Repertory Dance Theatre: Emerge

Repertory Dance Theatre’s Emerge, which opened last night, is a series of little experiments, the stuff of which all good dances are made. Exemplary of a sense of play is company dancer Jaclyn Brown’s Trifle, in which she partners her non-dancer husband, Terry Brown. I didn’t see Jaclyn’s earlier work with her children, but I’ve seen many dances in this vein, from David Dorfman’s Family Project to Victoria Marks’ work with veterans. This trope can sometimes reframe the trained dancer, making them more interesting to watch. Occasionally, the tables are turned, and the so-called professionals are given a run for their money. 

Luckily both Browns are compelling performers and are even more compelling as a pair. Terry has a presence and talent unusual in the context of this shtick. Paired with Jaclyn’s comedic timing, this makes the piece worth watching both as pure choreography and as a study in what a dancer is or isn’t. The sharing of weight in Trifle evinces the listening required in a real life marriage. It’s refreshing to watch Jaclyn try to catch her husband off balance, and the simple motif of Terry squatting down as he mirrors his wife in traveling steps is humorous, endearing, and well-developed. For once, it’s the man who’s doing everything backwards, if not in heels.

MASC (part 2), by Dan Higgins, is perhaps the most ambitious piece of the evening, at least in terms of length. As the lights come up, painted white and corseted in gold, Higgins, Kaya Wolsey, and Micah Burkhardt swing their hips to a series of clubby tracks that mix electronic sounds, Afro-Latin drumming, and a disconcerting text about conquerors on the beach, pockets full of sand, and casual drug use. Is the commentary here meant to be about the history of colonization? (The performers appear to be white as well as being painted so.) Is some idea of sexual liberation at stake? What is all the unison about? MASC is amply rehearsed, but like its score, feels full of mixed messages.

In both MASC and artistic associate Nicholas Cendese’s Tsvey Fun a Min, I feel like the choreographers are trying to communicate something very specific with their costuming choices. And sadly, in both cases, that something totally eludes me. Cendese’s piece makes use of boisterous Yiddish songs by the Barry Sisters, whose music you might recognize from the TV series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. A fifties-era, ostensibly heterosexual couple gambols amiably around the stage in period garb. The man (Daniel Do) is in a dress and the woman (Megan O’Brien) is in a boyish pair of overalls. Here the reversal is straightforward. In MASC, all the make-up, latex, and swooping limbs of a Gaga dancer lost at Burning Man amount to a big question mark. In neither case can I figure out what the choice to queer the obvious costuming is supposed to do to the choreography. 

The highlight of the evening is Navigation, RDT artistic director Linda Smith’s solo for retiring dancer Efren Corado. Smith pieced together the solo with movement from some of the dozens of roles Corado has performed over the last six years. Corado nimbly samples the hairpin weight shifts of Limón and Cunningham, the exuberant footwork of Bill Evans, and much more that I couldn’t immediately place. All the while he navigates a grid of white Styrofoam boxes that cover the black marley floor. What we end up seeing is Corado’s nuance and endless reservoir of characters. He jumps, turns, and skitters, never once upsetting the take-out delivery boxes that mark out the arena. Rarely have I seen a solo so lovingly made for a specific performer. I’m not sure I could imagine anyone but Efren performing this dance. Like the chairs in Pina Bausch’s Cafe Müller, the boxes add a special absurdity to Corado’s gambit through the thousand and one choreographers. It’s like watching your favorite fictional detective (for me, Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect) give a final soliloquy while driving her car through an obstacle course. And the end, well, I won’t spoil it for you if you haven’t seen it yet…

Repertory Dance Theatre’s Emerge continues today, Saturday, January 5, with a matinee at 2 p.m. and a final evening performance at 7:30 p.m.

Samuel Hanson was born in Salt Lake City in 1988. His recent work has been seen in NYC at Triskelion, the Reckless Theater, Weis Acres, Green Space, Danspace through the Movement Research Festival, and in Utah at the Rose Wagner Center and in the Mudson performance series. He has performed for an eclectic mix of artists including Isabel Lewis, Yvonne Meier, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Mina Nishimura, Alexandra Pirici, Ashley Anderson, Diana Crum, and Yve Laris Cohen.

Repertory Dance Theatre: Dabke

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.