SALT: Spring Concert

At 7:24 p.m., I stepped into the Jeanne Wagner Theatre for SALT Contemporary Dance’s 7:30 p.m. Spring Concert, to find dancers already onstage. I felt slightly guilty walking in during a performance, but other audience members were doing the same, and I heard whispers about this being the pre-show.

Some of SALT’s key branding points are that they are the second largest dance company in Salt Lake (now encompassing SALT and SALT II, as well as a junior and senior company for ages 12-18), and that they are bringing new, cutting-edge dance to Utah. I was glad to see their senior company perform (if only briefly this time), and would be interested to see the junior company at some point too.

After finishing a piece choreographed by SALT company member Logan McGill, the senior company took their bow, and then crawled backward to stand up and take a smaller bow, which I thought was a nice detail.

After a pause right at 7:30 p.m., “Stand by Me,” the first main company piece, began with the house lights still on. The stage was littered with a hundred oranges, and two dancers began slowly and carefully rolling one between their bodies. It was absolutely beautiful and unique, and accompanied by peaceful, pleasant music that helped set the tone. At a V.I.P. event the previous week, Spanish choreographer Gustavo Ramirez Sansano mentioned he was inspired by a game that children play with oranges in his home country.

After this had gone on for a while, more couples joined the scene, and the house lights dimmed. A sense of loss was palpable when one half of a couple abruptly left, neglecting the orange and letting it drop to the floor. It made me think of the Spanish phrase “media naranja,” which translates literally to “half orange” and refers to a concept similar to “my other half” or “you complete me.”

After another pause, SALT II performed “I Love You,” by Portland-based artist Katie Scherman. The dancers impressed me with their fluidity and control. They looked like they had been training hard, and training smart, since I last saw them in concert this past fall. It was also a somewhat different group than previously.

I loved the gesture phrases in “I Love You,” including some heart-shaped hands. I was impressed with the execution of wavy shoulder moves, and of a solo with a lengthy balance following a one-footed élevé.

“Beyond the Limitation,” by Joni McDonald and SALT artists, premiered last fall and was reworked a bit for this presentation. This time, the music was more unique and the intention seemed clearer.

In the fall, there had been three couples doing the same choreography at the same time for some parts, but this time, there were two couples for the most part who took turns dancing (the stage-right couple moved for a bit while the stage-left couple sat still in the dark, and then the lighting drew attention to the stage-left couple’s movement, as stage-right darkened).

The first time I saw it, the intent of the piece had been unclear beyond a heaviness in personal interaction. This time, I noticed distinctly that there were moments of missed connection, which I found very interesting. For example, one dancer would reach for another just as she was moving out of the space within which he would have been able to touch her. McDonald is absolutely brilliant at partner work, and I’m so glad that she was able to continue to explore this piece.

Following an intermission, Eric Handman’s “Cloudrunner” showcased intricate, group-interactive choreography. Some of the phrases were repeated facing different directions, a choreographic technique that can be tiresome, but that in this case stayed exciting, allowing the audience to notice different aspects of what took place each time.

I particularly enjoyed when two female dancers lifted Eldon Johnson off the ground, his arms over their shoulders, and Johnson pantomimed running in mid-air – which tied into the piece's title for me. I also always appreciate when dancers who are not the smallest onstage are lifted – when the group makes something work without doing it the easiest way.

The final piece of the concert was “Proverb,” by Banning Bouldin, which was memorable for the well-utilized costuming of nude bodysuits and long, sheer, puffy black skirts. According to the choreographer’s program notes and a previous conversation with Johnson, the skirts represented the weight of regrets the dancers carried with them. The movement was appropriately heavy for this theme.

For me, the most striking image in this piece was when Arianna Brunell took on an extra-immense skirt of regrets, built up underneath her by the other dancers whose shoulders she sat on, with everyone’s skirts trailing out behind her in a long train.

By the end, all the dancers had shed their skirts/regrets, which, knowing the intended symbolism, was something I was really hoping would happen. Johnson kept his skirt on the longest, and I could see his relative heaviness as he interacted with the skirtless dancers toward the end.

The piece finished with a repetition of Brunell’s extra-immense regrets shape, only without the skirts this time. The tone was still somber, although I had hoped that the dancers would feel lighter without the weight of their skirts. But maybe the similarity could show that you never know just by looking at someone what they might be carrying around with them.

Overall, SALT’s Spring Concert presented a great collection of well-executed choreography with interesting concepts and unique visuals. I look forward to enjoying more from SALT in the future.

Kendall Fischer is artistic director of Myriad Dance Company, for whom she also choreographs and performs. She performed with a variety of local groups, including Voodoo Productions, SBDance, Municipal Ballet Co., and La Rouge Entertainment. In 2017, Kendall’s dance film project, “Breathing Sky,” received the Alfred Lambourne Prize for movement.

Repertory Dance Theatre: Current

Repertory Dance Theatre’s Current included five dances presented one after the other, after the other, and yet... another, because they were all made recently; they are a reflection of “right now”; they are current.

To begin, the silhouettes of Justin Bass and Tyler Orcutt spoke their way across the stage beginning “Still Life With Flight” by former RDT member Sarah Donohue. The faces of the dancers were illuminated once they landed their popping (not locking) bodies on a bench. They shifted ever-so-slightly with harmonized pulses of their torsos that incidentally occured to execute the larger movement of wringing hands, crossing legs and shrugging, casting quick glances at one another before interlocking to perform cartwheels over the bench. Through a series of turns en dehors with their legs in arabesque (legs held behind, turning counterclockwise) the two moved around the bench, holding each other often and expertly.

Cut to Ursula Perry dancing to herself in a mirror with a scrim hanging downstage, creating a hazy, sepia effect. “Aloneness,” choreographed by Francisco Gella, contained a lot of unison phrases, all considering its subject of solitude. Or, not solitude - loneliness. The choice of being alone. I sometimes get lost on the bridge connecting etymology to physicality; are the movements representing different definitions of aloneness? Are they enacting solitude? They wore black so they must have been mourning the loss of community. Nothing was certain save for the calm and careful movement of Perry, who pierces space with her gaze. Even her fingertips and shins saw what they were moving towards.   

“Flood” began with the company in line, facing the audience, shifting together on the pads of their feet, creating a “tiny dance” of utmost specificity. (Choreographer Nichele Van Portfleet is specific.) The dancers wove in and out of this line throughout the piece, pushing and displacing each other from the line, and carefully buttoning up their shirts in a mime-like fashion ending with a gesture to form a suffocating collar made of flesh and bone (their own hand). This sequence communicated internal flooding - perhaps a flood of information, perhaps something else entirely. I was reminded of “The Green Table,” choreographed by Kurt Jooss, depicting pre-World War II “peace” negotiations and their ultimate futility. In both pieces, the dancers embody caricatures of those in power, whether world leaders or parts of themselves. The performers in “Flood” were not at peace with themselves nor with one another. They were often on the edge of physical stability, twisting themselves with movement overlapping and interweaving dynamically, likewise putting me on the edge of the seat beneath me.

Justin Bass and Jaclyn Brown in "Schubert Impromptu" by Francisco Gella. Photo courtesy of RDT.

Next on the program was a bonus duet by Gella, aptly called “Schubert Impromptu,” as if one of many Schubert compositions was picked out of a hat to entertain us after “Aloneness” and “Flood.” Justin Bass and Jaclyn Brown appeared to have been directed to move in sync with the music, and it was very satisfying, if not predictable. At one point, Brown slows down a cartwheel on her forearms over Bass, leaving me impressed with her ability to resist gravity. The two wore black, like the costumes in Gella’s previous piece. Some of the movements were similar, but, in “Schubert Impromptu,” there were no mirrors reflecting long beams of light into the audience, slicing through the space between stage and seats. “Schubert” seemed purposefully intimate - the dancers’ light did not come to us, but we could go to it for a diversion or a shelter from darker subject matter.  

“Material Tokens of the Freedom of Thought,” choreographed by Angela Banchero-Kelleher to the music of Wojciech Kilar, ended the evening. Many of the movement phrases in the piece were punctuated by the dancers pausing at length to look out into the audience, arms placed at their sides, forming a slight oval around them. They stood this way, waiting for their turn to move again, and in these moments I saw their eyes searching, perhaps to find the meaning of “mother” in the midst of the fan-like movement surrounding them.

Current flowed - or careened - like a recital. One can only do so much to connect a playful duet with a reconciliation with one’s deceased mother to a socio-political abstraction to an exploration of being “alone together,” without any transition other than closing and opening a curtain. However, the members of RDT moved through the evening with grace and deep breaths. They exhibited a cohesion that prompted the friend accompanying me to wonder if some of the choreography throughout all five pieces was extremely similar, if not the same.  Each moment of contact carried with it a familiarity stemming from continued physical practice as a company. The dancers are fully integrated, if not the dances they are dancing.

Emma Wilson received her BFA in Modern Dance at the University of Utah and has since been making solo works, choreographing for Deseret Experimental Opera (DEXO) and working as the Salt Lake City Library’s Community Garden Coordinator.

Repertory Dance Theatre: Dabke

Repertory Dance Theatre presented the evening-length Dabke, by Zvi Gotheiner (choreographed initially on Gotheiner’s ZviDance in 2012), for the second time to Utah audiences. After performing an excerpt of the work in 2015, RDT premiered the full piece in 2017. This performance distinguished itself further in the more intimate Leona Wagner Black Box Theatre, which served the emotionally charged piece.

Much that is central to Dabke has already been written about and explored; among local writers Les Roka and loveDANCEmore’s own Liz Ivkovich, as well as New York-based writers Alastair Macaulay, Pascal Rekoert, and Brian Seibert, I will try to find my own voice within an established narrative.

Much has also been said about Dabke in terms of cultural appropriation, regarding who may lay claim on the dabke - the national dance of Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Palestine - or who (if anyone) may stake a claim on any cultural dance form. I came to the show with swirling dialogues of culture, power, and ownership, but also with a deep desire to watch and be moved by dance. Post-show, dialogues of cultural appropriation continue to swirl; notwithstanding, I was deeply taken with the power and complexity of Dabke and RDT’s embodied, virtuosic performance.

Dabke is Arabic for “stomping the ground” and this is how dancer Efren Corado begins. It is as if he is experiencing a memory, brought on by summoning a familiar beat within his body. When Lauren Curley tries to join him, he succinctly and somewhat aggressively denies her permission and continues alone. Eventually, the full company enters the space, but whether because of choreographic intent or personal performance quality (or both), Corado continues to be the central character. He is the sun and the others orbit around him, warmed by his energy.

The piece continues with entrances and exits, and with solos and duets that meld into larger group sections. A solo by Justin Bass marks the beginning of a musical score by Scott Killian, with dabke music by Ali El Deek. Bass is rounded and sensual, hips swaying and gestures soft. The solo recalls Gotheiner’s reference in “Creating Dabke” (an introductory film shown before the dance) to the quest to be “macho” in a hyper-masculine world. In one moment, Bass embodies the social construct of femininity; in the next, he is externally focused and direct, punctuating clear lines and rhythms in the space while referencing a cultural dance form that has often kept women from participating.

The struggle to preserve previous establishments is again communicated when Dan Higgins pulls at, then manically re-adjusts, his shirt. It is a gesture that hits an emotional chord and provides a pedestrian moment, a respite from the movement-driven work. Higgins plants himself downstage, his focus outward, while a group of dancers upstage, dimly lit, perform as if within his own mind. He lets the thoughts (dancers) play out, then walks off the stage without looking back.

The anchor of the evening is a solo (a duet, if you count Lacie Scott’s prone body) by Corado, in which he removes his shirt, wet with sweat, and proceeds with many actions rife with metaphor. He waves the shirt in the air, carefully arranges it on the floor in front of him while he kneels behind it, wraps it around his wrist - the shirt is both his offering and his lifeline.

Corado shines in roles such as these, roles in which the dancing may be important but the storytelling even more so. He has a vulnerability and a distinct self-awareness while losing himself that is piercing. Before this section ended, I found myself wishing I could restart it in an attempt to memorize every nuance. Eventually Scott joins Corado, partially undressed, in solidarity, but the moment reminds me that a woman removing her shirt carries a different weight than a man doing so.

There is violence in Dabke: aggressive partnering, convulsing bodies that won’t be quelled, imagery of slit throats, and coarse sexual gestures. While the piece is about coming together and being pulled apart, and ultimately about finding an experience in blended cultural forms, it is marketed as highlighting national and tribal identities, grappling with conflict in the Middle East, and as a hope for eventual peace.

I do not question the power of the moving body (in most respects), and certainly this work does well to explore, succinctly and powerfully, a myriad of themes central to the human experience. I do, however, question the ability of the moving body to stand in as a surrogate for a mass of countries with many distinct religions and cultures. Can we, as a community in Salt Lake City, not only appropriate a cultural dance form but also represent a complex war, with involvement by our own government to varying degrees? I do not propose to have the answers, but I do have many questions.

Ursula Perry has the last solo of the night. While the music relentlessly carries on, she struggles to find solid ground. She is beautiful and strong, then broken and weak. She clenches her fist as if she has found “it,” but then just as quickly lets “it” go. Sound escapes her mouth, jarring in its evidence that she and the others on stage for the past hour have been living, breathing people. She runs in circles, tracing the patterns that her community of dancers once traced with her. She is running, alone; she pants and gasps as the lights fade to black.

Ursula Perry in Zvi Gotheiner's Dabke. Photo by Sharon Kain.

Erica Womack is a Salt Lake City-based choreographer and an adjunct faculty member at Salt Lake Community College.  

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.