Wasatch Contemporary Dance Company: Nerve and Sinew

What is contemporary dance?

As a dancer myself, I have encountered this question more times than I can count; Wasatch Contemporary Dance Company attempted to answer it with Nerve and Sinew. The performance spanned multiple techniques and featured pieces by both established professionals and emerging artists. I appreciated the performance’s variety but, at seven pieces, it felt a bit long.

When I think of contemporary dance, I tend to think more along the lines of the pop, “So You Think You Can Dance” sense of the term; a coupling of emotion, narrative, and both ballet and jazz techniques. Each of the pieces in Nerve and Sinew included elements of this to varying degrees of success. However, purely from a performance standpoint, the first act felt questionable: the dancers did not seem to be physically invested in the movement, which left the choreography feeling forced.

I am familiar with Eric Handman’s work, so his piece, “Permanent Now,” was to me the biggest victim on the program of lack of energy - it was missing the tension, vigor, and attention to detail that is most often present in his work.

On the other end of the spectrum, Lyndi Coles presented a new piece, “Spill,” that was so full of energy that there was a lack of attention to technique in moments of suspension, and instead the focus seemed to be on presenting tricks (i.e., high lifts and the dancers throwing themselves to the floor).

WCDC also presented a piece by Angela Banchero-Kelleher, which invoked emotions and sensations of Americana through its color palette and score. However, the political sentiment expressed in the program notes simply didn’t come through in the choreography. A lack of desperation and of authentic weight-sharing, as well as forced facial expressions, left the piece devoid of any real emotion. That being said, the piece’s ending trio of duets set to Johnny Cash was incredibly satisfying.

The first act concluded with a solo choreographed by Sarah Donohue, “Luz e Lorraine,” that featured Lyndi Coles. It is always a pleasure to watch Coles, and I was excited to see this piece again after first having seen it at Brine last fall. I was slightly disappointed, however, as the characterization of Coles comedically reacting to a spotlight felt completely different than that found throughout the rest of the piece. This stood out to me because Coles is such a controlled and fluid performer - but the moments of comedy looked unfamiliar to her body.

Going into the second act, I was prepared to continue to feel as ambivalent as I did in the first; instead, I felt like I was watching a completely different show, each piece more exciting than the last.

I had no idea that the Regent Street Black Box at the Eccles Theater housed floor-to-ceiling windows, but Jocelyn Smith opened the back curtain in her new piece, “Melodic Jargon,” to reveal complementary natural light. The dancers directed both the audience and themselves in rhythmic patterns that provided the score for the piece. The dancing didn’t always match the joy and energy of the rhythms, but the dancers did seem to experience joy.

WCDC also shared a work they’ve performed before by Brooklyn Draper, entitled “unaccustomed acquaintances.” Out of the whole program, I would argue that this piece was the least “contemporary,” but it was very successful. Each of the four dancers was committed to the awkward movement material and, without necessarily trying to be humorous, the piece felt unexpected in its held shapes, unheard whispers, and embodied characters.

Jake Casey’s “pop.” was the final piece on the program. The company’s performance and ongoing commitment, a strong duet by Coles and Smith, and the piece’s overall intensity made “pop.” the only piece that indicated to me that WCDC is in fact a professional company.

I went through a range of emotions during Nerve and Sinew. As a modern dancer, I often hear “contemporary” dance getting a bad rap. However, when it’s performed with commitment and gives a real experience of emotion, it too can be powerful, as demonstrated on this program.

In its 10th year, I hope that WCDC will continue to define its voice as a company and to hone in on what makes it successful. I could have watched the last two pieces of Nerve and Sinew over and over and would have continued to find exciting new details because of the dancers’ commitment and relationship to the movement. Regardless of the genre of dance in question, it’s those two things that connect performers and audience.

Natalie Gotter is a performer, choreographer, instructor, filmmaker, and researcher. She recently completed her MFA in Modern Dance at the University of Utah and is on faculty at Utah Valley University, Westminster College, and Salt Lake Community College.

SALT: Spring Concert

At 7:24 p.m., I stepped into the Jeanne Wagner Theatre for SALT Contemporary Dance’s 7:30 p.m. Spring Concert, to find dancers already onstage. I felt slightly guilty walking in during a performance, but other audience members were doing the same, and I heard whispers about this being the pre-show.

Some of SALT’s key branding points are that they are the second largest dance company in Salt Lake (now encompassing SALT and SALT II, as well as a junior and senior company for ages 12-18), and that they are bringing new, cutting-edge dance to Utah. I was glad to see their senior company perform (if only briefly this time), and would be interested to see the junior company at some point too.

After finishing a piece choreographed by SALT company member Logan McGill, the senior company took their bow, and then crawled backward to stand up and take a smaller bow, which I thought was a nice detail.

After a pause right at 7:30 p.m., “Stand by Me,” the first main company piece, began with the house lights still on. The stage was littered with a hundred oranges, and two dancers began slowly and carefully rolling one between their bodies. It was absolutely beautiful and unique, and accompanied by peaceful, pleasant music that helped set the tone. At a V.I.P. event the previous week, Spanish choreographer Gustavo Ramirez Sansano mentioned he was inspired by a game that children play with oranges in his home country.

After this had gone on for a while, more couples joined the scene, and the house lights dimmed. A sense of loss was palpable when one half of a couple abruptly left, neglecting the orange and letting it drop to the floor. It made me think of the Spanish phrase “media naranja,” which translates literally to “half orange” and refers to a concept similar to “my other half” or “you complete me.”

After another pause, SALT II performed “I Love You,” by Portland-based artist Katie Scherman. The dancers impressed me with their fluidity and control. They looked like they had been training hard, and training smart, since I last saw them in concert this past fall. It was also a somewhat different group than previously.

I loved the gesture phrases in “I Love You,” including some heart-shaped hands. I was impressed with the execution of wavy shoulder moves, and of a solo with a lengthy balance following a one-footed élevé.

“Beyond the Limitation,” by Joni McDonald and SALT artists, premiered last fall and was reworked a bit for this presentation. This time, the music was more unique and the intention seemed clearer.

In the fall, there had been three couples doing the same choreography at the same time for some parts, but this time, there were two couples for the most part who took turns dancing (the stage-right couple moved for a bit while the stage-left couple sat still in the dark, and then the lighting drew attention to the stage-left couple’s movement, as stage-right darkened).

The first time I saw it, the intent of the piece had been unclear beyond a heaviness in personal interaction. This time, I noticed distinctly that there were moments of missed connection, which I found very interesting. For example, one dancer would reach for another just as she was moving out of the space within which he would have been able to touch her. McDonald is absolutely brilliant at partner work, and I’m so glad that she was able to continue to explore this piece.

Following an intermission, Eric Handman’s “Cloudrunner” showcased intricate, group-interactive choreography. Some of the phrases were repeated facing different directions, a choreographic technique that can be tiresome, but that in this case stayed exciting, allowing the audience to notice different aspects of what took place each time.

I particularly enjoyed when two female dancers lifted Eldon Johnson off the ground, his arms over their shoulders, and Johnson pantomimed running in mid-air – which tied into the piece's title for me. I also always appreciate when dancers who are not the smallest onstage are lifted – when the group makes something work without doing it the easiest way.

The final piece of the concert was “Proverb,” by Banning Bouldin, which was memorable for the well-utilized costuming of nude bodysuits and long, sheer, puffy black skirts. According to the choreographer’s program notes and a previous conversation with Johnson, the skirts represented the weight of regrets the dancers carried with them. The movement was appropriately heavy for this theme.

For me, the most striking image in this piece was when Arianna Brunell took on an extra-immense skirt of regrets, built up underneath her by the other dancers whose shoulders she sat on, with everyone’s skirts trailing out behind her in a long train.

By the end, all the dancers had shed their skirts/regrets, which, knowing the intended symbolism, was something I was really hoping would happen. Johnson kept his skirt on the longest, and I could see his relative heaviness as he interacted with the skirtless dancers toward the end.

The piece finished with a repetition of Brunell’s extra-immense regrets shape, only without the skirts this time. The tone was still somber, although I had hoped that the dancers would feel lighter without the weight of their skirts. But maybe the similarity could show that you never know just by looking at someone what they might be carrying around with them.

Overall, SALT’s Spring Concert presented a great collection of well-executed choreography with interesting concepts and unique visuals. I look forward to enjoying more from SALT in the future.

Kendall Fischer is artistic director of Myriad Dance Company, for whom she also choreographs and performs. She performed with a variety of local groups, including Voodoo Productions, SBDance, Municipal Ballet Co., and La Rouge Entertainment. In 2017, Kendall’s dance film project, “Breathing Sky,” received the Alfred Lambourne Prize for movement.

Repertory Dance Theatre: Sanctuary

“When you have fire, that’s where you are,” she said as she rubbed ash across dancer Efren Corado Garcia’s face. The other dancers followed suit, rubbing the ashes from campfires grown cold across their faces and hands.

Poignant words from Ida Yellowman, one of the three Navajo guides who led the artists of Repertory Dance Theatre, guest choreographer Zvi Gotheiner, and ZviDance on a pilgrimage to Bears Ears National Monument in San Juan County, Utah. Marty Buhler’s documentary of their five-day journey began Repertory Dance Theatre’s Sanctuary program, contextualizing the 30+ minute work, “Dancing the Bears Ears," the group built from this experience.

“Dancing the Bears Ears” opened with eight RDT dancers slapping knees and head, two lines of four, weaving in between each other in unison, turning in one breath, energizing the Rose Wagner stage. The collected energy of their stomps highlighted the projections of small spaces from the Bears Ears -- a purple flower here, a range of colorful dirt there.

The ensemble dissembled into a series of duets, where small moments of tender intimacy echoed the small spaces projected. Ursula Perry and Corado Garcia arching underneath each other’s circled arms, she lifts and turns him around. Justin Bass and Lauren Curley lying legs tangled on the ground, she gently rubs the back of his neck, a touch as intimate as the rubbing of ashes onto a dancer’s face.

Returning anew to the rhythmic opening, the dance seems to begin again. This recurring beginning marks this as a dance of hope, the kind of hope that (to quote environmental educator David Orr) “is a verb with its sleeves rolled up.” By that I mean not a naive optimism that all will be well with the land, or a desperate cynicism about the wilderness that is slipping away in front of our eyes, but rather an engaged and recurring plea for the protection of this place for all who consider it sacred, and returning to the daily act of advocating for the land.

As the dancers took their bow, they gathered together in the center of the stage, arms around each other. There was a finality to the bow, a sense of complete giving and abandon to the energy of sharing their transformative experiences at Bears Ears with us.

Efren Corado Garcia in Eric Handman's "Ghost Ship." Photo by Sharon Kain.

After intermission, Eric Handman’s “Ghost Ship” led the second half of the evening. This 2007 work was re-staged on six of the eight RDT dancers, who huddled on stage right, moving across to stage left in syncopated build -- climax -- dissolve duets. Less stylized than more recent works of Handman’s that I have seen, the recurring arabesque lines and tight duet unison created a sense of remembering without nostalgia, and history without pain. The piece concludes with a shower of 250 pounds of rice on stage right, the patter of it on the stage satisfyingly never-ending.

RDT and Utah Valley University students in "Tower" by Andy Noble. Photo by Sharon Kain.

Andy Noble’s “Tower” (2015), featuring 27 guest performers from Utah Valley University, concluded the evening. Evoking military images, the ensemble goose-stepped and chassé-ed on, across, and off the stage. The UVU artists’ command of ballet and jazz techniques supported Noble’s competition dance aesthetic. Also notable: their commitment to the stage presence required for the work, such as when the house lights went up and a group of dancers slid towards the front of the stage, aggressively waving their arms in the faces of the first row of the audience. I struggled to connect the army-inspired images and content of the work to the evening’s theme, begging the question of what makes an ‘environmental piece’.

While leaving the concert with a heart full of beautiful and engaging dancing, I stumbled into one of my students, who had, for the first time, paid for a ticket to a dance concert specifically to see "Dancing the Bears Ears." Confused, she and her brother had left the show at intermission, certain that the evening was over. I must admit that I shared that sense of finality at intermission. While the later works of the evening were also interesting and important, I felt satiated after seeing "Dancing the Bears Ears," and would have preferred to have gone on with my evening with its hopeful dancing strongly in my mind’s eye.

Liz Ivkovich is in a relationship with the loveDANCEmore performance journal (it’s complicated), works in sustainability communication and development for the U of U, and adjuncts at SLCC.

SALT Contemporary Dance: Spring Concert

SALT Contemporary Dance closed their 2016-2017 season with a collection of current works from local, national, and international choreographers. This was my first time witnessing a SALT performance and I am so grateful I finally had the opportunity.  

The evening took place at Infinity Event Center. The venue was transformed into a contemporary auditorium where the audience could wander between upstairs and down and eventually find their seat below the stage. Seating was difficult without any sort of risers. I managed to sit eight rows back but ended up standing off to the side in order to see. The walls of Infinity Event Center are also incredibly thin. Music from next door blared throughout the night. (Unfortunately this has happened at every performance or event I’ve attended there.) Luckily, SALT was captivating enough for the distraction to be minimal in scope of the concert’s entirety.

Paper bags purposely littered the stage for Paper Cuts by Peter Chu, the opening number. The simple prop decorated the stage long before the concert started. My mind had the opportunity to wander, questioning what choreographic choices Chu would make with the simple and noisy prop. His choice of placing the bags overhead surprised me. It’s uncomplicated but somewhat dangerous. Chu’s image of the dancer moving with the paper bag left her blind and masked. What was she hiding? The two other dancers guided her throughout the stage and I was fascinated by her fearlessness and willingness to trust the others. Once the bag was lifted the dancers became braver, and stronger, with movement choices I interpreted as more masculine. They each demanded the audience’s attention with stark steps and pulsing contractions. Paper Cuts set a contrastingly powerful yet vulnerable tone for the evening. I found myself frequently going back to these two motifs. I was captured by how SALT managed to showcase a unique sense of vulnerability while displaying unwavering strength.

Voice of Reason by Ihsan Rustem followed. Blue lights echoed through the darkness as four dancers broke the stillness. My attention was caught and never left. Men highlighted the piano notes in the score while the women took control over the vocals. The combination was haunting. Rustem’s movement was connected and fluid. Each dancer spoke their own voice, their own story; then in a stunning moment, they all came together. Twelve dancers, twelve individual artists, executed unison on a heavy bass drop. It was the most refreshing dance image I’ve seen all year. This piece showcased SALT’s technique and work ethic, and appeared well-rehearsed within Rustem’s artistry. The piece ended in an evolution of the community breaking away. The stage was left with a final endless duet. It was constant motion, staying true to Rustem’s fluidity. I didn’t want to look away and I didn’t want the piece to end.

Eric Handman’s Omnivore closed the evening’s performance. I have always been a fan of Handman’s work and this was no different. Subtle waves of movement swept over the floor,as if the water held a steady pace.  Handman’s work has a fierce attack to it, but Omnivore’s attack was soft and serene. There was a motif of partnerships and trios slowly falling in weight-bearing shapes that left me speechless. The shapes seemed to stop time. I allowed my mind to wander within this work and the imagery reminded me of Dali’s The Persistence of Memory. The melting watches are strong but sustained; the dancers held their ground but kept falling. The only reason you knew time still kept going was because the music acted as a backbone for the piece. It was one of the more beautiful works I’ve seen of Handman’s and SALT performed it effortlessly.

Ultimately, SALT is carving out their path in Salt Lake City’s dance community. They are speaking to the necessity for current and technical work.  The performers have the maturity of a company that has been around much longer than just four years. SALT allows the audience to think while ascending to the architectural beauty of extremely technical dancing. I was completely captured by the beauty of the evening.

Temria Airmet is the Artistic Director of Myriad Dance Company. She received her BFA in Modern Dance from the University of Utah and currently teaches with Ballet West, Tanner Dance, and Millennium Dance Complex.

SALT at Eccles Regent

Lehi-based SALT Contemporary Dance, founded in 2013, was the first performing group to reserve space in the new Regent Street Eccles Theater this past weekend (a black box - or in the Regent’s case, a purple box). As mentioned by founding artistic director Michelle Nielsen in her pre-performance speech, SALT’s self-professed mission is to present contemporary works by local and international emergent* choreographers. While the members of SALT, and of second company SALT II, proved their technical prowess many times over throughout the evening, the programming choices themselves fell short of Nielsen’s boasts about the work the company seeks to present.

The first half of the program, three works by Ihsan Rustem, Jason Parsons, and Eric Handman, felt uncannily similar, particularly in movement vocabulary. Specifically, a leg extension in a la seconde - turned in, but with an aesthetically sickled foot at the end - made its indelible mark on each of the three. Other motifs were perhaps less memorable, but no less ubiquitous. I suspect that many of these choreographers in the program’s first half asked the dancers to input movement and that these similar choices might actually be a product of the dancers’ personal comfort zones rather than each individual choreographer’s vision.

Also in these early works, and despite the dancers’ facilities, I did not feel a kinesthetic use of weight and effort - instead, the movement seemed to stagnate at similar dynamic levels and gave the effect of many limbs gesturing with unclear intent and often at the same “volume” as each musical selection. The dancers’ internal, at times self-indulgent, foci further retracted the physical impact of the choreography from my viewpoint as an audience member.

In Rustem’s “Voice of Reason”, I enjoyed Elissa Collins’ counterpoint of stillness: seated facing the side with her legs outstretched, ankles purposefully extended like Barbie feet, she remained stalwart as duets unfolded onstage around her. However, the acoustic, singer-songwriter music that accompanied these several, all male/female duets - “But I wanna fall in love with you” - did not invite fresh perspective.

In Parsons’ “Tracing the Steps You Left Behind”, featuring SALT II, I was struck by a moment where one dancer, unveiled as the leader, controlled the all-female group to sink collectively, as if in a trance, to the floor; then upon rising, she conducted an orchestra of their seething bodies with her hands. There were several other such eerie, ritualistic moments, but their effect as a whole was diluted when the dancers walked slowly around the stage, staring warily at each other like many aimless deer in headlights.   

Handman’s “Omnivore” gave glimpses of greater dynamic variation than the two previous pieces, especially in a brief opening solo for Joni Tuttle McDonald. I am familiar with a significant body of Handman’s work, having spent semesters in class with him while at the U and having seen many of his pieces for Performing Dance Company concerts (albeit mostly work set on students). That being said, I noticed significant differences between this previous work and “Omnivore”, namely the movement vocabulary (which, of course, is subject to change throughout any choreographer's career trajectory) but also the kinesthetic effect and physical inhabitance displayed by the dancers, which has always felt singular and powerful in Handman’s work but felt less so in “Omnivore”.

A section of “Ominvore” did transcend the dynamic plateau of mid-level choreography done at a moderate tempo: wild electronic music invited chaos and the change in speed viscerally heightened a group section. This section was short-lived, however, and quickly found its way back to a meandering duet to equally meandering music, rife with affectations (sometimes confusingly classified as “contemporary”) such as the turned in a la seconde leg. This new choreographic chapter Handman might be exploring has lost some of the physical excitement, involvement, and even exhaustion that characterized the old.

Opening the second half of the program, “Comes the Night” by Brendan Duggan began with a single stomping dancer, slowly increasing the tempo and setting the rhythm for the phrase the group would soon break into, also incorporating stomps. Breath was audible and one could hear bodies slapping together at times, finally giving the SALT dancers weight and purpose both in space and in relation to one another.

Duggan also defined relationships between dancers in his world more clearly, aided by dancer-delivered text about a relationship intertwined with a vigorous duet. The content paired with the male/female duet did feel campy at times, but eventually morphed into a larger group alternately delivering lines about compartmentalizing the past and letting others in: a concept much more universal, and perhaps open to investigation, than a female telling her male counterpart that he is “boring!”

Ketley spent several weeks in SLC over the summer teaching classes at Salt Dance Fest, and “A Particulate History of Friendship, The Trial and Absence of Stillard Mave” was a collage of phrases that I learned in one of these classes and spent hours workshopping. Maybe it was this prior connection to the choreographic material that hindered me from seeing the piece as a singular entity: the structure felt haphazardly patchwork, with the roster of phrases merely rearranged in time and space. Group unison was executed in contrived chaos, using different timing and facings, and duets were bolstered by swapping out partners several times.

Ketley’s phrase material itself was captivating and, by far, the most inventive on the program. He choreographs movement with an attention to, and even an indulgence in, gesture while still retaining a sense of matter-of-factness. Varying degrees of attack and delicacy further colored the surprising shifts in level, from soft gestures done standing to sudden, brash poses on the floor. As in several other pieces, an intricate duet that took place on the floor was difficult to make out, as the risers in the Eccles Regent offer a very low grade of steepness with many heads partly obscuring almost half of the marley.

SALT’s success in the community it seeks to serve is evident in its outstanding attendance. As a local dancer attending a community dance performance, I relish SALT’s success, and similarly relish all the many unfamiliar faces seen at Friday night’s performance who walked away having seen more dance and of a different kind than they may have ever seen before. At the same time, again as a dancer, I’m not sure SALT’s diligent marketing of “fresh” and “innovative” correctly describes the company: much of the work I saw over the course of the evening was familiar to the point of feeling derivative, even identical, despite featuring truly stellar dancers with a variety of backgrounds and the work of choreographers from all over the world.

In the future, let’s go easy on the qualifiers, and remember that invoking “contemporary” should just refer to dance that “belongs to or occurs in the present”, rather than dance that adheres to an arbitrary set of aesthetic standards. After all, it’s really only contemporary right now.  

*I wondered what, if anything, SALT aimed to distinguish by opting for the less-used “emergent” over the common “emerging” when describing up-and-coming choreographers in a section of their program notes. I thought an exploration of the company’s semantic choice here could further shed light on their mission. A Google search I conducted for the difference between the two yielded few results, as “emergent” is not in common use. The best definitions I could find, via The Difference-Between, were “emerging”: becoming prominent, newly formed, emergent, rising; and “emergent”: arising unexpectedly, especially if also calling for immediate reaction, constituting an emergency. “Calling for immediate reaction” is probably the intended effect of invoking “emergent”, but to me “emerging” remains more relevant when describing choreographers: becoming prominent, or newly formed, but not constituting an emergency. If SALT is making a purposeful distinction between “emerging” and “emergent”, it seems a superfluous one; that is, one that does not serve to change the nature of the work presented but rather only the language that surrounds it.

Amy Falls is loveDANCEmore's Program Coordinator and regularly contributes to the blog. 

Photo (at top) by Ismael Arrieta / Artwork by Lisa Marie Crosby