Rire-Woodbury: Traces

Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company’s Traces includes a sharp, stylish duet by company artistic director Daniel Charon as a prelude and Ann Carlson’s evening-length “Elizabeth, the dance,” originally created for the company in 2017. My pet word is almost always “effective” when I critically appreciate and evaluate a production. But, regarding Carlson’s astounding “Elizabeth,” I find that the words sending me to the thesaurus are related to ‘“strength” -  strong choices, strong chemistry, and an overarching strong sense of deliberate purpose.

The focal point of the opening tableau in “Elizabeth, the dance” is a modular wall of dense foam blocks, each around two and a half feet square, that are stacked in rows of five or six. The company of six sits contemplating the blank, imposing structure. They proceed to launch individual full-body assaults on the wall, egged on by off-the-cuff verbal appraisal from their cohort. The wall gives way with a truly jarring crash and its constituent blocks are claimed, scattered, and repurposed by the dancers with intense motivation. This sequence presents a literal foundation, and also its figurative analogue. The theme is structure: obstruction, destruction, construction. These incredibly versatile blocks are later counterposed with light white balloons. Archetypal simplicity belies complexity of craft in “Elizabeth, the dance”; a textured collage of speech, movement, and sound proliferates within this elemental framework. 

Carlson drew directly from the lives and experiences of the dancers in the creation of this work, and the dancers embody it beautifully. Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company is thoughtfully peopled with distinctly virtuoso individuals who, together, have an incredible working chemistry. Their ensemble unison in silence was especially impressive. Some singular moments and images in “Elizabeth” stand out from the piece’s gestalt enactment of human endeavor: Melissa Younker is the first dancer to fully arrest the viewers’ attention, in a series of draping poses on a block pedestal with all the exaggerated static angularity and total living force of the classical statuary figures she invokes. A recording of Bashaun Williams telling a personal story is accompanied by William’s solo movement, which, though adept and sharp, left room to focus on the utterly compelling cadence and content of the narration. The dancers emerge and re-emerge from behind the wall in accumulating states of clown get-up, starkly breaking the aesthetic monochrome, and enact a furtive pants-tugging, crotch-rubbing, shiftily ambiguous probing of erogenous bits that hits the perfect note of discomfort and grotesquerie.

(From left to right) Bashaun Williams, Dominica Greene, Brian Nelson, and Melissa Younker of Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company in Ann Carlson’s “Elizabeth, the dance.” Photo by Stuart Ruckman.

Other moments of note deal more explicitly with the overarching theme of dance history and precedent and its patent impact on the lives of dancers. Clad in pointe shoes and tutu, Megan McCarthy executes bravura balletic movement, only to break against human impediments and collapse dramatically to the floor. The director stops the scene to redo the fall again and again, which McCarthy accomplishes not only with wit and intensity but also the blithe, performative deference demanded of a dancer receiving vague, disparaging rehearsal notes. In another vignette, newest company member Dominica Greene speaks directly to the problematic framing of historical legacy. Greene and two other dancers ascend and descend a block, draping their long black costumes in pan-Hellenistic toga fashion and striking the corresponding languid poses. They respond warily at first to unvoiced questions about unnamed forebear Isadora Duncan. The series culminates in Greene stating that this historical figure was a racist, that she prefers personally to look to the many women of color who innovated and originated modern dance, and, in an admission of confliction, acknowledges Duncan’s contribution to the field with the certainty that Greene would have been excluded from her work. In “Elizabeth,” the treatment of modern dance as subject never feels like an in-joke. Rather, it is explicit and integral, driving conflict and inquiry.

Watching “Elizabeth, the dance” reminded me both of reading Italo Calvino’s lectures on lightness and weight and of trying feverishly to stay awake through the hippo, crocodile, and ostrich ballet in Disney’s Fantasia. It made me consider the difference between intention and objective. We are often called on to appreciate and acknowledge the intention or internal process of a performance. But it is refreshing and exciting to be swept along with unremitting craft and purpose, with the sense that each artist is driven by a strong objective in every moment, and on a path of deliberate choices. The path here terminated in an on-stage popcorn party, so thoughtfully scaffolded and respectful of boundaries that I participated in it comfortably and gladly.

Ann Carlson has long-standing connections with the University of Utah and the founders of Ririe-Woodbury and has recently presented work for UtahPresents and the inaugural Dance West Fest. I fervently hope she will continue to create here in our community.

Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company’s Traces continues through September 28, with a family matinee and full-length evening performance, at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center.

(From left to right) Dominica Greene, Brian Nelson, and Melissa Younker of Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company in Ann Carlson’s “Elizabeth, the dance.” Photo by Stuart Ruckman.

Nora Price is a Milwaukee native living and working in Salt Lake City. She can be seen performing with Durian Durian, an art band that combines post-punk music and contemporary dance.

Brine Dance: Brine 5

Brine Dance, a Salt Lake City collective, presented its fifth annual concert at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center as part of Repertory Dance Theatre’s Link Series. Symmer Andrews, Ashley Creek, and Sara Pickett are the creatives behind the collective, and have co-directed and -produced its five concerts thus far. This year, Brine 5 presented four dances by five choreographers, purportedly to show "longer, more in-depth works… to give the audience the opportunity to experience [a] high caliber of choreography.” This model was a major departure from last year’s structure, which featured work by 18 choreographers split between two programs. 

The choreographers included Lauren Broadbent (a junior at the University of Utah), Mar Undag (recently of SALT II) and Daniel Do (of Repertory Dance Theatre), Portland-based artist Trevor Wilde, and dancer/director Rebecca Aneloski.

There was no question that the show was well-rehearsed; all dancers performed with extreme clarity and all work was clean and contained in a way that left little room for audience interpretation or nuance. The overarching physicality of the show alternated between precise, isolated gestures and simultaneous, whole body movements. 

Do and Undag’s collaboration resulted in “Permission To Be [VDSW],” a dance for four women. The women began in front of the show curtain, working with repetitive, direct gestures to the beat of the music, then proceeded onto the stage, the music oscillating between genres and moods. Indicated by the program notes, the dance aimed to demonstrate the power of the four women. Comprised primarily of overlapping solos and duets, the piece’s many entrances and exits allowed the dancers to change their various all-white costumes. The final image had the four women with their tops off, snapping to turn off the lights. 

Trevor Wilde’s piece, “Anotherwom(e)n,” utilized a door frame and a pile of red roses. The first solo spoke of a dark memory while a contemporary ballet sequence was performed. As a counterpoint, a second soloist leapt around the stage with a bouquet of roses as if in love. In a duet, the two dancers often mirrored one another, alternating silly faces and classical lines. The simple black dresses accentuated the leggy choreography. 

“TASTE,” by Rebecca Aneloski in collaboration with her performers, had a refreshingly clear identity. Flirty, floaty, and bizarre, the choreography employed nuance and spatial logic. The physical textures allowed characters to develop complex personal identities inside a distinctive world. Suspending time, condensing time, and other surprising timing choices added to the piece’s pleasure and satisfaction. “TASTE” evoked images of family structures and personal struggle. Aneloski crafted a series of overlapping tableaus with striking moments of reflection that I continue to reflect upon. 

“8.6.45,” choreographed by Lauren Broadbent, was the final piece, and one primarily driven by its music. Strong beats drove the dancers’ sharp gestures around a table and a bench. Hands were placed over eyes, mouths, and ears. The dancers occasionally assumed a formation to face the audience, moving through punching and slashing choreography, and then finished with a large piece of white fabric. 

Even as a reviewer, I am not completely certain of my role. I do not feel I am watching to determine whether something is “good,” or not - that is far too subjective of a decision, that I think is best left to each audience member. I do, however, have some questions about the dynamics of dance-making. Some are specific to this show, some specific to Salt Lake City, and some on a larger scale.

Why do choreographers make dances seemingly based on experiences that are not their own? Why do men choreograph dances with the expressed intent of highlighting the experiences of women? Why would a young choreographer make a dance about Hiroshima, an event that predates her by half a century? 

Why do dancers use voice on stage, and how does it relate to the physicality of the body? Did the artist(s)/producers obtain the proper licenses to play the music of Kendrick Lamar? Is it appropriate for four white women to perform to Lamar’s music? 

Did the producers have conversations with choreographers about problematic gender or music content? Did they address undeveloped dances? Did choreographers have opportunities to receive feedback from the producers, their peers, or other artists? 

Can a dance find an identity succinct enough to find multiplicity inside of that clarity? Why might a dance have enough content to fill multiple distinct works?

How does a community push the boundaries of a predominant movement aesthetic? 

How does a community create space for artists to take risks while also holding the entire community to high standards of craft and quality? 

It is important for there to be more independently produced shows like Brine 5 in Salt Lake City. 

But as we create more space, we should continue to ask questions of ourselves, our peers, our mentors, our collaborators, and those with the power to create more space. We may not agree upon the answer or the methods, but in the asking, we may create the possibility to discover the unimagined ways that dance can transform, heal, and connect communities. 

Originally from the Midwest, Hannah Fischer is currently pursuing her MFA at the University of Utah. She received an Individual Artist Grant through the Indiana Arts Commission in 2017 and was an Associate Artist-in-Residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in 2014.

UtahPresents: Ann Carlson's Doggie Hamlet

Go see Doggie Hamlet. It’s a rare event, and one that exemplifies what dance has to offer our species. Last night, I drove down Provo Canyon, from a conference I was attending in Midway, to the Salt Lake County Equestrian Park. Just to watch this dance. It reminded me: viewing dance – the rarified act of looking at other bodies and identifying with them – is an irreplaceable way of knowing. 

Those incredible mountains I’d just driven through lay there on their sides, bathing in the sun. The lawn was eerily verdant and flat. We sat on bleachers – like you do at a high school football game – staring at an arbitrary rectangle of grass. Dominica Greene, who you may know from Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, climbed over a fence and a haystack to traipse casually across the long, heroic diagonal. She was wearing what looked like a wedding dress made of snakes. We never saw her again, but she was followed by Imre Hunter-To, who might have been a teenaged ranch hand. He waved toward a faraway road, and moments later several dozen sheep came bounding toward us from the inaudible distance. Dogs, a shepherd or two, and more dancers followed. 

Doggie Hamlet, the brainchild of choreographer Ann Carlson, is hard to describe because the action unfolds at a glacial pace – and yet there‘s always more to look at than you can really take in. You make choices. I spent a lot of time looking at Eph Jensen’s son, the middle-aged caretaker of his father’s flock, who stood still at the far corner of the field, an imposing icon with his cowboy hat, bright white shirt, and cane. (The program notes tell us that the Jensens are the only sheep outfit in Utah that still trails their ewes home each fall via a dedicated right-of-way in Box Elder County.)

Geese and airplanes cross the sky. The six human performers (including Diane Cox, the “onstage” shepherd) comprise a weather-beaten family.

One of many tableaux: the dancers call out for the dogs with a helpless enthusiasm. Their cries and useless flailing-of-limbs make the dogs’ connection with Cox seem like the epitome of ancient human-animal competence. Another image: our heroes dress up in sheep-drag and perform a gruesome Vaudeville number for their uninterested ungulate co-stars. As the night unfolds, the sheep themselves react very slowly to the rising temperature of inexplicable human behavior. The dogs do what dogs do. They labor to make sense of the social predicament. 

Ryan Tacata dances an entrancing solo with real or fake sign language that puts me in mind of the work of Francisca Benitez. Maniacal human-patriarch Peter Schmitz (more King Lear than Hamlet) invites us to sing. The dancers – yes! – but there’s always something else to look at. It’s not anthropology or narrative that lets us understand these humans, it’s what they look like next to the other animals who also run, leap, and stare. Periodically, we even find ourselves to be indifferent to the human concerns on display. We become like the sheep and the empty blue sky. 

Doggie Hamlet asks a lot of the audience. When we are not being sheep, we must work. We must accommodate several different frames, up to and including the valley in which we live. We must look at animals and people in various states of pain and confusion. A logic emerges, far outside of what a story can tell us. We learn something by imagining ourselves as a part of that grimy – dare I say, primitive – pack of humans. We learn something else through our aestheticized empathy with the dog who gets stepped on by a ewe. Another insight comes from watching how the flock acts as one slow-moving mind, but still makes room for the odd leaping soloist. The sun sets on all of us. The mountains turn azure and pink and the grass is still unnaturally green. 

Doggie Hamlet continues Saturday, September 14, at 6 p.m. at the Salt Lake County Equestrian Park.

Samuel Hanson is the editor and executive director of loveDANCEmore. 

Sugar Space presents Suite: Women Defining Space

This year’s performances of Suite: Women Defining Space showcased the work of Corinne Lohner, Haley Stassia, and Halie Bahr. The Suite series is dedicated to “support[ing] the creation and presentation of new work by women choreographers,” and is produced by Sugar Space Arts Warehouse through funding from Salt Lake County’s Zoo, Arts & Parks program. 

Corinne Lohner is a recent transplant to Salt Lake City via New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. In “The Schema of Pretense,” she had Eliza Tappan and Ali Lorenz perform games of discordant make-believe and wrestle wildly amidst a landscape of hobby horses, play telephones, and tubby plastic chairs. Conceits flashed from “here are sixty-something ways to mount a horse,” to “pretend I’m dead and you find me and we had a tenuous relationship so there are things left unsaid,” to “what if we got a divorce” and “pretend I’m lonely, and you’re lonely but not as lonely as me.” Tappan in particular is very good at theater games. Her face and voice contort elastically, with the kind of calculated improvisational ease that only comes from possession of precise comedic timing and being very well-practiced. 

These small fantasies wound down to a long moment of empty, languishing quiet before exploding. The two worked themselves into a frenzy, rolling into each other and all over the room, whispering and shrieking and laughing hysterically. They wrestled like children, like puppies, with anarchy and a caustic seamlessness between tenderness and competition. As my companion at this show put it, “hugging or fighting?” is a format/question that tends to crop up regularly to better (or worse) effect. This time, I really liked it. The window into their intense intimacy broke open towards the end with a drastic lighting change, and from then on Tappan and Lorenz’s escalating hysterics became more and more distant, and almost off-putting. A feeling settled over both myself and my companion akin to the faintly disgusted boredom of being the only sober one at the end of the night, the jokes and secret pacts of friends having become inscrutably dumb and out of reach. 

“Unmasked Vignettes” was a series of alternating solos and duets, and a final trio. It was immediately obvious that this was the piece choreographed by SALT Contemporary Dance company member Haley Stassia. The familiar and popular style of contemporary dance neatly checked all its boxes right away (trace a line to its points, push against something and then undulate away, sweep a leg, meaningfully place your hand on various body parts, etc.). I enjoyed Edromar Undag’s well-executed opening solo, but felt my attention wander as the piece progressed against a soundscape of varied solo piano waltzes, its keyed-in devotion to musicality dampened by the chaotic traces of Lohner’s piece. 

Halie Bahr is an MFA candidate at the University of Utah, and her piece began as Stassia’s ended, with a walking pattern, this time with a larger group and for a longer duration. Bahr’s five dancers transitioned from walking to an across-the-floor combination that could have come from any modern technique class. The combination was repeated many times, with slight variations in movement and facings. A few times, the lights dimmed suddenly and someone would hold up a bright cellphone-flashlight-like beam on a dancer, who would thrash their limbs with heightened intensity. The movement, effects, and intent of the piece were hard to parse and stay engaged with consistently. I’m not sure that the cumulative effect Bahr was reaching for ever coalesced for me, although the piece moved dynamically and was performed very well. 

Emily Snow is a Denver native who now calls Salt Lake City home. She has most recently been seen performing with Municipal Ballet Co. and with Durian Durian, an art band that combines electronic music and postmodern dance.

Bijayini Satpathy in Kalpana - The World of Imagination

I walked into the Leona Wagner Black Box for Kalpana - The World of Imagination (presented by Chitrakaavya Dance) excited to see a traditional Indian dance performance. Little did I know that I would witness magic on stage in the form of Odissi, a historic and sacred dance form from the state of Odisha, on India’s eastern coast. Furthermore, the evening’s soloist, Bijayini Satpathy, was one of the most beautiful technicians and performers to have ever graced a stage. 

After Satpathy took her final bow to a standing ovation, I craved more of her and, as a result, began to research. I was not surprised to learn that Mark Morris, who has attended her performances for the last twenty years, counts her easily among the top five dancers he’s seen in his lifetime. Additionally, I learned that Satpathy, who was born in Odisha, was the longtime star of premiere Indian classical dance company Nrityagram Dance Ensemble, until last year when she decided to push into new territory as a solo artist. 

But it does not take an Odissi practitioner, let alone a dancer, to be mesmerized by Satpathy. This was evidenced by the silence of the crowded theatre during short pauses in between pieces, and as I looked around me, many (myself included) sat on the edge of their seats at times, seemingly forgetting to blink or breathe. 

The combination of Satpathy’s perfectionist attention to detail, physical strength, musicality, ability to be simultaneously grounded and airy, her unwavering balance, and control at all times of every inch of her body would be admired by any dancer; but it is her facial expressions, and more specifically, the power of her gaze, which make her a truly compelling performer. 

In ninety minutes, we watched her transform into a deer, Mother Earth, a mourning woman, a demon, a mischievous five-year-old boy, a tormented milkmaid, a strong woman admiring her physical beauty, and both male and female lovers engaged in a passionate act, to name only a few. In a split second, Satpathy was able to embody a new character, often in a contrasting emotional state, and each time the expression in her eyes would initiate the transformation, her serpentine limbs following suit. 

Satpathy’s eyes had a way of making me feel like she was staring at me and only me, yet her expressive gaze also appeared directed inward, as if she was simultaneously staring into her own soul and internal anatomy, directing her muscles to move with her eyes. In fact, it could be argued that her eyes were all the audience needed to see in order to understand the array of characters and mythical and religious stories expressed on stage. 

It would be a disservice, however, not to reflect further on Satpathy’s remarkable technicality. The Odissi dance form’s theoretical base can be traced back to 500 CE in the Natya Sastra, the ancient Hindu Sanskrit text on the performing arts. The text states that two main dance forms comprise Odissi: nrita, or “pure dance,” which focuses on the perfection of detailed gestures and shapes of the hand; and nritya, the solo expressive dance which stresses the dancer’s ability to evoke and portray emotion. 

While all of the pieces in Kalpana told well-known Hindu stories, pure dance, or nrita, was also shown and celebrated. In the final piece, “Sun Maiyya,” the gesture of making a tight fist was repeated. This gesture is not necessarily new to either eastern or western dance, but here, Satpathy extended her wrist, her elbow gracefully bent with an ever-so-slight external rotation, and wrapped each finger inward so tightly that the audience could practically see air escaping from her palm.

The first piece, “Mangalacharan – An Invocation to the Mother Goddess,” was full of hand movements that a layperson might describe as miming. Instead, a more accurate description of the intricate gestures might be a form of poetic sign language. In each position of the hands, every finger breathed and quivered in tune with the raga music, as if each finger was playing its own musical instrument. 

The dramatic, saturated, red and green lighting by designer Sujay Saple, in tandem with meandering, mysterious, and heavy fog which filled the stage, only further transported the audience to an ethereal realm. Through watching Bijayini Satpathy move, we were all taken to her world of imagination.  

Bijayini Satpathy in Kalpana - The World of Imagination. Photo by Ravi Darbhamulla.

Joanna Emily Reed is a Salt Lake City native currently residing in Pittsburgh, PA. She identifies as an occupational therapist and dancer, and wholeheartedly believes that movement is the most fundamental aspect of life.