every other day.” The film focuses on his movement—speed-walking through the day. But the light-hearted film takes a twisted turn when the lovable postman is abducted by aliens in his suburban home later that night. Viewers were left with a haunting feeling as Reggie was lifted out of his home in a blinding light while his audio journal played in the background: “Today was a good one, just like every other day.”

“Body Language Zone,” a Finnish film by Kim Saarinen, continued on this idea of movement in everyday life, turning it into a kind of choreography. The film featured a short-haired woman in a business suit, typing at her desk. Her fingers flew over the keyboard, her toes tapping on the floor. The movement became powerful and interesting as the woman changed positions and began typing her fingers on the wall, swiveling in her chair, moving her knees up and down—dancing without ever leaving her confined cubicle space. As the woman moved to different settings in the workplace, the camera focused on her hand, touching a variety of different surfaces. Her hand sliding over countertops, microwaves, and light switches elicited the question, “How can we touch things differently? How can we be more aware of the objects we encounter everyday?” A man’s voice narrated the ordinary, yet choreographed movements of the woman, making the film feel as if we were observing a creature on an Animal Planet show. The quirky ordinary human movements proved to viewers that body language in itself is a type of dance.

Other films captured dance as traditional, technical choreography. Sierra Crawford’s “A Man Who Fell in Love With an Island” had a captivating partnering duet in the medium of a music video. The male dancer emerged from the lead singer—a ghostly, static-y representation of the singer’s past self. The duet between the male and female dancer served as the singer’s reflection of a past relationship. As they continued to move together, the dancers became covered in black sludge. The watery paint dripped down their soaking wet bodies, a strong visual representation of how we leave our mark on people that come in and out of our lives.

One final film, “Woods” by Skyler Sorenson (the product of another 24-hour Film Competition creation) explored movement in the human body, but also movement of the surrounding scenery. As the title indicates, this brief 2-minute film shows a man taking a flickering candle into the woods. Before any dancing is every captured on camera, the audience notices the movement of the pale white aspen trees, highlighted against the pitch-black midnight sky. The reflection of shimmering light and shadow cast upon the trees makes the white aspens a main mover in this visual illusion. As the man dances, silently and smoothly, he and nature choreograph together.

This year’s Film Festival offered a range of approaches to dance filmmaking. From the crafting of ordinary movements to attempts at capturing choreography from new angles, filmmakers proved there is no restriction as to what constitutes “dance in film.”

Chloe Stacey is a student at BYU.