A process that gives peace. Mitsu Salmon interviews Stephanie García on migration and ecological disaster through her new work 'What Have We Lost?'

I sat down with choreographer and interdisciplinary artist Stephanie García to talk about her creative process, collaboration, and the questions shaping her new work, What Have We Lost? García speaks about a practice grounded in inquiry, where meaning develops gradually through the process of making. Our conversation touches on injustice, migration, ecocide, and embodiment, while staying closely tied to the practical realities of creating work with others. What Have We Lost? is presented by Utah Presents’ Stage Door Series and runs February 12–14, 2026. Link to tickets here. 

Mitsu: Hi Stephanie, thank you so much for taking the time to meet. I am a fan of the work I have seen of yours and would love to hear more about this new work, What Have We Lost, that will be this February at Utah Presents. What are some themes of this work and how does it connect to your previous work?

Stephanie: We started working last October in the studio with dancers, and it was a little blurry for me. The beginning is always hard. But after the last few weeks and having that break, things started to settle. I realized it is still very personal and very connected to my interests, which have always been about human behavior and the human condition.

I am still trying to understand why we cannot find ways to co-exist as a human race. It is not just about daily life, but also about more complex systems of power. We have the ability to reason and solve complex problems, and yet we are always in conflict with violent dynamics.

My work in general deals with social issues and injustices. At different times, the focus shifts. During graduate school, I was very focused on gender violence and discrimination. Now this piece came from seeing how irresponsible we are with the environment and natural destruction. But it also connects to other things. It keeps returning to the question of what are we doing? 

Photo by Emily Muñoz

I think about the future and future generations. Through this work I am thinking about how environmental justice connects to other social issues like inequality and discrimination. The piece started with  the concern of the destruction of the natural world, but it has become about other issues as well.

Mitsu: So your work often deals with injustice and this question of why humans cannot figure things out. You allow the work to evolve. How do you usually begin? 

Stephanie: At first I work alone. I gather, read, collect images, make collages. I have a digital journal. Sometimes I share that with Peter Hay, my collaborator. In this particular project, What Have We Lost?, there is a continuous conceptual dialogue between Peter and myself. Peter has been a key in both witnessing and developing the content of the work. We talk a lot and his feedback is very helpful at this initial stage. Once I have ideas for structure, like a skeleton of the piece, I bring them into the studio and test them with the dancers.

My work is based in movement, but it is also about how I craft the piece as a whole. Pieces that are only [the medium of] dance are harder for me. I feel I need other elements because they help communicate ideas that are complex and difficult to express only through the body.

When starting a new process, I get nervous, especially with new people. In Mexico, I worked with a group where we already knew each other. Here I had to start again, find people who trust each other and build that relationship. With Peter it feels easier because we already know each other very well. But with dancers, especially when everyone is new, you never know how it will go.

Mitsu This upcoming piece is a collaboration with Peter Hay. Tell me more about your collaboration together?

Stephanie: Peter is a visual artist. What I like is that he is not from the performing arts world, so he sees things differently. He brings me back to earth. He helps me understand what an audience might read. I think I am communicating everything clearly, but he helps me see what is missing or out of context.

For this piece, he is making installation work. There is negotiation between ideas and technical possibilities. Sometimes he proposes something and I doubt it, but once it passes through the theater and technical team, I can see it can be very powerful.

Sometimes collaboration is chaotic. We still disagree and misunderstand each other, sometimes because of language. But it is part of the process and it keeps the work alive.

Mitsu: Your work is interdisciplinary. Movement is important, but not the only element. How do you decide what leads?

Stephanie I do not always know. It is very intuitive.

I care about the quality of movement, but sometimes objects create the image first. Bodies are powerful, and when you add something around them, meaning appears. It changes how people look and engage.

A lot of the process is playing, trying things, simplifying. Sometimes we move toward more text, sometimes more movement, sometimes just actions. It is still dance, but from another angle.

Something important for me is that the process should be enjoyable. I have had processes in the past where it became unhealthy, and I do not want that. Even with serious topics, the studio should still feel playful and human.

I also wish we had longer processes, but economically it is hard. That forces you to be efficient. Collaboration is fundamental because instead of one brain, you have many brains offering ideas and solutions.

Mitsu: You mentioned being drawn to movement that does not look like what we are used to seeing.

Stephanie: A lot of contemporary training comes from ballet foundations. Even when it changes, you still see that lineage. I was trained in those languages too.

It is not that I reject that tradition, but I am not interested in seeing the same movement language repeated over and over. Changing costumes while keeping the same steps does not feel meaningful to me.

This also happens in contemporary dance. In the US, the modern tradition is still strong. In Mexico it broke earlier, but we received influence through release and floorwork, which I love and teach. But even those can become repetitive if they are not connected to meaning.

I am more interested in organic movement. Softness, but not weak. Strength, dynamics. I am especially drawn to the spine and its adaptability. I struggle with rigid lines unless they are intentional. I prefer movement that feels responsive and alive. But that is just taste.

Mitsu How did you begin dancing?

Stephanie: It was by accident. My mom passed by the National Arts Center and picked up a pamphlet for the national dance school. She brought it home and asked if I was interested. I did not know what contemporary dance was, but I auditioned. About 300 people auditioned and they accepted 14. I got in. I had no dance background, but I was a gymnast. My mom had been a gymnast and coach, so I trained with her growing up. That helped physically for my audition.

The school included both academics and dance training. The first year I did not understand much. By the second year I discovered I really loved it. By the end of my third year, I began dancing professionally.

Mitsu: You lived in Mexico City until moving to the US?

Stephanie: Yes, my whole life.

I danced with companies, but I always wanted to explore different styles. In Mexico you could clearly identify each company’s language. I was excited by that diversity.

Later I began making my own work. I was invited to tour solo work through UNAM’s cultural program. Then I co-founded a multidisciplinary company with collaborators from theater, dance, and visual art. That is where my interdisciplinary approach grew.

I was also influenced by Mexican theater directors who rework classical texts in radical ways. Seeing that work shaped how I think about form.

Mitsu: How did you end up visiting and eventually living in the US?

Salmon: First through my work in arts administration, and after because of Peter. I became interested in how presenters work, how touring happens, how opportunities are structured. The performing arts company I co-founded was also a nonprofit in Mexico City and I handled grants, applications, and touring for about ten years.

Through that, I met presenters from the US. I was invited to a conference in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where Peter was working. That is where we met. Later my work was presented at Living Arts. That was my first time presenting work outside Mexico.

Eventually I came to the US for my master’s degree.

Mitsu: How does Salt Lake compare to Mexico City?

Stephanie: Lifestyle is very different. In Mexico City, you commute constantly. You leave early, you carry everything, you do not go home between things. Here, you can go home, eat, rest. That makes a big difference.

Pedagogy is also different. In Mexico, teaching used to be very hierarchical. Here, consent and dialogue are more present. That has changed how I teach and direct my work.

The community here feels small but supportive. Conditions are still difficult, but relationships feel more honest.

Mitsu: Does place influence your work?

Stephanie: Yes, I would not have created certain pieces if I had not lived here, especially those related to migration. You cannot truly understand migration until you experience it. The migrant experience is universal, yet deeply personal. It is experienced in much the same way by any migrant, regardless of their legal status, encompassing themes such as displacement trauma, cultural adjustment, and a sense of loss. This experience is multilayered and becomes even more complex depending on the levels of privilege one has when relocating. 

The landscape also affects me. The mountains, the lake, the snow. It deepens my thinking about impermanence and nature. That enters the work naturally.

Photo by Winston Inoway

Mitsu: Is there anything risky or unresolved in the upcoming work What Have We Lost?

Artist: Yes. The piece is immersive but not participatory. The audience moves through the space, but we will not ask them to perform. That boundary feels important.

The risk is timing. We will not know how audience movement and reactions will affect the pacing until people are there.

Also, performers working with spoken text is always challenging as conventional dance training often treats voice as a foreign tool detached from the body. Working with all these elements is exciting.

Mitsu: What feels most essential in this current piece What Have We Lost?

Stephanie: I believe our ability to connect is crucial. What makes this process feel personal to me is that I am sharing my deeply held concerns with my collaborators. While our experiences may differ, we all have the capacity to recognize our blind spots and understand different perspectives. This allows us to realize that we have more in common than we might think.

From an ecological perspective, when the world collapses, I have been thinking that the natural world will survive. What is at stake is us, humans.

Documentaries about evolution and readings about anthropology have been important resources for this piece. Humans are adaptable, but extinction will happen eventually. That is part of life.

So the piece asks if all this conflict is worth it, when we could change how we live? I do not think art changes the world on a large scale. What this process has selfishly provided me with is a sense of peace. It has helped me reconnect with a survival strategy that emphasizes pragmatic thinking. This way, I can maintain a sense of hope and still appreciate the beauty amidst the chaos, especially as a Mexican immigrant living in this country right now.

Some parts of the piece are poetic, some are literal. The audience will interpret what they will.

Photo by Emily Muñoz

What Have We Lost? is presented by Utah Presents Stage Door Series and opens February 12 - 14, 2026. This interdisciplinary performance, created and dramaturged by Stephanie García & Peter Hay, explores humanity's current condition and reflects on what remains in the aftermath of catastrophe. It features movement artists Leslie Jara, Fausto Rivera, and Kellie St.Pierre. Link to tickets here. 

This programming is funded by loveDANCEmore as part of our in-house writer series, where we have in-depth conversations with artists to get to larger contexts about their work. If you would like to support this programming in the future, please consider making a donation or join our monthly subscription here. 

Stephanie García is a multi-awarded Mexican dance-maker, movement artist, performer, producer, arts administrator, arts advocate, and independent curator working in the USA and Mexico. She is co-founder and co-director of Punto de Inflexión Project and PROArtes México, and is a loveDANCEmore artist-in-residence. Last April, Stephanie was appointed to the 100th class of Guggenheim Fellows in the field of Choreography. She has collaborated with renowned Mexican and international choreographers, performed at prestigious dance festivals and venues in Mexico and 11 countries across America, Europe, and Africa, and created over 30 original interdisciplinary pieces presented in the USA, Mexico, Cyprus, Ireland, Peru, Panama, Spain, and Cuba. Her work has received grants and funds from Mexican, USA, Ibero-American, Dutch, and Canadian institutions. 

Mitsu Salmon is an interdisciplinary artist and writer based in Salt Lake City, working across performance, sound, and visual installation. Her practice explores translation across media, culture, and personal narrative. 

Her writing has appeared in Dance Chronicle and loveDancemore, and she received the Dance Chronicle Book Review Award. She has self-published artist books including Resonates, Traces, Orchid, and Feathered Tides. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from NYU. She has presented work at institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Chicago Cultural Center. Her work in Utah has been supported by the Utah Performing Arts Fellowship and grants from Salt Lake City.

Looking back at “Strands of Identity” with Irishia Hubbard Romaine

On Friday, August 22nd, the seats of UMOCA’s auditorium filled up to witness an evening of dance films curated by Irishia Hubbard Romaine, a dancer-filmmaker who lived in Salt Lake City for 3 years. “Strands of Identity: Excerpt and Guest Artist Screening” presented five works exploring the Black experience in Utah through a variety of perspectives, genres, and methods.

Two of the films were created by Romaine: “F3VER” (2024), a documentary following the journey of Andrew “3D Dance Fever” Jones in his roles as street dancer, high school substance abuse counselor, and globally recognized dance fitness instructor; and “Strands of Identity”—Excerpt (2025), a nonfiction film following the experience of two Black women in Salt Lake City that use their hair as a symbol of resilience and connection. Irishia now lives in Pittsburgh, but returned to Salt Lake City for this evening of work, which was inspired by her time in Utah. “When I began developing Strands of Identity, I wanted to create a documentary that highlighted aspects of my experience during my time here in Salt Lake — the people, the stories, the movement, and the memories that stayed with me,” Romaine shared.

The other three films were curated by Romaine to share the spirit of resilience and creativity of Black filmmaking in a white-dominated field. These five films offered a dynamic evening that approached Black storytelling through a range of methods, including fantastical world building, through traditional documentary, through experimental non-fiction filmmaking, and through abstract screendance. Each of these methods centered the experience of Black artists through generative movement and authentic storytelling.

“Nobody’s Child”—Excerpt (2025), directed by Makayla Hopkins, is a documentary through the eyes of Makayla of her father, Charlie who was born during the Vietnam War to an American GI and Thai mother in Bangkok.

“Invisible Power” (2023), directed by Cayla Mae Simpson,is a screendance where two Black dancers move across the city of Newcastle seeking their own quiet moments.

“Gold Sphere” (2023), directed by Jade Charon Robertson, imagines gold hoop earrings becoming a portal to an alternate universe created by Black Girls who can study, research, and find connection through movement. This short film is rooted in Afrofuturism and envisions an universe where Black girls can discuss and escape the racial unrest in the United States of America.
After the screening, Aja Washington, Host and Lead Programmer of the Black, Bold, & Brilliant (BBB) series, facilitated a Q&A with several of the artists involved in creating the films. The Q&A cultivated a dynamic conversation about race, racism, and the very specific experience of being Black in Salt Lake City. Many of the panelists remarked on how rare it is to have this kind of conservation – frankness about being Black in Utah, and having Black hair in Utah – publicly. Hubbard Romaine wanted to recognize the significance of the vulnerability that poet Franque Bains and rock artist Pepper Rose shared throughout the process of creating “Strands of Identity.” As Rose reflected, “I don’t ever say this stuff out loud.” For their part, Bains and Rose reflected that art allows ideas to be shared that might otherwise feel like oversharing. The films and the discussion that followed provided an opportunity for Black artists to share their authentic experience in their own words, and be visible on their own terms.

Pictured left to right: Aja Washington, Justis Aderibigbe, Makayla Hopkins, Pepper Rose, Franque Bains, and Irishia Hubbard Romaine.

By the end of the Q&A, I was struck by the way that film as an art form demands community; every aspect of the process relies on collaboration. After this event, I had the opportunity to sit down with Romaine to discuss her filmmaking and curatorial process. 

Rae Luebbert: What brought this event together, especially as you are no longer living in Salt Lake?

Irishia Hubbard Romaine: I always wanted to tell a story of my experience of Salt Lake City. Everywhere I went people had their own perception of how I got there and the labels and the stigmas of who I am as a Black person living in Utah. I wanted to create something that highlighted this community and what was possible. In doing that, it became a much larger thing and I realized I needed to share an excerpt of this work. 

Rae Luebbert: “F3VER.” is such an amazing documentary. What were you considering as the director to capture these scenes with the movement that reflected both what Andrew “3D Dance Fever” Jones is doing and how this is impacting the community?

Irishia Hubbard Romaine: This film was commissioned by Dance Camera West. I originally wanted to create a dance film shot in many locations. Then looking at the footage and because of some technical difficulties with the DP that was provided for me, I realized that all of these [original] locations would not work. So, I needed Andrew to actually talk about these locations. Andrew is such a lively person. On the first day we met, he sat down with the little spider man box that is pictured in the film and it had all of his life in there; medals, passports, money from abroad, gifts, everything in this box. He sat with me for an hour, hour and half ready to tell me his story. Every time he mentioned something from the box, he would say “And that was on this street!” “And that was over there!” This gave me a ton of locations. You see some of the spaces that are used are community spaces true to Bakersville, CA [where the work was filmed]. All the students have their own stories and we were able to pay them for their contributions. 

Working with the technical difficulties meant that I had to rely on found footage. Andrew had all of this footage saved from traveling and working with kids. This actually made the story more interesting because you could see his younger self, but it also made the film really difficult to edit. 

Rae Luebbert: This evening had five films, two of them you directed and the other three were from other directors and filmmakers, which you curated. These films represented a variety of genres, but all centered Black voices and experiences and storytelling. What drew you to these three other films included in the evening?

Irishia Hubbard Romaine: Justis shared Makayla’s work with me. I fell in love with the trailer. In relation to “Stands of Identity,” [“Nobody’s Child”] showed these singular perspectives about things that everyone has experienced but then have their own ways of navigating. Mikaela’s documentary does a great job of sharing that. A Black female filmmaker in Salt Lake City in a white male-dominated space, it is important for her to have a platform as she builds her career in Salt Lake. I saw Jade’s work through “Dance Camera West” as a board member. It was important for me to share this film knowing that it is a perspective that isn’t commonly reflected in the dance film circuit. I wanted to give it a platform to reach a different audience so people can see how you can weave the narrative with dancing while also having this identity portion. [Jade] was able to take the perspectives of her students and the community that she has built and give them that opportunity to see themselves in their new world with this motion capture. 

I am always inspired by Cayla’s work. She has done a lot of work in New York with well known contemporary dance artists. The rhythm of her edits and how she is able to create an emotional draw from seeing these two figures experiencing something. [The two dancers] have crossed paths before, spiritually and are experiencing different sensations separately. I really enjoyed that film and what she was able to create. Cayla’s film “Invisible Power” was commissioned by Serendipity Institute for Black Arts, a UK organization whose mission is to centre perspectives from the African and African Caribbean Diaspora, embedded as part of cultural experience for all . 

Rae Luebbert: All of these films are quite stunning. In Cayla’s film there is a moment where the dancers are leaning into each other in the street and you can really feel their weight pressing into each other. 

Irishia Hubbard Romaine: Yeah, and I love the pacing of it too! We get to experience one of the figures in the rain and it continues to build. You are waiting for the resolve and then boom, it cuts into this next concept.

Rae Luebbert: My next question is about your film “Strands of Identity.”  Can you talk about your process to approach nonfiction filmmaking? Specifically the way you play with elements planning and some improvisation and maybe letting the narrative evolve or surprise you?

Irishia Hubbard Romaine: I think I treated it like choreography. This might have been a challenge for certain individuals. When I create live performance choreography, I make up choreography on the spot. I can have a full skeleton of a score of sorts, but at the end of the day, I go off of what is happening in that moment and react in the present. I think that is how this documentary was created. I had clear ideas of what I hoped [Franque and Pepper] would talk about. In honoring how I wanted to approach documentary filmmaking and entering from a choreographic approach, there was only so much that I could plan for. I had an idea of location and things I wanted to capture.

After making this film, I have reflected a lot on the element of communication in a documentary process. I realized I needed to check in more about how much they would be sharing as the documentary filmmaking process and  intense durational process. Explicitly breaking down that your emotions may shift during the process as you're working in this vulnerable place. You talk about these things in a studio setting and in a syllabus with group agreements, expectations, tractile feedback, verbal feedback. If I do this process again, I have been thinking about how I would build this same framework and apply it to film setting so everyone feels supported. I loved that we had these relationships so people felt vulnerable enough to share because of our shared love for each other. 

Rae Luebbert: There is movement and dance in “Strands of Identity” which is really striking to watch. My understanding is that the folks in the film have varying levels of experience in dance and are mainly not professional dancers. Can you talk about what that was like to bring them into this movement experience? Did you offer any coaching?

Irishia Hubbard Romaine: Most of us would take this House class every week with Chacho Valdez at the School of Dance. We were already dancing. We danced together. How do I get them to feel more comfortable dancing solo? I would give them a task and we would talk through it and then I would count them in. Sometimes it would take five or six times to make them feel comfortable. We started with gestures related to care and what that feels like. I would guide them through a score and let them make choices within that. 

Rae Luebbert: I know that “Strands of Identity” was an excerpt. Is a longer work coming?

Irishia Hubbard Romaine: I would love to continue editing to get the work in a place where I feel comfortable to see if there is money and support to extend the film. There was a third story …but I don’t know if it will necessarily [fit], … and I am no longer in Salt Lake. I will not be re-entering into this work until next year [because of other projects]. 

Rae Luebbert: That leads right into my next question! What else are you working on? 

Irishia Hubbard Romaine: I am a curator for “Dance on Camera” this year. I have so many films to watch! I am an artist in residence for the Louis Armstrong museum. I will be going through his archives and doing light filming. I will be able to be in his house and will do a live performance in October. 

I did a residency earlier this year in Wilmington, North Carolina called Cucaloris. They have a VR and immersion residency and I got to work with VR for the first time and we will have an artist salon in November. And that’s it! 

For more information about Irishia, please visit her website at https://www.irishiahubbardromaine.com/. 


There are two more events in the Black, Bold, & Brilliant Series:

  • Bring Them Home tells the story of a small group of Blackfoot people and their mission to establish the first wild buffalo herd on their ancestral territory since the species’ near-excinction a century ago. This was presented on November 5 at 7:00pm at the Utah Film Center

  • Beyond the Mix showcases a diverse array of genres and influences, highlighting the global reach of contemporary music. Presented on December 10 at 7:00pm at the Utah Film Center

Mitsu Salmon and Kellie St. Pierre on “Landscapes Within and Without”

I sat down for a conversation with Salt Lake City dance and interdisciplinary artists Mitsu Salmon and Kellie St. Pierre to discuss their upcoming performance through the RDT’s Link Series “Landscapes Within and Without”, a split-bill evening featuring both artists' work. 

“Landscapes Within and Without” opens in Rose Wagner’s Leonna Black Box Theatre October 17-18, 2025. More information and tickets can be found here. 

Halie Bahr: Mitsu, the first time I saw your work was Somatic Tracing in 2022 at UMOCA, and Kellie performed in the work. Over the years working together, how have your interests as artists developed individually, and what shared interests collided when working together?

Mitsu Salmon: My work, in terms of form, has been very interdisciplinary, working with text, voice, video, movement and the visual. When using these different forms, I think of them almost as different languages. My biggest influence in terms of movement is Butoh, which is a Japanese contemporary form. Everyone approaches Butoh differently, but I've been really drawn to how animals and plants and emotions and stories and ancestors inspire movement. 

In terms of the content of the work, I often start with family history, particularly on my Mom's side who's Japanese. In solo work, it's more about my family stories and how it connects with me personally. With group work, it's a little bit more flexible or fluid. We started Somatic Tracing in 2022 about ideas of invisible Asian labor. So, the first collaboration Kellie and I did, I worked only with Asian-American dancers and we were looking at our own experiences, or our family's experiences, or historically, this idea of Asian invisible labor. It felt very collaborative. My great-grandfather was a botanist, so I have been creating work connected to plants. Also my family migrated from Japan, so I studied birds as related to migration. It was more loosely based upon family. But, it wasn't just my story, I was working with other performers and thinkers to develop the ideas.  

Photo by Ricardo Adame

Kellie St. Pierre: In a similar way, what inspires me are spaces that hold multiplicity. I'm always  interested in collaborating with environment to create movement. That could be with or without set pieces, digital technology, or whatever it is that I've been engaging in lately. How is movement present beyond our bodies, and with our spaces? I have worked with Mitsu for three projects now, and I'm always so drawn to her work in activating non-conventional spaces. 

Halie Bahr: How did you both meet, and when did you start working together? 

Mitsu Salmon: We've known each other for about five years. When I was new to Utah I did a residency through UMOCA, and I was asking around about Asian-American performers. Jorge Rojas recommended Kellie. I went and saw her work, and was like “this is amazing! She's amazing!” We grabbed coffee and talked, and then I invited Kellie into our rehearsals. It all started through a mutual friend and artist. 

Kellie St. Pierre: We quickly jumped into a process together for Somatic Tracing, and we quickly became friends through that process. 

Mitsu Salmon: Returning to what you've mentioned, Kellie, about environment. None of these previous projects were in a theater. The first piece [Somatic Tracing, 2022] was in a museum and it had mobile paintings and objects. The second one [Plants Daydream of Trouble, 2023] was a roving piece at the International Peace Gardens. The last piece [Feathered Tides, 2025] was a roving piece at the Miller Bird Refuge where only ten audience members at a time could view the work and listened to sound through headphones. 

All three projects are very much about interaction with site or objects. Hearing about your work, Kellie, I feel like you create these really big and often difficult but amazing objects to work with. You build the environment you interact with. Then you and the dancers have to tame, or stay wild, within that environment. I can see a clear through line in your work in both interaction with others and environment. It feels very central to your recent and past works. 

Kellie St. Pierre: Thanks for saying that. I do like to build environments, and I love engaging in site-specific work. Mitsu, your work reveals spaces to their fullest. I love being guided and coached on how to activate a space that already exists too. In Mitsu’s work, she reveals an environment and then adds layers and richness. In a way that both adds to the environment that exists and also creates space for her voice and the voices of the others.

Regarding our upcoming split-bill in October, “Landscapes Within and Without”, there's a lot of crossover with our work in multimedia production. We’re using video projections and storytelling to consider our identities. Even though the pieces are quite different from each other, they also complement each other within the evening. 

Previously, my work [See Me Closely] has been shown in academic settings at Utah Valley University, and I wanted to develop it further. Mitsu’s work has toured many different places, but hasn’t been shown in Salt Lake yet. We are seeing this as a premiere for the Salt Lake City community. 

Photo by Emily Muñoz

Mitsu Salmon: Yes, Kellie had presented this work at UVU, and I had opened this work in Chicago at Steppenwolf Theatre about a year ago. We had met up afterwards, and you showed me videos [of See Me Closely], and I was like “my goodness this is so gorgeous”, and I felt like not enough people from Salt Lake saw the work that you made. I really wanted to share with the community here.

There was already this desire to show these new works, but we realized there's also a lot of crossover with us working in multimedia and video projection. Kellie has these huge mobile screens that the performers are interacting with. The projections create this environment. My work [Desert Turtle] uses a lot of the landscape of Utah and the Mojave Desert in California as a huge, projected backdrop. When I presented Desert Turtle in Chicago, initially that was a way for me to bring the landscape here, what I've been exploring here in Utah, and tour it in all these different theaters.

I struggled to find a place to present [Desert Turtle] in Salt Lake City. In Chicago, there are these small little theaters. But, because of the way that it was developed at Steppenwolf Theatre, this big theater with lots of lights and a huge projection, it's taken me over a year to present in Salt Lake. Which says a lot to the kind of complexity of the performance art scene here. 

Kellie St. Pierre: We knew we wanted to work with a theater that has the technical capacity to then bring the projections to life. The black box at the Rose felt like the best choice. In our planning,  Mitsu brought up this great point that it is so hard as independent artists to actually present work in a theater if you're not already sponsored by a company. And it's harder in Salt Lake City. Mitsu took a year to figure out where and how to present this work. It's important to present in these larger spaces, and even harder to do so when not connected to a bigger entity or institution.

Halie Bahr: There are two things emerging in this conversation that are really interesting for me. Mitsu, you've been hinting at the environment, the desert landscape, literally becoming part of the work in Desert Turtle. Second, we are also discussing the practicality and difficulty of presenting work as independent artists in Salt Lake City. Can you both talk about your life as artists living and working in Salt Lake City and how this particular dance community has impacted your work for this production? 

Mitsu Salmon: Before moving to Utah, I was living in Chicago. In Chicago, there’s a big community of independent artists making experimental work, it's even more than in New York in some ways because people do a lot of DIY work. It's a big community and I had a number of residencies in Chicago theaters making solo or duet work. The residency would give rehearsal for 20 hours a week and then after 3-4 months you present a work in their space. I had residencies at Links Hall, The Cultural Center…because I was given the resources I made a lot of solo work in theaters, and sometimes I toured those pieces in different spaces. When I came to Salt Lake, I realized quickly that it doesn't exist here. There's no such thing. In 2022, UMOCA had a painting residency and I have a painting practice, so I brought my performance into it.

However, in Salt Lake, there are grants to create work outside, interacting with the environment. Finding out what resources were here really changed the kind of work I made. For example, my recent work within the Miller Bird Refuge was looking at the birds of the Great Salt Lake, or this new work, Desert Turtle, uses the landscape of the desert to inform the work. So the landscape, in tandem with the history of Asian-American invisible labor and the transcontinental railroad, informs my work now. My recent work is connected to the landscape and history and personal mining of Utah and the desert.

In Salt Lake City, there are exciting things happening. It's much smaller, and it happens much slower. There's these spaces, like 801 Salon and loveDANCEmore, where there is independent work being shown, but they are small. There isn't a company that has a space where independent artists’ work gets programmed every weekend. There isn’t a place you can go to see a work that's gotten a lot of support to be developed. That doesn't exist here. 

Halie Bahr: And that makes me dream more about the programming of loveDANCEmore. Rehearsal space and showing independent work is so difficult for artists in Salt Lake City. I wonder if there could be something to adopt from this independent artist model from midwestern cities that could really help the Salt Lake community flourish. It’s all a dream now, but I am curious. 

Kellie St. Pierre: I also moved to Salt Lake City from somewhere else. I lived in LA and Chicago. I haven't been deeply a part of the LA scene for about five years now, but I agree with Mitsu in the ways that [smaller dance scenes] might be even more generative than the spaces of LA. My time in LA was specific because I was with the company [Diavalo | Architecture in Motion], and  I was just starting to create my own work. We had a performance space, which made it easier to rehearse and present work, but when I was creating my own, I was usually traveling to that university and setting a piece. Instead of cultivating within LA. 

After moving to Salt Lake City, I’ve been focusing more on my role as a choreographer. The Salt Lake dance community has supported a lot of my ideas. And, I am also inspired by the community itself. Similar to Mitsu discussing the DIY culture in Chicago, Salt Lake City has this very “can do!” attitude. Artists here love experimental work. They welcome the range of what is allowed to exist. There's such a punk culture here that likes to defy all of those boundaries. I love it, and I'm inspired by it. It has made me more bold, and has allowed me to believe in my own ideas more. I can just let my work live, take risks, and believe that it can happen here. My work doesn't have to be so buttoned up. I'm really inspired by the community here and it has shaped further who I am as an artist.

Halie Bahr: Before we close, I want to know just a little more about the process of creating both works that opened October 17th, Kellie your work See Me Closely and Mitsu, your work Desert Turtle. 

Mitsu Salmon: So this process of this particular piece started during the pandemic in 2020. I got a residency through Rogers Art Loft, which is a residency space in Las Vegas. Since it was a pandemic, they awarded the residency but said “you can't come out here!” Instead, they financed housing for my research nearby. It was so important to the work that I travel geographically because the project began about my mother immigrating from Japan to Barstow, California in the Mojave. I wanted to make a video about that, and Rogers Art Loft supported me. 

So, I went there with a friend from LA. We quarantined for a week, and she helped me video. So originally Desert Turtle started as a video work that was viewed online. Afterwards, I eventually developed an album out of it. Desert Turtle was a lot of research over time. 

And then a friend and curator out of Chicago invited me to share some work at Steppenwolf Theatre. There wasn’t enough funding to bring the group I was working with at the time, but I thought of this particular video I made during the pandemic. 

Originally, it was about my mother moving from Japan to the desert, when I was making through Roger Art Loft.  Later when I further developed the work for Steppenwolf, I was four months postpartum. I just had a baby. The work then transformed and changed through that. Now I wanted to bring in the story of me becoming a mother in the desert. How becoming a mother has changed my relationship, both in how I see the desert, but also how I viewed my mother’s story. 

When I presented it in Chicago, it became a solo dance piece, and then I toured it to different places. The work has changed in many ways since then, but many of the original parts are still there. I remember writing lines and singing while watching my baby. In one part, I was breast pumping, and thought “this is a sick beat”, and then I made up a song recording the beat of the breast pump. Desert Turtle was a multi-year project with large gaps in between. I get to revisit these ideas now, and feel how different they are, now that I'm a mother. 

I always struggle with my work because it doesn't fit anywhere. I always feel a little self-conscious. I was in a performance art festival in Arkansas, and Desert Turtle wasn’t really performance-arty-enough. I’m singing too “in key”. Then I'll perform at a Butoh festival and think to myself, “There's too much contemporary dance in my work”. Now I'm performing it at RDT’s Link Series, and I think to myself “there's not enough contemporary dance in it now”. 

Photo by Ricardo Adame

Kellie St. Pierre: For me, See Me Closely started as a labor of love, guesting with Contemporary Dance Ensemble at Utah Valley University. I wanted the work to be multi-disciplinary, layered, and a challenge artistically for myself. Mobile set pieces, cinematography, editing, projection mapping, and choreography. I was able to pair up with UVU Broadcast Team for their cinematography, and I am grateful to the professionals in my artist community who offered support and helped bring my vision to life. 

As a general narrative, the piece represents the challenge of living in the age of social media, where screens become windows of either separate or amplified narratives of  “who we are”.  Sometimes what is hiding behind the screen is a more raw version of ourselves, Sometimes people only view you in one way. And it's an interesting dilemma because we are both the creators, curating what our lives look like, and also the ones impacted most.

For me personally, See Me Closely, came from a deeper place when moving to Salt Lake City in 2020. I had just left a really rough part of my life in LA that completely transformed who I was. I was recovering for years, and had just gone through my seventh surgery.  And then I entered into one of the most rigorous spaces, graduate school.  I just had to move forward. And there was no connection to who I was while grieving the way that things were in my recovery. 

In graduate school you expose your heart open. You expose all that you were protecting over the years. I felt like in graduate school there were a lot of people who could articulate who I was, but I felt like they were missing a lot that happened for me to get to that point.  And so, See Me Closely came from this cry for me to say to people "Hold on, can you learn more about me before you decide who I am?" I was just kind of thrown around in my mind, I felt super displaced and super confused even on my own identity.

See Me Closely is this cry to use image and film as a way to get really viscerally close to a human body for the purpose of connection. It’s also about how the work resonates with the dancers involved, “If you could just look past the screen there's something there you're missing.” Social media is a form to equally connect and disconnect. We can hide behind its presence or live up to it.

I feel so grateful that Mitsu and I get to support each other, and I get to share a show with a beautiful friend. 

Mitsu Salmon: Thank you, Kellie. I'm very excited to share this evening with you. I feel honored and humbled and look forward to sharing “Landscapes Within and Without” with the community. 

“Landscapes Within and Without” opens in Rose Wagner’s Black Box Theatre October 17-18, 2025. More information and tickets can be found here. 

Photo by Emily Muñoz

Halie Bahr is the associate director and editor of loveDANCEmore. She continues to present work and perform all over the country, and is a professor of dance. In 2024, Halie was awarded the Performing Arts Fellowship through the Utah Division of Arts & Museums. www.haliebahr.org  

Mitsu Salmon creates visual and performing works that fuse multiple disciplines. Creating across differing media, translating from one medium to another, is connected to the translation of cultures and languages. Her work draws on familial and personal narratives, then abstracts, expands, and contradicts them. Her current projects investigate familial histories, nature, imperialism, and archives.

Salmon received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and BFA from NYU. She has participated in artist residencies such as at Taipei Artist Village (Taiwan), Incheon Art Platform (Korea),  Guildhall (NY), and Utah Museum of Contemporary Art. She has presented work at places such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and the Chicago Cultural Center. She has received the Midwest Nexus Touring Grant, Chicago Dancemaker’s Lab Grant, Utah Performing Arts Fellowship, and grants from Salt Lake City. 

Kellie St. Pierre is an interdisciplinary artist, engaged as a choreographer, performer, filmmaker, and educator. She creates dance experiences that highlight the kinesthetic and emotive interplay between movement, environment, technology, and objects. She crafts socially relevant works that invite dancers and audiences into tactile worlds, often integrating other collaborators. Her approach encourages risk-taking, awareness, and spontaneity while examining the balance between simplicity and complexity. 

St. Pierre received her BFA from UC Irvine and MFA in Dance and Screendance from the U of U. She danced for Donald McKayle’s Etude Ensemble and spent five seasons touring with DIAVOLO | Architecture in Motion. Some of her choreographic commissions include Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company,  SALT Contemporary Dance & Ching Ching Wong, and several universities, including the U of Utah, UVU, and the UCO.  She was awarded Pacific Monticello Emerging Choreographer through Regional Dance America and is currently a finalist for Palm Desert Choreography Festival. As a screendance artist, St. Pierre has been recognized for her films through Women in Dance Leadership Conference Los Angeles & Dance Film Festival in Yokohama, Japan, Cinedanza International Festival, For This Earth Screendance Festival, and Utah International Dance Film Festival. St. Pierre is currently the co-director of Contemporary Dance Ensemble at Utah Valley University and adjunct professor at the U.

Credits: 

See Me Closely

Dancers:  Lilly Barrington, McKayla Browning, Emma Crow, Ciera Erekson, Aubrey Fisher, Zachary Marshall, Heather Morley, Richelle Rindlisbacher, Emmanual Diaz Santos, Ashley Wilcox

Music: Josiah Pugmire

Set Design: Steve Goemaat

Cinematography: UVU Broadcasting 

Special thank you to Monica Campbell and Melissa Younker

Desert Turtle 

film in collaboration with Amelia Charter and music in collaboration with Kiku Hibino.

Dmitri Peskov, Meghan Durham Wall, and Lehua Estrada at the Rose

Two men appear, one after another, dressed in work suits. They take turns pushing a plastic garbage pail through a field of discarded objects — broken cups and clam-shells, eerily white. jo Blake leans on the can, then back onto two feet, he proposes something with the slap of a foot, a hip turning inward. There’s a good-natured humor in how his limbs paw through the void. Dmitri Peskov’s movement is more cautious, yet also somehow jocular in a way that complements his partner’s directness. They gather up the each piece of refuse, but they aren’t in a hurry. They pick things up and consider them. They even pick tentatively at each other, hands considering another body. Along the way we realize that the soundtrack is telling stories of, among other things, space travel. These trash men are understated and calm, their improvisation is a bit like bricklaying, but as the title and the mysterious ending of this short piece reminds us, they — all of us — we are dead stars. A plastic cup could just as well have been a piece of the breathing, intelligent body deciding to pick it up. All proposals are provisional, transitory. Everything is material for some kind of dance.

This opener sets the tone for Two Fold, a concert by three Utah dance artists who have been working in different contexts in and out of Salt Lake City long enough that they aren’t trying to impress anyone. They’re in it for the long haul. The evening's choreographers, who include, among others, Peskov, Meghan Durham Wall, and Lehua Estrada, are at times quite diligent, but in Two Fold they share a refreshing lack of flashiness.

Photo by Doug Carter

In Alexandra Bradshaw-Yerby’s collaboration with Peskov, The Alex (Dmitri?) Show, the two performers earn our attention through markedly individuated strategies. For Bradshaw-Yerby, its all about dancing. Her opening solo displays a kind of playful, balletic musicality. It also contains the ever-present suggestion that, if she let herself, she might fall through space with a shattering multi-directional abandon, breaking the spell of formality cast by her long legs and articulate hands. Somewhere in the middle of all this delicacy, Peskov suddenly arrives, perfectly awkward, carrying one chair after another to make a circle around her. Finally he brings his partner a plastic purple Martini. She mimes drinking it and Peskov starts telling the audience a tall tale version of how he has arrived at this particular moment on stage, brilliantly making fun of, among other things, himself, the other Dmitri Peskov who works for the Kremlin, Paul Taylor, and, of course, dance itself. Eventually she rejoins him, four members of the public are brought on stage, and two proposals collide into an ending.

I say “ending,” but one of the best things one can say about Two Fold is that the whole show is both a collection of proposals and a collision into an uneasy whole. It’s nine dances, none of which — even at their most uneven — are too long, and it’s a show that talks to itself — sometimes literally. As Wall writes in the program, it’s “about listening, responding, and creating something together that none of us could make alone.” All kinds of images arise, subside, and speak to each other in this group experience, like Estrada’s trio of fierce wolves — Devin Etcitty, Kylie Lloyd, and Samantha Matsukawa in O-Six — presaging further breeches of the fourth wall in Salt Lake Ballet Collective’s rendering of Peskov’s wherever we are is what is missing. One thing leads to another, but not necessarily along straight lines.

Photo by Doug Carter

Wall’s works play with the tension between language and dance — a tricky proposition given the ways in which text can overdetermine how we read movement. In Werklyfe, Wall dances to what sounds like a TED talk about the tyranny of email, but also vocally addresses the audience herself, her movement riding the wave between narration and spoken aside. In frio, frio, frio, with theatrical foil Stephanie Stroud, Wall shows as much willingness to poke fun at herself as Peskov, pillorying both herself and the ego it takes to make any dance happen.

My favorite of Wall’s works was Confessional, which boasted a stellar cast of local veterans. Wall was joined by Eileen Rojas, Corrine Penka, and Lehua Estrada, dancing to verse by Carmen Giménez. Poetry in particular, when read into the voice-of-God microphone, can often crush a relatively abstract dance such as this one, but in Confessional something clicked, and I once again found myself thinking about everything as kind of proposal, a conscious choosing of one of many possibilities. The poem itself was a litany of proposals, conditional statements of identity which cascaded down on these women’s bodies at such a speed that they added up to being a statement about the instability of identity itself. This somehow made space for the dancing itself to become a vehicle for seeing these women in a state of serious play. Their expectations for each other were high, and each of them delivered — Wall and Penka crisscrossing with a mercurial vitality, Estrada stepping out and owning the space in a way I haven’t quite seen before, and Rojas, dancing like calligraphy, in confident ownership of a pared-down simplicity.

Samuel Hanson is the executive director of loveDANCEmore.