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.

RDT: Emerge

Repertory Dance Theatre’s Emerge was an opportunity for each of its company members to choreograph a short piece performed by local dancers. This review reads like the show itself: eight disparate dance works, reflected upon individually. Although the choreographers might share conceptual interests and influences, having performed with each other extensively, their works were not directly in dialogue with one another.

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You Can Sit With Us, choreographed by Justin Bass:

The dancers began scattered on the floor amidst overturned metal chairs and tables. This careful dishevelment ended immediately when the dancers started moving, tidying up. They rose doing lovely tilts with their legs while beaming at the audience and putting the outdoor furniture in well-balanced arrangements. Occasionally the dancers would arrange themselves downstage and gaze at the audience invitingly. I wondered what warranted their relentless expressions of joy mixed with occasional ambivalence and why we were invited to sit with them.

One Step Forward, 500 Miles Back, choreographed and performed by Efrén Corado García:

The lights illuminated García in a striking position - his back to the audience, dark tresses shifting with his rippling arm movements. The piece was parsed into images triggered by the lights going off and then on again, similar to David Parson’s Caught. García, however, was not “caught” in midair, but grounded. He seemed to transform into a new entity for each snapshot, his still-visible silhouette  running to a new location onstage and then settling into position in quasi-darkness (due to the blaring lights from the sound booth). Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel gently pushed the dance forward; each repetition of layered melodies created a common thread between dynamically distinct movement images.

Miasma, choreographed by Jaclyn Brown:

The first third of this piece was a loose-limbed solo danced by Alicia Trump, whose hands occasionally cupped Martha Graham-style, but without the usual rigid arms and contracted torso - a compelling anachronism. This was followed by another solo danced by Marty Buhler, whose likewise loose limbs traversed the opposite diagonal. In the third section the two abruptly came into contact with familiar combative duet material. It was more interesting to witness the two when they were physically separate but moving in relation to each other, connected by common movement vocabulary and compositional elements rather than the obvious physical connection that is expected of a duet between a male and female. The piece started so strikingly with isolated solos, but deferred to duet material without precedence from within the piece to do so.

Figure it out, choreographed by Tyler Orcutt:

This piece consisted of a foundational walking pattern executed by Natalie Border, Tiana Lovett, and Gaby Zabka. Their knees were bent while walking, keeping them in a middle range between standing and fully descended, which they remained within even when they deviated from the walking pattern. Sometimes one dancer would fall in a sustained manner into the arms of the other two, or all of them would do their own phrase. But they consistently settled back into the original pattern that seemed to demand a lot of focus, both from the dancers to stay in sync and from the audience to “figure it out”.

Folie a Deux , choreographed by Nicholas Cendese:

Company members Ursula Perry and Daniel Higgins performed this duet exploring the “madness of two”. Their shared psychosis was manifested in a tense physicality and dim lights. Higgins repeatedly lifted Perry’s arm from the wrist, then tried to encircle her with both arms, only to encircle air as she ducked out of the way. Perry usually manipulated Higgins indirectly while repeating her own phrase that would happen to nudge him out of the way or allow her to slither out of his more direct grasp. Folie a Deux seemed to be an unabashed acknowledgement of the futility of repeating the same action without resolution.

Ipseity, choreographed by Daniel Higgins:

The music of Turkish composer and DJ Mercan Dede created a driving sound texture to which seven white, female dancers moved confidently while wearing identical tan, long-sleeved mini-dresses with slits on the sides. A loose narrative developed, punctuated by a scene in which all of the dancers stood around Elle Johansen who was lying supine. Natalie Border placed her hand on Johansen’s torso and then moved downstage. The two performed mirrored movement upstage and downstage while the other dancers sat in the middle creating a barrier. The piece ended with a powerfully tender solo performed by Border downstage while the rest of the dancers were shrouded in darkness upstage.

after/ever, choreographed by Lauren Curley:

For after/ever, Curley mixed and matched . Dancer Micah Burkhardt wore a skirt that matched the shirt of partner Megan O’Brien. Composer Eli Wrankle performed the violin live onstage, but was accompanied by a recording of himself that served as the rhythm to the melody that he performed. Both pairs - skirt and shirt, melody and rhythm - were separated by space and composition. The implied interdependency of these pairings was subverted by the fact that each component was operated by either another person or a rigid recording. Sometimes Burkhardt would lift O’Brien onto his shoulders or balance her in a fetal position on his reclined torso, emphasizing that the two were not actually one entity despite what their outfits might imply. after/ever brusquely revealed glitches in connectivity between autonomous beings.

Lively Sa-Sa, choreographed by Justin Bass and Ursula Perry:

This collaboration certainly was lively. The dancers had all participated in the company’s Winterdance Workshop and this piece served as a demonstration of what they had done. The movement was alternately wiggly and linear, like a graceful classic jazz dancer acting silly on the dance floor at a wedding reception. The workshop seemed like an upbeat way to stay warm in the beginning of January.

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Emerge seemed to feature mere glimpses of what RDT dancers are interested in choreographically partly because it was structured like a recital, not an interwoven concert. I am curious to see if any members continue these explorations beyond initial emergence.

Emma Wilson is a graduate of the University of Utah and regular contributor to loveDANCEmore. She frequently jams with Porridge for Goldilocks and was recently a choreographer for Red Lake at the Fringe Festival.