The Weekenders, last weekend

The Weekenders, a Salt Lake City-based rock and roll band, celebrated their sophomore album release with their first headlining concert at The State Room on April 29th. Accompanying the concert was modern dance choreographed by Erica Womack over the past year with dancers Brooklyn Draper, Jamie Myers, Amy Falls and Bashaun Williams.

Viewing modern dance in an unconventional space (i.e. not your typical proscenium theater) where I could grab a drink or two and sit back was extremely refreshing. Joining the rest of the attendees with my margarita in hand, and seeing the red and orange neon stage lights illuminating the rock instruments, I was hoping to witness equally unconventional choreography.

But first, I would be unjust in glossing over the opening act. Another local band, The Quiet Oaks sieged the stage and their enthusiasm was infectious. Members of the audience, including my friend who came with me, couldn’t sit anymore. “I gotta get up and groove!” my friend exclaimed, jumping up and rushing closer to the stage. Rock and roll demands embodiment. The band members themselves were dancers in their own right, the keyboardist waving his long, luxurious locks, the vocalist closing his eyes and swaying allowing his voice to project. You could sense the joy and passion that each member of the band had for their music. Mike Moon exuberantly danced around the stage. There was no pinning him down throughout the set, his energy shone through as he bounced, strummed, and provided supportive vocals. After their opening set, the Quiet Oaks’ lead vocalist promised that the Weekenders would “blow [my] mind.” I was ready. The opening band had done their job and primed me for what was to come.

The Weekenders took position with their respective instruments and the lead vocalist Rob Reinfurt introduced the dancers. The music began as Brooklyn Draper deliberately stepped in a diagonal pathway onto the white marley. As she arrived at the center of the stage, she turned and looked out to the audience. Brooklyn has an incredible presence that subtly demands your attention. The rest of the cast, in a pedestrian fashion, walked on from the side to join her in the dancing space. One by one they commenced an arm arcing phrase, meandering throughout the space as though under a spell.

It was during this first piece that I sensed a tension between the weightiness of music and the loftiness of the choreography. Repeated movements that occurred throughout the fifty minute set were a forward step on the diagonal as an arm floated up like a silk scarf while the opposite leg lifted to attitude. I feared that the selected movement vocabulary for the evening would not match the release that I hear in rock and roll, but rather offer an insufficient contrast.

The remainder of the dancing was bound by the confines of the form and a limited stage space. While I had hoped for an equal marriage of live rock music and live modern dance, I found that the movement took backseat to the music, despite being physically placed in front of the band.

For instance, some lyrics in the third number repeated, “let it go, let it go, let it go…” getting more wild with each repetition. Rather than altering dynamics to accompany the music, the choreography remained static. Amazed as I was with the control that each of the dancers exhibits over their bodies, I yearned to see a loss of that control. Rock and roll is not a genre about holding back or stifled formality. My expectations were further denied as the music would accelerate and crescendo, and the dancers stood to the side, taking sips from their water bottles. There seemed to be a handful of these lost opportunities to showcase the talent possessed by each dancer or to at least unleash some untapped energy.

The fifth song in the set contained the lyrics, “People are screaming ‘Jesus,’ but I don’t know if he can hear us,” which struck a personal chord with this ex-Mormon and waffling Atheist-Agnostic. My stomach jumped to my throat in a visceral reaction and I was disappointed to see the dancers holding their arms rigidly and orderly. It may have been the intention of the choreographer to create this uncanny dissonance yet I wonder what a more literal accompaniment of movement choices would have looked like; something to illustrate the words, “mama’s got no steam left for the fight,” or allowing the dancers to become “lost in the synergy.”  

It wasn’t until the sixth dance where I noticed dancer Jamie Myers cracking smiles, hinting that she was taking some pleasure in her duet with Amy Falls.The other dancers broke out of their stoic, dutiful completion of saut de chats and arabesques as the finale began, revving up their tempo to match that of the band, jumping with the crashes of the percussionist, and grinning, making eye contact with the other performers.

The dancing was technically strong, but I would have wished for a choreographic choice to “let go” of the dancers’ training and create more room for the music to possess their bodies rather than rely on the formalities of tried and true choreographic rules and tools. I understand the necessity of contrast when it comes to choreography, in this case it allowed for the music to be the main focus of the evening. Yet a stronger parallel between movement and music may have offered a more cathartic experience, and dare I say, left me more satisfied and uplifted.

I would urge that future works of collaboration between local rock bands and modern dancers tap into a release rather a containment of energy to showcase the rebellious and unpinnable spirits inside the performers, and invent unconventional movements and formations. If you can name the movement, change it.

Shane Davis is an MFA candidate at the University of Utah. He’s recently performed as a guest dance with RDT for Jose Limon’s “Missa Brevis.”

The Nijinsky Revolution

While introducing “The Ninjinsky Revolution,” Ballet West director Adam Sklute recalled the riotous shock with which much of Vaslav Nijinksy's work was met. Sklute described the boundary-pushing nature of Nijinsky's movement and libretti, inviting the modern audience seated in the Capitol Theater on opening night to see if they, like their historical counterparts, are scandalized by the three ballets offered. Jerome Robbins' Afternoon of a Faun, Helen Pickett's Games and Nicolo Fonte's The Rite of Spring are re-imaginings of three of Nijinsky's four choreographic works. They are presented as contemporary continuations of Nijinsky's ideas. It seems appropriate to view them in that context, albeit with varying degrees of success. Robbin's Afternoon of a Faun is a masterpiece in its own right and Pickett's Games is an energetic rendition of one of Nijinsky's lesser known ballets, simultaneously dense and flippant. Fonte's The Rite of Spring, however, misses the mark having little of the revolutionary zeal found in Stravinsky's still shocking masterpiece.

As the first languid notes of Debussy's score, beautifully conducted by Jared Oaks, drift through the theater, the curtain opens onto a hazy, sunlit scrim, beckoning the audience into a dream world inhabited solely by two dancers and their elusive courting ritual. Robbins is a master at creating a world on the stage and Afternoon of a Faun is no exception. The entire ballet takes place in a bright, softly illuminated studio against a sky blue backdrop. The audience voyeuristically occupies the place of the studio's mirror. Throughout this short poem of a work, the gazes of the dancers are constantly directed towards that mirror, piquing the audience's curiosity without inviting them in. This outward gaze directly contrasts the Nijinsky original, which echoes a Grecian frieze in its two dimensionality and stillness.  As Adrian Fry and Emily Adams, look out toward the audience with subtle curiosity, boredom, vanity, and shyness, you find yourself growing more deeply interested in the dancers' exploration of each other and themselves and the unspoken rituals of courtship they are enacting through ballet's familiar forms. Adams and Fry cautiously approach one another, Fry mesmerized by the quietly bold Adams. I relished Adams' glamorous and confident interpretation of the female character; Nijinsky's Faun featured nymphs that spend the majority of their time running away in fear and modesty. Adams, however, directs the scene, drawing the eyes of the faun as she sensuously combs her dark hair and luxuriously extends her limbs as if basking in the warmth of afternoon sun. As Adams' withdraws from the gossamer studio leaving Fry to recline in reverie, you wonder if the sweet, dreamy interaction was even real.

Robbins' purposeful choreographic contrasts to Nijinsky's Faun and occasional references to the iconic movement were particularly satisfying. A flexed wrist and pointed hand, picturesque moments of suspended pause, the dripping veil of Adams' hair and Fry's mystified fixation upon it. Of the evening's three works, Robbins' Afternoon of a Faun is most successful at reaching beyond the revolutionary ideas of Nijinsky precisely because it has a solid and full understanding of the original.

The second piece, Helen Picket's Games, opens with dancers Alison DeBona, Arolyn Williams, and Christopher Ruud standing isolated in pools of light against the hint of an urban office building. This is the last moment of pause before the non-stop energy and exertion of the dancers' flirtatious romp begins. Throughout, the dancing is quick-witted and sharp. Each dancer engages the other two with a solo that can't decide if it is trying to entice one or the other or neither. DeBona's biting sparkle was a delicious counterpoint to Williams bright and enchanting girlishness, an especially seductive combination.  The score, another by Debussy, and the dancing are incredibly dense, changing tempo and theme almost constantly without ever letting up energetically.

Nijinsky's original, entitled Jeux, used the trappings of a tennis game to explore a romantic tryst between a triad of dancers, two women and one man.  Pickett does away with the metaphor of a tennis game, placing the story in a modern day office.  Cautions against office romance (especially office threesomes) aside, the removal of the tennis metaphor doesn't serve the ballet: though the sexual draw among the three dancers is more openly acknowledged, it is not more openly expressed, save a few kisses near the end. The action of the ballet hints at scandalous behavior without ever fully exploring or displaying either the behavior or its consequences. Largely light and playful, I was quite aware of the absence of actual game-playing. The dancers flirted and giggled but exhibited no jealousy or any other ill-feeling, guaranteed emotions in such a romantic arrangement. Games is short however; perhaps it would have been too much to fully explore the emotional landscape of polyamory in its brisk twenty minutes. Or maybe I'm reading too much into an unusual but frivolous one night stand.

The opening oboe solo of The Rite of Spring is undoubtedly iconic. It signals the beginning of one of the most revolutionary musical scores of the twentieth century, one which caused an actual riot at its premiere in 1913 and continues to challenge audiences today. Instruments pierce through wild discordance, blossoming into musical themes that are equal parts unsettling and captivating. Rhythms and harmonies interweave into a chaotic system that seems incomprehensible.  Stravinsky's score is a celebration of creation and the inescapable destruction that accompanies it, a hymn to the bloody, violent, cyclical process of artistic birth. In Nicolo Fonte's interpretation of this musical masterpiece, the stage is dominated by rusted metal monoliths and spider-like dancers clad in black leather and rhinestone leotards. There is little of messy spring in the scenery, much less the choreography. Fonte's interpretation is menacing and fierce like the score but it does not sweep you up. The ballet is filled with hyperextended legs, arched backs, splayed ribs and hands. There are unclear references to a narrative but little investment in its development. However, there is a pervasive sense of something being at stake; I just couldn't figure out what. Though the choreography is uneventful, the dancers perform it beautifully. They are sinewy and sensual in acrobatic twists and contortions, lending the movement intensity with their arresting gaze. I just wish they had been given something more substantial to work with.

Mary Lyn Graves dances for Ririe Woodbury Dance Company alongside other local teaching and performance. 

This review is published in collaboration with 15 BYTES, Utah's Visual Art magazine

REVERE in review

April 14th marked opening night for Repertory Dance Theatre’s Revere, the culminating performance of their 50th anniversary season. In this show, RDT pays tribute to Jose Limon, a Mexican American who is attributed to both developing early modern dance and shifting the portrayal of the male dancer. The show opens with Suite From Mazurkas (1958), accompanied by pianist Vassily Primakov, and was created as a tribute to the strength of the Polish people after World War II. The show closes with the masterpiece Missa Brevis (1958) featuring music by Zoltan Kodaly sung live by the Salt Lake Vocal Artists. Limon is said to have been questioning his religion at this time, while simultaneously being inspired by people rebuilding their communities after the devastation and destruction of World War II.      

Suite From Mazurkas is predominantly comprised of solos and duets, showcasing the company’s ability to shine in the classical Limon technique. Efren Corado Garcia anchors the piece with his gift of weight and abandon in the section Solo (Opus 59, No.2), which is a somber and contemplative departure from the more upbeat and light vignettes. Corado’s final move is a bow to the pianist, but unlike the previous dances, any formality or choreographed reverence is eliminated. His entire being pays homage to the music that seemingly served as a lifeline. We watch these classical works against the backdrop of what has come after, and classical modern dance can often feel presentational, with all movements held at a formal and theatrical distance. This simple bow echoes a more undone, yet still highly structured moment.

Lauren Curley shines in Solo (Posthumous A Minor). She embodies the necessary clarity in both movement and spatial design that Limon technique requires, combined with a nuanced and specific musicality. RDT names themselves as a living museum, which is equal parts commendable and challenging when one considers the varied styles and aesthetics that have developed in the 100 years plus of modern dance.  In this concert of Limon works, the company is strong and competent proving that a living museum can indeed breath new life and relevance into works made in 1958.

Missa Brevis reads more narratively than Mazurkas, with Efren Corado Garcia finding the plight of an outsider as a cohesive community creates and rebuilds. University of Utah dancers complete the cast of 21 and hold their own with more seasoned company members. The choreography is rich with subtlety and texture, harmony and careful contrast, and includes a male jumping sequence so powerful that the theater walls were almost pushed away. Ursula Perry stands out with her powerful yet yielding physicality, and Corado performs with such heart that it is impossible to sit as a passive observer. This piece succeeds in its grandeur and scale, and is a timeless piece of dance history.

Thankfully Salt Lake City has a varied and abundant dance community, with performances to chose from practically every weekend. With Repertory Dance Theatre performing on the heels of Ririe Woodbury, it is hard to not to compare the two companies and their diverse programming. Seeing works that were made almost 60 years ago in this show in contrast to works that were created as premieres in RW’s show bring up questions of what is (or will be) timeless, and what is merely a stepping stone to a more distilled product. For example, will the unapologetic dissonance that we have experienced in the recent works of Joanna Kotze and Netta Yerushalmy one day be performed in the living museum alongside the more formal and highly structured works RDT has presented by Jose Limon and his contemporaries, including Doris Humphrey, and Helen Tamiris?  And will there be dancers capable of traveling through all the genres of modern dance as we know them now, or even 50 years from now? Time will tell.   

Erica Womack is a Salt Lake based choreographer who regularly contributes to loveDANCEmore, she also teaches dance at SLCC. Her new work "Music and Dance" will be presented at the State Room April 29th. 

REVERE concludes tonight, Saturday April 16th at the Rose Wagner. 

This review is shared with 15 BYTES, Utah's Visual Art Magazine. 

Myriad at Sugar Space

Myriad Dance, co-founded and -directed by Temria Airmet and Ashlee Vilos, debuted its evening-length show Doors at Sugar Space Arts Warehouse. The evening was divvied up amongst Myriad’s core choreographing members, resulting in three segments (Doorway I, Doorway II, and Doorway III). The name “Doorway” referenced the host of doors onstage that were hand-painted by local artists, and each one unfolded with varying degrees of completeness.

Doorway I, Airmet’s “Blame the Youth”, introduced the audience to the stage-scape of doors, the dancers clad in a spectrum of over-sized T-shirts. In a brief opening vignette, Kendall Fischer toyed with a collection of keys she pulled out of her shirt pocket. As she began dancing, the collection of keys flew, unacknowledged, out of her pocket and was left strewn about the stage. To the bombastic tune of Kanye West, dancers commenced a series of pedestrian repetitions, often returning to face the audience straight on while running in place. Here the piece did not dwell upon any postmodern sense of ironic juxtaposition, and quickly meandered onward.

Dancers muttered under their breath, wringing their hands. Fischer spoke of what was presumably an embarrassing monkey bar accident. The group pounded on the doors positioned around the stage, only to find them locked and unanswered, and then formed a human pyramid reflective of Fischer’s playground anecdote. “Blame the Youth” scratched at a wealth of personal experiences, but the patchwork of performative choices that feigned embarrassment, pleading, joy, and a host of other emotions diluted the more potent snippets of Fischer’s monologue. The sections involving dancing without heavy emotional directing felt the most genuine, such as a confident trio featuring elastic side leaps and the occasional smirk.

Doorway II, “The Theory of o-o*” (*a graphic representation of super-string theory), was a choreographic collaboration between past collaborative partners Ashley Creek and Symmer Andrews. Their costuming choice was odd (orange leggings with sky blue sarongs tied at the waist), but Creek and Andrews made more compelling use of the doors than had yet to be seen. Two dancers came bursting through a door in the split second before it was pushed away, a dancer shot through a doorway into a strong plank, a duet repeatedly slithered through a doorway and back again. A duet I could have seen over and over again featured Elle Johansen and another dancer who quickly chopped their arms through the air then dipped into an arabesque-turned-forward somersault. Happily, this short duet occurred twice, though I wanted more of these contributions to what could have been a richer choreographic fabric.

Doorway III, choreographed by Ashlee Vilos, was the program’s most substantial work. While the first two felt like fragments even at their conclusions, Vilos wove her thoughts more cohesively throughout three sub-sections (“Me and My Monster”, “Door to Death”, “Forgive You”). As its sub-titles could belie, Doorway III dealt with the idea of “skeletons in the closet” or in this case, a rickety, pieced-together mannequin torso. A trio in party dresses (some of the group’s most effective performers: Airmet, Andrews, and Creek) began timidly, regarding the closeted mannequin with apprehension before bringing it out center stage. Abruptly but with a convenient change in the music, the three began to happily dance with it. A new group of dancers went through the same progression, proceeding to dance while cradling its dismembered arms before shutting it back in the closet.

At a change in scene, Vilos made her way out of a doorway flanked by two cloaked, hooded figures. Drawing in audible, sharp breaths, Vilos contracted, spiralled, dropped suddenly, and liquidly snaked in the most visceral display of movement seen yet. A dynamically varied as well as emotionally engaging performer, Vilos radiated a passion-infused, emotionally-heightened drama that I had not previously found as convincing in the performances of some of her cohorts. Even when she sat, gesturing, on a torso upstage while a group danced fully in front of her, my eyes were drawn to Vilos and the conscious narrative found behind her gaze.

In one of the final scenes, Airmet was left with a lapful of dismembered mannequin parts, which she fumbled with while stumbling around to the group’s droning hums. Suddenly shouting, “None of these are mine!,” Airmet seemed to take even herself by surprise with her wild outburst. Airmet’s performance was specific and confident as she went around the stage returning limbs to their rightful owners and exchanging words about forgiveness with each one. A thrashing solo danced well by Charity Wilcox led into a final group unison section, throughout which I found myself both intently watching Vilos and also wondering why a gap existed between Vilos’ performance and those of many in the group.

While narrative content appeared high on the list of choreographic priorities, honing of performative specifics (what, why, how) could have contributed to more believable performances from the group as a whole. Throughout the evening, the music and voice-over narrations fed the audience a rollercoaster of feelings, but never fully explained themselves by way of the choreography or individual performances. I would be interested to see an iteration of Doors  that used all of its working parts more cohesively and more clearly mined its existing narrative ore. 

Amy Falls is the program coordinator for loveDANECmore. Additionally she is a choreographer and performer most recently seen in the Utah Opera's production of "Aida." 

Ririe Woodbury in review

In the intimate space of the Rose Wagner Black Box Theatre, Ririe Woodbury opened Spring Season with two premieres and one reconstructed work, concluding the company’s annual season with a show that is as virtuosic as it is contemplative. 

Joanna Kotze’s commission, “Star Mark,” begins with increasingly rapid projections of floral prints. With dancers clad in matching floral costumes by Eugene Tacchini, “Star Mark” calls to mind a dance by John Jasperse, another fairly recent contributor to the company’s repertory. Although the two dances are different in a host of ways, both use the idea of matching prints to, at once, disguise and highlight the moving body. After performing inside the projection, the black traveler rolls in, clearing the space of colorful imagery. The audience is left to reckon with the dancers themselves, interrogating their movement without a shroud of external ideas. 

A program note suggests that the dance highlights performance as a multi-faceted role using a daily process which includes “investigating a person.” At times the thoroughness of this choreographic investigation pays off: Bashaun Williams making an exacting diagonal pass, performers trading momentary comic pas de deuxs, Melissa Younker ending the piece with a slice of her arms before disappearing into black. But at the end, the audience still sees only slivers of this wholeness, as they do in any other dance. 

A reconstruction of Ann Carlson’s “50 Years” gets at how these small slivers of knowing change over time. The dance is a chorus of base instincts. Wearing dirty, wet, dusty red rompers, the ensemble repeats an imagined chant while rolling through various states: fear, ecstasy and hesitance, among others. 

It was my third viewing of “50 Years” which was made as a celebration of Utah’s Bicentennial in 1996. Last night, Amy Falls and I sat together debating: Who was in the cast we saw several years ago? Was that magnificent tree from Shirley Ririe’s yard always downstage left? Wasn’t it a set of lightbulbs instead? 

Our miniature debate speaks to how “50 Years” functions not just as a series of shifting choreographic choices but also a reflection on the possibilities within the embodiment of social histories. In this iteration, dancers appeared frightful and adoring of the aforementioned tree. In past iterations those same impressions floated more ethereally. Both choices reflect ancient ideologies of hope and consternation in different ways. 

The concert concluded with “Enter,” a world premiere by Artistic Director Daniel Charon and the second installment of his developing trilogy “Together Alone.” While the first portion of the trilogy presented a didactic representation of digital life, “Enter” is largely absent of such an approach, opting instead to explore the concept of dancers continuing to move through the idea of a “metaverse,” a collective virtual space. While the idea of “metaverse” is relatively new, dance has always lived between the real and the representational.

In front of geometric projections created by Charon (cycling lines, a minimalist clock, a grid) the cast performs alongside an evolving sound score mixed live by Michael Wall. There is something engaging about the stark repetition of the imagery and the unpredictable nature of how dancers can find momentum in space. The music augments this sensation by adding information to both what is actual (a human voice) and what requires envisioning (unidentified ambient soundscapes). 

The work ends with sounds emerging more and more clearly, like waves rolling on a beach, while Brad Beakes (who is leaving the company at the conclusion of Spring Season) dances with Yebel Gallegos. They are genuinely there but the beach is not. They are genuinely moving together but are also only a sketch or an illusion of who they, in fact, are. Their togetherness is a physical fact, but the success of the piece also relies on our belief that it might be so. 

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

This post is co-published with 15 BYTES. "Spring Season" runs through Saturday at the Rose, tickets available on ArtTix.