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.

Lost Love Socialite Sweet Love Recluse

There are countless frames in this dance: walls that rearrange themselves, curtains and doors that close, and a hazy story about a hotel where tall tales are told. Memories of an audition. A history lesson. Ponce de León and the Fountain of Youth. There’s definitely a heroine, Gertrudine, who wants – and maybe gets – to die because she’s reached the age of fifty and has lost her “sparkle.” Gertrudine is reanimated by most of the cast, one at a time, though none seem to fit her perfectly. John Allen understands age, but might not have learned any of his lines. Eliza Tappan is Gertrudine more often than anyone else, though she’s twenty-two or twenty-six, anything but fifty, a diva nonetheless. Juan Carlos Claudio is perhaps the most compelling Gertrudine, but she leaves you with the least information.

Visual pleasure and misdirection abounds, and I keep thinking, this is a story I know, isn’t it? I am reminded of the feeling years ago, when I watched Big Dance Theater’s piece about the film Cleo from 5 to 7. I knew we were somewhere in the French New Wave, but I’d yet to see any of Agnès Varda’s films.

Throughout this collaboration between Satu Hummasti and Daniel Clifton, I keep wracking my brains for the story about a fabulous dame who wants to off herself. At one point, Eliza/Gertrudine discards John Allen for Christine Hasegawa, who roller-skates impressively while sporting Lolita’s red, heart-shaped glasses. Natalie Border dons a fur vest and becomes a lithe, frightened horse. My meaning-making senses gravitate toward the gender line. The three women revel in a youthful sexuality that seems haunted by specters of age or mania. The men, who are (or appear) older, are occasionally violent but mostly just seem benignly confounded. Even when Eliza (temporarily a mother) fights with John (a father) for the affections of a sleeping (or dead?) baby Natalie, they do so in song.

Near the beginning, John beats Eliza’s head against the ground in slow motion. This seems very important. Later on, the action is replayed in a different context with roles rearranged. Another salient image: Before the funeral scene, in which Bashaun Williams enjoins the deceased to “say hello to Jesus,” a round robin of talking corpses speculate on the details of Gertrudine’s demise. Does she die in possession of herself, or is she slowly robbed of her faculties in a parade of indignities? We simply don’t have all of the information. The most pleasing image, and perhaps the most conventionally romantic, ends the action. The large square panels which comprise the set, brilliantly attuned to the costuming by designer Dan Evans, have been theatre wings, a table, an altar. Finally, Bashaun and Eliza climb into them as they form a makeshift treehouse. They close the door, and shut the light.

A tempest – sex, silliness, death, and jealousy – has concluded in unexpected coziness. The ends are not so neatly tied up, and I’m not sure this last image really fits. Why is she in there with Bashaun, who we know so little about? Is it a triumph of love over death? Or is this just another snapshot of Gertrudine’s irretrievable life and times? I feel like I’ve been on the outside of an inside joke. Maybe that’s the point.

Satu Hummasti and Daniel Clifton’s Lost Love Socialite Sweet Love Recluse continues through Saturday, May 11, at Sugar Space Arts Warehouse. Tickets are available here.

Samuel Hanson is the editor and executive director of loveDANCEmore.