Dan Higgins: In. Memory. Of.

Dan Higgins captured the human condition in its rawest form in his new evening-length work, “In. Memory. Of.” There were moments of intense vulnerability paired with stark confrontation that allowed the dancers to unveil deep human feelings often hidden from the public eye. The 70-minute work was a part of Repertory Dance Theatre’s Link Series and was followed by a panel with Drs. Shannon Simonelli, James Asbrand, and Jinna Lee that unpacked the piece’s voice on the effect of mental illness.

As the audience entered the Leona Wagner Black Box Theatre, the show had already begun. Higgins sat in a chair at a wooden table facing away from the audience. A dark green scarf that later emerged as a motif lay in front of him. The soft rattle of audience voices painted the landscape - the dance had started with simple human connection.

As the five other dancers (Natalie Border, Micah Burkhardt, Jalen Williams, Bethany Shae Claunch, and Lyndi Coles) entered the stage, their bodies created a sculptural landscape. With simple walking patterns and standing sequences, we watched them move with keen alertness. At one moment, they stood at the edge of the wings while Higgins walked past. The shadow of his hand glided gently across each of their faces. A deep humanness was unveiled in intentaional movements such as these.

The piece developed into a series of duets, a string of conversations. All the while, Higgins remained on stage, observing the connections and interactions; he was an outsider who witnessed and watched, much like the audience. Williams and Burkhardt’s duet had a virtuosic nature that alternated between playful and aggressive. The two men began by running past each other with quick changes of direction and near misses. They chased each other, launched their bodies toward one another, and supported each other in lofty, suspended lifts. Williams and Burkardt captured both the strength and gentleness of the human body, moving like young wolf pups or brothers.

“In. Memory. Of” wove together a diverse sound score that featured several layers, from a continuing drone that intensified into abrasive, pounding sounds, to moments of silence characterized by the breaths and brushing of body parts, to Higgins’ deep voice that relayed a complex and vulnerable narrative. Each of these layers was developed in small pieces, so that the narrative was presented in increments. The story created then seemed to span a very long time, an unveiling that required space and patience.

The text, written by Cooper Smith and Mary Higgins, shared a story of feeling deeply alone yet finding a sense of belonging in surprising places. It was a story of experiencing extreme awareness of and alertness to the world yet confusing the edge of reality. It was a story that carried an emotional journey and exposed memories of trauma. The narrative was shocking at times, but also allowed me to connect to the words so that my own experiences resonated alongside the narrative.

After a section of story, Higgins and Border moved through a stunning duet. Their movement held powerful parallels to the narrative. I could not help but wonder if Border was a representation of the female in the story or if, in fact, Border was a manifestation of Higgins’ inner mind, an internal conversation physicalized. Their partnering was strong and facilitated both fierce and tender moments. The amber shadows of lighting, designed by Pilar Davis, bounced the reflection of body parts off the floor’s surface. The focused brightness captured the quality of light usually found in the middle of the night when the moon hangs high in the sky.

The scarf on the table at the beginning became another moving component and motif in the dance. It emerged as a safety net, an object of comfort that crawled across dancers’ skin and seemed to offer a calming familiarity. Yet, at other moments, it was a force of tension, something that pulled, tangled, and restricted the dancers. This simple object captured, and physicalized, the complexity of mental illness.

Higgins’ words, “The wolves always come to watch,” still resound in my mind. This phrase was followed by group movement - the first time all six dancers moved together on stage since the beginning. Were the five representative of the wolves mentioned in the story? Are we, the audience, the wolves, here so faithfully, only to watch from the outside? Or, are our minds the wolves, creating outsiders within ourselves? “In. Memory. Of.” offered few solutions to these ponderings and instead gave voice to the complexity of the human mind. The movement and narrative created a space to look at mental illness and the response of the body and mind to trauma. “In. Memory. Of.” uncovered the struggles that many may face but may keep private, laying bare painful, yet ultimately human, experiences.

Rachel Luebbert is a senior at the University of Utah, nearing completion of a double major in modern dance and Spanish. Rachel has also contributed writing to the College of Fine Arts’ blog, The Finer Points. 

OSBA presents Parsons Dance

As an undergraduate student in 2008, I discovered Parsons Dance when I serendipitously checked out a DVD of the company, released in 2001, from a music and dance library. Upon watching it, I fell in love with David Parsons’ quirky choreographic style.

One of the pieces on the DVD, Reflections of Four, was performed by four women on a stage filled with water, each experiencing a different type of weather. There was also a humorous piece about the woes of mail delivery (The Envelope) and an idiosyncratic piece set in a restaurant-sized kitchen, dancers piling on top of one another as a set of eyes rose above a large vegetable cutting board (Fine Dining). Ten years later, I can still remember these works, as Parsons’ unique and strange presentations were unlike anything I had ever seen.

When I learned Parsons Dance would be performing at Brigham Young University the semester after watching them on DVD, I anticipated seeing witty, humorous, and viscerally sensitive work, but was underwhelmed by what was presented. The concert seemed more focused on presentational affectations and general accessibility rather than on the witty content and strange gambol of Parsons' earlier works.

With these experiences in my pocket, I attended the Ogden Symphony Ballet Association’s presentation of Parsons Dance at Weber State University with the hope that David Parsons’ creative output had returned in the way I first experienced it. I also came to the show on the heels of taking a technique class from two company members, Zoey Anderson and Justus Whitfield, earlier in the week.

The technique class, offered for BYU students and faculty, juxtaposed Parsons’ recognizable, shape-oriented movement with a house dance exploration inspired by Parsons’ recent collaboration with choreographer Ephrat Asherie.

The show, at WSU’s Val A. Browning Center, opened with a balletic piece, Wolfgang. Commissioned by and created for the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, the piece (set to Mozart) unfolded in three sections. Three men and three women began; Parsons’ longtime collaborator Howell Binkley’s fantastic lighting design made them visible only by white side light. Soft and elongated port de bras was placed on top of petite allegro steps, all while the dancers changed formations, entered and exited the stage, and took turns in heteronormative duets. The revolving transitions exposed rich dimensions of the proscenium space, and the dance included a plethora of chaîné turns (sealed as a theme due to their sheer number). One female dancer did chaînés around her male counterpart more than a dozen times, which was met with applause from the audience.

In the second section of Wolfgang, when two men delicately lifted their female partners, the third male opted to drag his. In the third section, dancers unexpectedly lined up at the front of the stage, hands on hips, while one male dancer collapsed to sitting, nonplussed, his hand resting on his knee. After two duets were sequentially performed in rectangular spotlights, the third and final partnership advanced into a spot holding one shape and then retreated the way they came with no additional movement. Parsons’ wit and humor was thinly revealed in this well-crafted, well-executed ballet, with enough oddity amongst the regularity of the ballet vocabulary that I found myself gently chuckling.

The second piece was an excerpt from a duet, Finding Center, that was created in 2015 for the Harriman-Jewell Series in Kansas City. It was a breathtaking piece in which Zoey Anderson and Justus Whitfield utilized counterbalance and Pilobolus-esque techniques to effortlessly rise and fall in the spotlight for several minutes. I can’t remember Anderson ever touching the ground. I would bet money she never did, though I cannot be positive because I was distracted by the audience applauding at inappropriate times. The lifts were impressive, but the moments of stasis and settling were disrupted by and lost in the clapping. Should the audience’s trick-promoting response have been absent, the salient moments of the duet would have allowed more pause for thought and offered even more intensity and serenity.

UpEnd, the third piece, was co-choreographed by Parsons and Asherie. I was pleasantly surprised by the percussive score created for the piece, as I had expected generic house music similar to what was used in the technique class. Anderson, a Utah native, began to rise as the star of the show beginning in UpEnd. Her ability to articulate agility, fluidity, and staccato movement upstaged her peers, particularly the other women. She found an equal match in technical mastery with Whitfield, with whom she predominantly partnered in this work.

The movement vocabulary created for UpEnd was even more original and exciting than what I had experienced in the technique class, but the piece as a whole lacked a clear arc and ended strangely. To wrap up, Anderson and Whitfield made contact a few times, held hands, and then finished in a quick and unexpected embrace as the lights faded out. Maybe the arc was meant to mimic that of a shooting star, because the narrative between Anderson and Whitfield both began and concluded in about ten seconds.

The program’s second half opened with Kind of Blue. Commissioned by the Umbria Jazz Festival in Perugia, Italy, this piece made me more than kind of blue: it made me kind of bored. A predictable and gendered quartet of two males and two females dancing to blues music only briefly captured my attention, and I was reminded of Fred Armisen’s “Stand Up for Drummers” (currently streaming on Netflix). In Armisen’s standup routine, he asks the audience to raise their hand the moment their mind wanders while listening to a song. He turns on a jazz track, and within six to ten seconds, the majority of the audience (and Fred) have raised their hands. For me, watching this dance validated Fred’s hypothesis on the engagement power of jazz. But, it was an accessible piece, with lots of shoulder rolls and sassy skirt tosses, so I’m sure it fit well within the programming at the Umbria Jazz Festival.

Finally, the piece came that we had all been waiting for: Caught, David Parsons’ seminal solo. Caught is a beautiful combination of athleticism and technology, and allows the performer to appear as though they are floating in space as they jump into the air more than 100 times. It is the dance version of a flip book, as each jump is caught at the height of its suspension by a flash of light. The solo is performed traditionally by a male company member but at this show, Anderson performed the solo effortlessly, even better than I remember it being on DVD or at a 2009 performance. The audience was on their feet at the end and I wanted to see it a least ten more times.

The show concluded with Whirlaway, commissioned in 2014 for the New Orleans Ballet Association. Joyful and groovy, it was a nice number performed to Allen Toussaint songs, and was choreographed and executed with prime musicality. Again, it featured the predictable gendered coupling of males with females, but this time, there were four males and three females. Anderson once more took a principal role but, while she is absolutely beautiful to watch, I began to wish I could see another performer’s strengths highlighted.

Whirlaway was another well-crafted dance with dimensionality, character, and precise execution, but, as my viewing companion stated, “I always find it sad when I watch professional dancers perform so well, but still feel bored.” The choreography was not bad or boring, and the dancers were energetic and impressively athletic. But it may be that I was tired of seeing works commissioned by other arts organizations and would have rather seen a work motivated by the personal interests and wit of David Parsons himself. That was the kind of work I saw in the company’s 2001 DVD from the library.

I was very impressed with the Parsons dancers, particularly Anderson, as well as with the musicality and craft expressed in Parsons’ choreography. I appreciated the collaboration with house choreographer Asherie and the inclusion of a female performer in the well-beloved Caught. However, upon reflection, the thematic material for each of these pieces (excluding Caught) might be found on a list of ideas created by a student preparing for an audition. Fusing modern dance with blues music or house dancing, or adding a few quirky gestures to ballet, are not hugely innovative ideas. I understand it probably pays to choreograph mainly commissions; the dancers need to be paid, and accessible themes appeal to a greater variety of dance consumers. But I would love to see David Parsons create a piece based on ideas he is interested in exploring, rather than just those that result as part of a commission.

Heather Francis is the Arts Bridge Director and Kinnect Artistic Co-Director at her alma mater, Brigham Young University.

UtahPresents: Doug Varone & Dancers, with guests

UtahPresents programmed an evening of choreography by Doug Varone, held at the University of Utah’s Marriott Center for Dance. The performance featured members of Varone's company, Doug Varone and Dancers, Varone himself, special guest artists and former Varone company members Daniel Charon and Natalie Desch, members of Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, and students from the University of Utah School of Dance. The multiple groups shared the performance cohesively. I would have loved to see even more interaction among the different groups, but I understand that they had limited time together to prepare for this show.

The first work presented, “in the shelter of the fold,” consisted of five sections, which were held together thematically, and with similar music (intense ambient sounds with humming vocals) and lighting design (many-rayed light coming from one source, with darkness to contrast around it).

‘1. horizon,’ performed by the company, introduced a stiff movement style that continued through the next couple sections as well. The dancers created shapes and painted pictures together as a group, moving at varied speeds and with nice moments of stillness.

My favorite moment of stillness involved a female dancer holding a male dancer up off of the ground. It was an interesting and aesthetically pleasing lift that demonstrated grace, strength, and coordination. But also, many female dancers are perfectly capable of lifting a male dancer, and yet we don’t see it choreographed that way very often, even in today’s more current landscape of female empowerment. I liked that it wasn’t supposed to be a big statement, just something that could happen naturally within a choreographic work. Looking at it in that light, it’s ironic that I wanted to dedicate a whole paragraph to the topic.

‘2. folded,’ performed by two dancers from the company, was not particularly noteworthy as far as any differences from the first section. It ended with the performers vigorously shaking their heads at the front of the stage, which I enjoyed.

‘3. shelter,’ performed by three dancers from the company, portrayed continual negotiation of relationships, likely among two parents and their child. It was tense and poignant, and included some wonderfully executed, choreographic details of hand articulation.

‘4. mass,’ performed by students from the University of Utah School of Dance, was stylistically different from the previous sections, featuring more choreographed unity among the dancers, more fluid movements, and more use of physical flexibility. This contrasting piece was like a breath of fresh air.

The dancers from ‘4. mass’ slowly crawled off the stage as ‘5. hope’ began. It was wonderful to integrate the two sections that likely could not have been rehearsed together very much due to time constraints. It was simple, but so effective, especially because of how well it fit the style. The crawling theme was also repeated toward the end of ‘5. hope,’ tying it together even more, and without feeling too repetitive.

‘5. hope’ was a solo by Hsiao-Jou Tang, who is, in my humble opinion, the very best choice for a solo feature of anyone who shared the stage that evening. Her seemingly natural grace and movement details made her stand out.

After intermission, we saw “Strict Love,” which featured an off-putting combination of upbeat music and stiff, floppy movements. Eight dancers (a combination of performers from Ririe Woodbury and Doug Varone and Dancers) seemed stuck in their limited expressions (contrasting with the lively soundtrack) as they stayed in the same formation for a displeasing amount of time. This 1994 piece by Varone wasn’t my favorite, but it did provide a good contrast to other pieces within the show.

After a pause, Doug Varone himself performed a self-choreographed piece titled “Nocturne.” The solo included a pleasing mix of larger dance movements, gestures, and wonderfully natural pedestrian moments. I loved Varone’s unique and charming style, especially his expressive hands and shoulders.

Next came a piece performed by Daniel Charon and Natalie Desch, called “Short Story.” I disliked it, although I don’t think that its purpose was to be likable. The piece portrayed a tense relationship and power struggles between two people. I prefer for everyone to support each other, so this was not my cup of tea. However, it was a memorable and well-executed piece.

Finally, “LUX,” a 2006 Varone piece, was performed by the company. “LUX” gave the audience a welcome abundance of big, energetic movement, including some playful barefoot tap moves, solos from my favorite dancer, Tang, and a strong ending. I very much appreciate the way that the evening of Varone’s choreography ended with a bang, so to speak.

Doug Varone and Dancers in rehearsal at the University of Utah, with students from the School of Dance 

Kendall Fischer is the artistic director of Myriad Dance Company. In addition to dancing with Myriad, she also performs with Voodoo Productions, and has enjoyed opportunities with SBDance, Municipal Ballet Co, and La Rouge Entertainment, among others.

Austin Hardy presents La Mela

What determines how we view identity? This question lay at the heart of La Mela, a program recently presented by Austin Hardy that featured works by local artists Rebecca Aneloski and Stephen Koester. Presented in the intimate black box in the Beverley Taylor Sorenson Arts & Education Complex at the University of Utah, the evening explored questions of performance, affectation and affection, memory, and interpersonal relationships. The works focused on how an individual may relate to social space both within and around themselves, and how those relationships drive who we are and who we become.

“Man Dance,” choreographed by Stephen Koester, Modern Dance Chair at the University of Utah, was a thoughtfully-crafted work that delved into what it means to be a man. Beyond just being a man, what does it mean to look, act, sound, and exist “like a man”; who successfully gets to be a man and what drives that success? With extremely physical partnering representative of Koester’s style, “Man Dance” was a duet between Micah Sir-Patrick Burkhardt and Austin Hardy, and kept me engaged throughout.

The piece opened with Burkhardt and Hardy performing a warm-up. Dressed in gray and black sweatsuits, the two seemed unaware of the audience’s presence until they were suddenly hyper-aware. While their voices dropped from their natural registers, the two continued to repeat “I’m a man!,” entertaining the audience at first, but eventually forcing a question: why did the two men feel the need to repeat this phrase? Even though Burkhardt and Hardy were performing versions of themselves, they were still characterized and performing affectations.

I appreciated Koester’s range of references in “Man Dance,” with movement motifs spanning from a Western gun battle to superheros, cavemen, a traditional Jewish wedding dance, and finally to MC Hammer. Each presented its own interpretation of what manhood means and, more importantly, each existed specifically to define masculinity. Burkhardt and Hardy, through these motifs, became the fighter, the savior, the provider, and the arbiter of “cool.” By presenting these motifs in a male duet, “Man Dance” exaggerated the men’s roles and forced the audience to view them as hyperbolic and impossible to embody.

Through Koester’s partnering, we were shown authentic weight transference between the two bodies, negating the role of the lonesome male figure. We were shown two bodies relying on each other in a way that was both intimate and clear in its connections. While some of the partnering was meant to be comedic, it maybe only seemed so because of a sense of machismo the dancers were attempting to personify.

I felt discomfort for the performers as they tried to manifest these roles with hunched backs and sharp angles, dressed in their sweat outfits, clearly uncomfortable. Towards the end of the piece, we experienced their real physical discomfort as they caught their breath, literally, in a spotlight. Their inability to completely embody the fictionalized, hyper-masculine roles was presented with nothing else to look at.

I questioned the role of mishaps in the piece, both of ones that were choreographed and others that might have been accidents. Though sometimes questioning them because of the performers’ reactions, Hardy made me feel his mistakes truly, in a way that enforced an impossible binary. At the end of the piece, both dancers embodied a groove in their pelvis, and I felt Hardy let go of all other roles he had been playing to exist in this physical element for himself. It was appropriate that this came at the end of the piece, as it was an immense relief to see the dancers stop fighting to become something and to simply be themselves.

A second work began after a brief intermission, this one choreographed by Rebecca Aneloski, a performer and teacher with SALT Contemporary Dance. I am unsure of the title of the work, but I assume it was “La Mela,” which translates to “the apple” in Italian. This seemed to be a deeply personal work for Aneloski and focused on memory; having worked with Aneloski in the past, I am familiar with her Italian roots. Complementary to this background knowledge, the stage was set with a table and chairs and a bookcase, all in constant shifting motion, and furthering the idea of memory through a familial context.

The piece opened with a quartet, featuring Burkhardt, Hardy, Nell Rollins, and Natalie Jones, and quickly grew to a larger cast, adding Natalie Border, Amy Fry, Allie Kamppinen, Haleigh Larmer, Chang Liu, Megan O’Brien, Laura Schmitz, Bayley Smallwood, and Sarah Stott. The large cast engulfed the stage with their presence and with Aneloski’s expansive movement vocabulary. The dancers constantly reached for and pulled each other, seemingly in slow motion even when the pace was brisk. They provided both physical and emotional support, remaining completely connected throughout the piece. Approximately an hour long, the piece as a whole presented moments for each dancer to shine.

I was struck by the thought of rediscovering the familiar, by way of memory and of caretaking throughout the entire piece. Regardless of who was being featured at the moment, the rest of the cast continuously arranged and rearranged the set: moving books to and from the bookcase; rearranging cups, plates, the tablecloth, chairs; finding new ways to see these everyday items. I often found myself entranced by what the next configuration on the table was going to be, and was surprised when my focus returned from the dancers to the set and it was completely different than I’d last seen it.

Though not explicit, specific motifs were repeated throughout the piece that lent themselves to an exploration of childhood memories. Natalie Border had one of the clearest moments of this, as she could often be seen traipsing around the stage with one arm reaching up and behind herself, her gaze towards the sky, as though flying a kite. She even brought a sense of lightness to some of the heavier moments, her white blond hair breathing fresh air into the scenes, as well as anchoring them. She gave the audience something to hold onto.

A feeling of foreboding and death surrounded Sarah Stott from the beginning of the piece through to the end. She was the only dancer to appear in color at first; from her initial entrance, she created drama, as she fell and the other dancers threw flower petals at her body. Throughout the rest of the piece, she swan-dived into the others, trusting them to catch her and seeming not to care what happened to her if they didn’t. At the end, she collapsed again, this time for good, as the titular apple appeared.

During the whole piece, we were presented with a style and vocabulary that was uniquely Aneloski’s, though with clear input from the performers. I was continually struck by moments and lines being cut off abruptly and almost awkwardly to create a sense of visual, and probably physical, discomfort. Chests were almost constantly forward, with arms reaching past shoulders, heads raised to create room for protruding appendages. The air surrounding the dancers had a tactile feel. Hands were often held at the hip, seemingly ready for action. During a duet with Burkhardt and Jones, this vocabulary was brought to a writhing climax in Jones’ body as her movement picked up pace and the discontinuous and tactile sensation continued. This hindered her ability to stay on her own two feet and led to beautiful partnering.

One moment that stood out to me was a duet between Liu and Stott. They moved with such clarity and assuredness that, even with all the shifting bodies and scenery on stage, my eye was drawn only to them. Amidst chaos, their clarity of line, precise unison, and powerful stage presence was completely engaging.

Overall, because of a large cast and constant movement, the work was chaotic. But memory is also chaotic. How we define ourselves derives from memory, both personal and external, and that perception is constantly shifting, much like the stage in “La Mela.” Without being able to pinpoint one specific element, the work felt autobiographical, like Aneloski was telling a story about her life through memory. It felt authentic to the dancers’ stories as well. I appreciated this deeply personal work and know that we can expect to see more from Aneloski in the future.

Promotional image for La Mela.

Natalie Gotter is a performer, choreographer, instructor, filmmaker, and researcher. She recently completed her MFA in Modern Dance at the University of Utah and is on faculty at Utah Valley University, Westminster College, and Salt Lake Community College.

Alwin Nikolais through the ages: Ririe-Woodbury's Strata

The work of Alwin Nikolais presented in Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company’s Strata spanned three decades, but the exploratory nature of Nikolais’s work appears to transcend time. What was once progressive still feels to be so; while others have emulated areas which Nikolais pioneered, his work maintains its sense of existing on the edge, despite the ebb and flow of many dance trends.

This article seeks to place the works featured in Strata within their original contexts rather than presume new observations and, in doing so, seeks to reveal how Nikolais’s choreography, concepts, and staging hold up, or even accumulate layers, as they continue to be performed and discussed.

Nikolais’s “Tensile Involvement” premiered in 1955; to place it historically, this was both the same year Arthur Mitchell first joined the New York City Ballet, later to become the company’s first African American principal dancer, and the year the polio vaccine was approved by the FDA. Around the same time, Nikolais himself wrote the following in a piece for the New York Times:

“We speak of dance necessitating humanistic relationships and concern, but new semantic meanings of man and his relativity within our present historical strata are constantly being redefined. The tools of the dancer - motion, time, space, light, sound, shape and color - have greatly extended and altered in meaning during the last quarter-century.” (August 18, 1957)

Nikolais’s observation may be extended more broadly, but is certainly an apt description of his own work and intent, as embodied in “Tensile Involvement” (if not equally embodied throughout his repertory). In the piece, dancers cavort, energetically but purposefully, weaving paths back and forth across the stage with long, ribbon-like cords. The dancers’ relationships to their environs triumph here; their relation to each other is important and evident, but is perhaps only a byproduct of the primary task at hand.

Withstanding the test of multiple viewings, the premise of “Tensile Involvement” continues to feel refreshingly new; arguably, the same holds true for the test of the span of decades since the work’s premiere. Perhaps this is also to credit the bright performance quality brought out by the spirit of the dance and the inherent quality of Nikolais’s movement: energy radiating from the eyes down to the metatarsals, and, in this case, even still outward along the full length of the cords, from the floor all the way up into the fly-space.

“Gallery” premiered in 1978 as part of a two-week run at the Beacon Theater in New York; in the same year, the U.S. would launch the first global positioning satellite and Yvonne Rainer would perform her iconic “Trio A” for the camera. New York Times dance critic Anna Kisselgoff wrote the following after attending the opening night of “Gallery”:

“[The] metaphor of an ordinary fairground shooting gallery representing humanity is typical of Mr. Nikolais’s way with a message. Yet it comes as no surprise that he also seduces his public with the dazzle and wit of his technique… It is one of Mr. Nikolais’s strongest works, in which he has achieved a great deal of variety within self-imposed restrictions.” (April 20, 1978)

Nikolais’s success in fully exploring one idea, living within restrictions set in place by a specific world, was a recurring impression throughout Strata, but especially in “Gallery.” Harkening back to composition class, the idea of exploring one thought completely before moving on to the next is tantamount to choreography; a thorough exploration is akin to sweeping out all the nooks and crannies, unlikely to leave a viewer wanting.

“Gallery” is an embodiment of such thorough exploration, as it twists and turns through various iterations of similar themes. The dance’s dominant imagery consists of red and green targets, bobbing heads, DayGlo masks, and dancers serving as abstractions of goofy yet macabre caricatures. While far from appearing human, the mime-like performers still elicit human responses from the audience - laughter, shock, discomfort, surprise - in their odd renditions to an eerie sound score.  

At first, the cast of “Gallery” seems to be in control of the fairground shooting gallery they inhabit: popping their heads up and down, going in and out of view, swirling back and forth along the counter they are behind, doing the backstroke, eventually creating elaborate counterbalanced shapes on two stacks of tables in front of the counter. But by the end, all are compelled to return to the confined gallery space from whence they came, and are subjected to invisible projectiles that render the mask-like targets in front of their faces shattered. Were they ever in control? “Gallery” explores such a full range of possibilities within its parameters that it seems for a time that they are.  

1980 saw not only the premiere of Nikolais’s “Mechanical Organ” but also those of the Pac-Man game, Star Wars’ The Empire Strikes Back, and Salt Lake City’s very own Ballet West in New York City. Nearly a year after the debut of “Mechanical Organ” at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, Kisselgoff observed the following after a Nikolais Dance Theater performance at City Center:

“An ensemble precedes the best moment, a solo beautifully danced by Marcia Weadell-Esposito. Like a lean wildcat pacing in her cage, she darts and whirls, discovering her own shape and yet still alluding to the mannequin image, her own head lolling atop her neck...As a pure-dance piece, "The Mechanical Organ" is as good as its choreography. It does not seemingly aim for the philosophical resonance of "Gallery." (February 12, 1981)

Mary Lyn Graves, in the solo described above by Kisselgoff, is a highlight of Ririe-Woodbury’s staging of “Mechanical Organ.” Quick and crisp, elegant and elongated, Graves’ performance of the doll-like solo was a perfect balancing act of precise attack and languid release.

Throughout “Mechanical Organ,” specifics of choreography remain of greater interest than the dance’s conceptual arc. While a divergence in that regard from other pieces in Strata, there was still delight to be found in Juan Carlos Claudio and Bashaun Williams’ virtuosic duet, in which they leapt over and rolled under each other, and supported each other in hinges and other counterbalances, and in an all-male quintet that took place largely on the floor for a transition from male bravura to more meditative contortions.

“Mechanical Organ” featured a sound score composed and edited by Nikolais himself, who forged a new path, technologically speaking, in 1964, when his company commissioned the first commercial Moog synthesizer. Nikolais used a synth to create jarring, discordant, computer-y sound scores for decades of dances, including for all those featured in Strata (all the program’s scenic and lighting designs are also his work).

In 1985, the year Nikolais’s “Crucible” premiered in Durham, North Carolina at the American Dance Festival, many now-common technologies were in their infancies, including the Internet Domain Name System, the Nintendo home console, and Microsoft Windows. William Forsythe’s first collaboration with composer Thom Willems was in 1985, the year following Forsythe’s appointment as director of Ballett Frankfurt. Jennifer Dunning wrote about the opening night of “Crucible” at ADF for the NY Times:

“One cannot help feeling that Mr. Nikolais will continue to play with ''Crucible,'' which doesn't look quite settled in. For the piece is almost at odds with itself after its first stunning and amusing moments. ''Crucible'' begins with a play with mirrors...and the nudity is meant to be one more abstract element...As is often the case with stage nudity, the bodies do become abstract and asexual very quickly. But as ''Crucible'' now stands, there is little eloquence to this design with bodies beyond a play of shapes and patterns.” (June 16, 1985)

“Crucible” employs optical illusion to create its otherworldly choreography; a sloped mirror duplicates hands, arms, and legs that poke upward, first like flora, swaying and multicolored, then metamorphosing into fauna, pecking and chopping. The emphasis here is truly on form and limb, and the kaleidoscopic imagery is successful due to the abstraction of bodies, which enables the eye to see a whole rather than a sum of many.

However, as the dancers begin to reveal more of their bodies above the slanting mirror, the abstraction wavers. Though the original nude dance thongs are foregone here for more SLC-friendly nude unitards, the focus very quickly shifts to the human body as, transparently, a conglomeration of its parts; the audience audibly tittered and even whistled as the dancers turned (the illusion of) nude rear ends to face them.

Viewing “Crucible” now, much may have settled that Dunning felt was incomplete following the work’s premiere. And, rather than sharing Dunning’s skepticism at the success of bodily abstraction, this writer wondered what lay at the heart of the interplay, even conflict, witnessed in “Crucible,” between the abstracted body and the human body. Through barriers of costuming, lighting, distance, and concept, the dancers’ bodies still appeared as unrelentingly un-abstract to many in the audience. It is a testament, perhaps, to the power of the body to announce itself, no matter its additional trappings.

By their very natures, history (both dance and otherwise) and technology have barreled ahead since the premieres of “Tensile Involvement,” “Gallery,” “Mechanical Organ,” and “Crucible.” But Nikolais’s singular and inventive use of lighting, projection, sound, costuming, concept, and movement still elicits strong response. Among a relatively small canon of enduring choreographers, Alwin Nikolais has proven what is unique about a dance may remain so, and that new layers may even be acquired in a dance's lifetime. This writer fancies that is because of, rather than despite, not only continued performance of the work but continued conversation and criticism surrounding it.

Amy Falls manages loveDANCEmore’s cadre of writers and edits its online content. She works full-time in development at Ballet West and still occasionally puts her BFA in modern dance to use, performing with Municipal Ballet Co. and other independent projects in SLC.