NOW-ID: Rite of Spring

Industry, productivity, labor, ritual, depletion, exhaustion.

These are some of the themes that emerged while watching Now-ID’s Rite of Spring. Even the path to the stage, surrounded by railroad tracks, chain-link fencing, and brick and concrete block buildings, felt like part of the performance.

The raised stage underneath the 600 North on-ramp (498 West 600 North) emerged like a destination in the midst of this industrial setting, an oasis for people curious to see what unfolds when an opera singer, four phenomenal dancers, and Igor Stravinsky’s landmark score come together to create an event. The performance began at 9 p.m. and ended less than an hour later, just as the sky had darkened and night had come.

Now-ID’s Rite was a study in contrasts: between the vibrancy of the dancing and the desolation of the landscape that surrounded it, between the glimpses of mountains and the concrete that surrounded the stage, between the timelessness of the music and the ephemerality of this moment, between the perseverance of the performers, and the ultimate collapse that ended this Rite.

Avoiding an explicit narrative, Rite unfolded as a series of images: beginning with the four dancers seated on stools at the corners of the stage. Evoking boxers waiting on the edges of a ring, they seemed focused and primed. Jo Blake stood, as if to signal the beginning of a ritual, and slowly walked by the other dancers (Sydney Sorenson, Liz Ivkovich, and Tara McArthur) to greet Joshua Lindsay as he stepped onto the stage and began singing. Lindsay’s voice, sonorous and lush, heightened my attunement to sensorial engagement, of letting the sounds, sights, and actions of this event convey meaning.

When Lindsay exited, Stravinsky’s score began, and Blake’s solo presented a transformation: from human to extra-human, with arms that morphed into wings as if he were performing an invocation. He danced like he was propelled by forces, and the clarity and strength of his performance was mesmerizing to watch.

Although the performance was choreographed by Charlotte Boye-Christensen, with Nathan Webster providing the concept, the dancers made their ideas into realities with a performance that was impressive in terms of both stamina and precision. Each dancer presented distinct qualities, while also maintaining a sense of coherence. Sorenson danced with a rare combination of power and extension. Ivkovich had a compelling expansion to her movement, limbs stretching away from her center of gravity in ways that seemed to resist gravity. McArthur presented a flickering, quicksilver quality, with movement that was so fast it seemed superhuman.

In unison sections the women generated a sense of solidarity, bounding across the stage with a loping gait that seemed to gain momentum as they moved. At other times, the four performers divided into pairs that suggested rival tribes: Ivkovich and McArthur wore red-ish pants that contrasted with Blake’s and Sorenson’s attire. In partnering sections, they seemed to engage in combat, like wrestlers grappling.

Tara McArthur and Jo Blake in NOW-ID’s Rite of Spring, in costumes by Mallory Prucha. Photo by Jeffrey Juip.

The costumes, by Mallory Prucha, added to the rough and exposed environment: pants were made of heavy cotton (“monk’s cloth”) but shredded at the hems and stained with dark streaks. Make-up and hair by Stephanie Ericson, Rikki-Lee Thomas, Brittany Botarri, Kevin Truong, and Vanessa Alfaro enhanced the sense of severity with body paint and spiky hairstyles. As the performance continued, the body paint disintegrated, leaving traces of colors just as the surroundings presented traces of former industries and communities.

It’s hard to decipher the connections between this landscape and this Rite: in some ways the choreography presented a familiar tale of a woman’s sacrifice for the betterment of a community. In other ways, the dancers seemed to be exposing the exhaustion and depletion of cultures and sectors that are no longer sustainable or viable, perhaps suggesting that we become more judicious in where we invest our energies and resources. No matter the interpretation, the dancers’ commitment to the choreography was impressive, and their ability to execute the phrases while maintaining a sense of understated calm was riveting. Each one is a compelling artist, and the lighting design by Cole Adams made it appear, at times, as if their bodies were glowing. A gorgeous and appropriate effect.

NOW-ID’s Rite of Spring, with lighting by Cole Adams. Photo by David Newkirk.

Kate Mattingly is an assistant professor of dance at the University of Utah. She has a doctoral degree in performance studies from UC Berkeley, and has had writing published in The New York Times, The Village Voice, Dance Research Journal, Dance magazine, and Pointe magazine, among others.

NOW-ID: A Tonal Caress at UMFA

It takes a special experience to challenge what we know about movement. NOW-ID’s newest production, A Tonal Caress, challenged the audience to question their knowledge of movement and what role it plays in relationships, and, most importantly, the communicative potential that movement inherently possesses. Humans are physical communicators, and the act of communicating is an act of physicality: training the hand to perform specific movements that create shapes on a surface, forming the mouth in specific combinations while forcing air out of the lungs to create speech. For the movement practice of this show, the bodies of performers were constantly in an act of communication, with gestures for emphasis, “body language” providing hints to true meanings, and, in the case of Deaf poet Walter Kadiki, using the hands and face as the primary tool of communication.

A Tonal Caress was a massive collaborative undertaking, with choreography by artistic director Charlotte Boye-Christensen, an installation by Gary Vlasic, poetry both written and performed by Walter Kadiki, sound by Adam Day, lighting by Cole Adams, and video by Jan Andrews. Each element emphasized communication, opportunities for potentially missed contact, and a feeling of otherness when the communicative potential was not realized.

Upon entering the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, I was greeted by Vlasic’s “Installation of Men,” in the stairwell off the Great Hall. Seven men were dressed in suits, barefoot and expressionless, and staggered up and down the stairs. While seemingly unprovoked, the men moved in perfect unison with reaching arms, lifted eyes, and precise hands. A droning soundscape allowed the enclosed stairwell to envelop the movers, and myself as an observer. Though occasionally changing formations, the men remained serene in their flowing arm gestures. Most intriguing was the seeming lack of cues, yet the men knew exactly when and how to move. Clearly well-practiced, the installation offered calmness and assuredness. While not verbally communicating with each other, the men exhibited a movement language of their own.

Seating in the G.W. Anderson Family Great Hall was arranged in the round, with rows of chairs on three sides of a platform that featured a lone chair on which Kadiki sat, still and silent, as the audience filed in. Before director Nathan Webster made an announcement, the droning score that had previously filled the space ended and Kadiki and the audience were wrapped in silence. Knowing that A Tonal Caress featured collaboration with a Deaf artist, I truly appreciated this moment. The lack of sound brought a hyper-awareness of the rest of the space; the audience’s focus was directed toward the seated Kadiki, who continued to stare straight ahead. I focused on his feet fidgeting, noticed a silent swallow, and paid attention to my own initial discomfort at the complete lack of sound.

Throughout the show, one interpreter signed in American Sign Language and the other in Auslan (Australian Sign Language; Kadiki is Australian). This immediately signalled that verbal communication was not the dominant form of discourse. The performance as a whole was rooted in the physical body: through signing, through emotive expression, and through dance. Sign language itself can be viewed as a dance, bolstered in this case by collaborative choreography. Additionally, it made me aware of sign languages as codified movement languages. In order to successfully communicate through either sign language, studying and proficiency are obviously required, as maybe opposed to expressions and gestures inherent in spoken language.

A Tonal Caress raised a question for me: what defines emotion through physical form? Additionally, in examining movement and the body as forms of communication, what makes one movement emotive but another less so? Kadiki’s relationship to the dancers pointed to this question: he stayed on a platform for the entire show, only occasionally rising to stand and never taking a step down onto the floor, yet Kadiki’s was still the story being told.

Jo Blake, Liz Ivkovich, and Sydney Petitt were all powerhouse performers, and danced for close to the entirety of the near hour-long production. All three shared unique relationships with Kadiki while also with each other. Through their constant reflection of, reference to, and direct eye contact with Kadiki, they existed as thematic and physical extensions of the poetry.

Blake’s relationship to Kadiki was best defined through his intense eye contact. He began the show with a water-like solo. Throughout the evening, he also became a partner and a leader of the “Installation of Men.” He provided a challenging gaze to the audience, but also to Kadiki. Every moment, every fluid, tossed spiral, was deliberate and subtly communicative. As I pondered what created emotion and meaning in movement, Blake created it through a physical manifestation of confidence that left no room to doubt his intentions.

Ivkovich’s movement choices, in contrast to Blake, provided a more direct relationship with Kadiki. Her entrance solo was one of the most memorable moments of the evening. The operatic score playing as she entered was blended so seamlessly it might have been missed if not for Ivkovich’s movement. She existed in actual conversation with Kadiki as Boye-Christensen’s choreography focused so much on the face and the mouth, even as she deliberately covered both. Ivkovich’s mouth and expressions moved in direct relationship to the arpeggiated score and were animated to the point of feeling just right, and not like a caricature. Kadiki directly communicated with Ivkovich through repeated gestures, initially in a matter-of-fact, physical tone but eventually with more vigor and frustration.

Petitt was a hard performer to pin down. She was so physical in her movement, with beautiful lines and immense control, but also attacked each movement with a desperation, in the most positive sense of the word. Toward the end of the piece, all three dancers were on stage together, Petitt with a pleading, breathy quality, ignored by the other two except for some physical pushes and lifts. Petitt and Blake had another memorable partnering moment, in which they started with a more traditionally balletic lift but then kept going, as Petitt seemed to roll and melt up Blake’s body. However, Petitt seemed to have the least direct relationship with Kadiki. During a trio, she ultimately became a physical extension of Kadiki’s desperate reach, but it was only possible because of the other two continuing to push, pull, and elongate her. She provided a truly emotional connection to Kadiki’s poetry as interpreted through her body.

As Kadiki shared his final poem, “Butterfly Hands,” Blake and Petitt performed the most classical and fluid partnering of the show, which provided a romantic reading of their relationship. But, as they left Kadiki and his butterfly hands alone on the stage, I was left with a sense of resilience. Kadiki experienced an extremely exhaustive, emotional act of communication as he shared, at times, his frustration, a lack of being understood, and a lack of being heard. But his parting happiness, butterfly hands flying light in the air, expressed a continued desire for communication - for what joy is there in being human if not the ability to share with and learn about others?

The men of Gary Vlasic's "Installation of Men," part of NOW-ID's A Tonal Caress. Photo by David Newkirk.

Natalie Gotter is a performer, choreographer, instructor, filmmaker, and researcher. She recently completed an MFA in modern dance at the University of Utah and is a faculty member at Utah Valley University, Westminster College, and Salt Lake Community College.

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.  

Ballet West: National Choreographic Festival, Part II

Billed as the “Sundance Festival for dance,” Ballet West’s National Choreographic Festival spanned two weekends and received significant regional support for its presentation of works by five ballet companies and seven choreographers.

 Below, Liz Ivkovich considers works from the first weekend while Ashley Anderson responds to the second. The two conclude together in conversation about this new platform.  

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Trey McIntyre’s The Accidental featured three couples (male and female), in pas de deux to the crooning voice of Patrick Watson. The piece was four distinct segments to four different songs. The almost-mariachi beat drove the dancers, in leafy leotards and flat slippers, through a series of intricate lifts. The partnering was well-executed, yet I felt the Pennsylvania Ballet dancers seemed to miss each other in their focus on the audience.

As the lights rose on Sarasota Ballet performing In a State of Weightlessness, I thought I saw five floating Buddhas. This image resolved into women in light tan leotards suspended in the air above darkly-clad male partners. Throughout the work, composer Philip Glass drove the men as they lifted their female partners like Bunraku puppet masters. I challenged myself to actually see the men, which was difficult because the work seemed designed to draw focus solely to the women. I was struck by the beauty and nuance in Ricardo Graziano’s choreography, where a simple head movement could define the pas de deux.

I wish I could see Nicolo Fonte’s Fox on the Doorstep two more times before I had to write about it. It was perfectly ordinary and extraordinary, folding me into their world.

Fox began with a heavy stage left; a mass of dancers that resolved into duets and solos, to dissolve again into the group. Beckanne Sisk and Rex Tilton discovered the unseen edges of the music with sharp flicks and easy extensions as they danced together, alone, and with others.

A single light shone from upstage down at the audience. At times it became the moon, at others an interrogation. And when it struck the dancers so that we saw them - strength of movement, sweat lines on costumes - they could see us. Performers and observers, we were there together.

A woman contorted in the center of dancers arranged like a flock of geese, while they watched. At moments, they tried to join her, only to stop and watch again, with cold eyes.

The piece seemed to end when the group melted off stage. It began anew with falling snow, and a lone figure (Chase O’Connell) who was joined for a brief moment by a woman in a gray leotard and soft slippers.

I feel odd singling out these few artists whose faces I recognize. If each dancer had performed their own part alone, it would still be captivating, a mash up of the ease of release technique, the intense exploration of Gaga, and iconic ballet lines.  

Yet, it was the company’s commitment to really being together on stage that lingers in my memory. I had the feeling that one gets when seeing someone hold their baby - that they are actually touching another person, not performing what it looks like to touch someone.

This connection between the dancers was so lovely in its ordinary-ness that the performance became extraordinary.

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Terra is not the first work by Helen Pickett that Ballet West has presented, but it is one of the most lovely. Working from Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth, Oregon Ballet Theatre performs both creation and opposition with dancers who appear at once Paleolithic and extraterrestrial. The choreographic structure measures up to several of Campbell’s functions of myth: to marvel at the universe, to show the scientific boundaries of these beliefs, to demonstrate sociological support for this ideas, and to live life within the aforementioned.

This last function, wildly living, falls short at times, perhaps because of the homogenous nature of the group (ballet-trained dancers of the same demographic) and perhaps because of a lack of practice in performing a visceral soundscape (grunts, shouts, etc.). Although vulnerable relationships are presented in a number of mythical contexts and formations from virtuosic masculine circles and romantic pairings to lone and longing women, the dance deals more with the structures and the outward marveling than it does the living.

Before/After by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa makes this concert happily equitable in terms of gender (a hot topic in ballet) and the brief duet presents a refreshing counterpoint to other festival offerings. A sparse text is repeated -- changes, the sound changes, changes, before, after, the light changes --  and each directive comes to pass over the 7 minute work. Light and sound cues progressively change before the “after” of departures from the stage by Angelica Generosa and James Moore.  Watching the duet I’m reminded about the powerful form of duets, especially in a regional dance fabric that so values an ensemble: the audience can focus deeply, marvel at intricacies, and also have the pressure of a “masterpiece,” lifted from their shoulders.  

The return of Oliver Oguma’s Tremor was exciting and curious. I reviewed the premiere at the Eccles in Park City and had such a remarkably different experience the second time around. I can’t pinpoint changes to the work beyond my own proximity (closer in Park City, from a distance in Salt Lake) that made the androgyny and ambiguity read and the performance by the dancers more keen and structurally refined. Perhaps this viewing was also seeking a hopeful precedent of truly new voices, outside the choreographic canon, to be included in future festivals.

The evening cycled back to explorations of ritual in Dances for Lou, by Val Caniparoli, a previous resident choreographer with Ballet West. The title refers to the accompanying composition by Lou Harrison, known for his use of Asian musical influences. With impeccable framing by visible stage lighting, brief vignettes revealed ideas similar to Terra although more formally framed. The vignettes carried largely the same implications -- wonder, boundaries, and questions about using specific cultural histories on specific, but non-representative casts.

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The National Choreographic Festival is certainly a relevant, ambitious pursuit resulting in exceptionally skilled performances presented in Salt Lake’s newest venue. The festival also  meets at least one Sundance measure in its vision of a gathering place for new works in ballet. Though ballet receives more public support compared to other dance forms it is also met with unique challenges, namely the expectations of ballet’s oldest patrons (read: Swan Lake).

Yet these accolades, the “broad, diverse, and ever-changing landscape of new choreography that exists today” promised in Artistic Director Adam Sklute’s program notes, are fraught, given that the public funding received by Ballet West is hardly comparable to either the early independent days of film festival metaphor or the payment that any regional choreographer outside of ballet is eligible to receive. Regional, independent choreographers are only eligible for $2,000 a year in public funding, or $4,500 if they are fiscally sponsored. Ballet West received $1.6 million in government grants in the 2014 fiscal year, and the festival garnered an additional $100,000 in support from the Utah State Legislature.

There are both valid and invalid reasons for these discrepancies but it does leave these two writers wondering what the cost of performance will be in an ever-tightened picture of funding. Is a reading of ballet as synonymous with choreography fair? Should models like the National Choreographic Festival promise a festival of new ballet rather than a festival of dance, a promise which Ballet West can unequivocally deliver? Or, could the National Choreographic Festival grow to become, like Sundance, a festival that “actively advances the work of independent storytellers” from a wider range of aesthetics, expertise, and identity?  

Ballet West: National Choreographic Festival, Part I

This abbreviated review from Liz Ivkovich is for Ballet West’s National Choreographic Festival, May 19 & 20, 26 & 27. The full review will be posted next week after the second weekend of performances. 

I wish I could see Nicolo Fonte’s Fox on the Doorstep two more times before I had to write about it. This is the moment I live for as a dance writer, when I know I cannot write this dance adequately. How can I translate Ballet West’s human connection and crisp technique to you? It was perfectly ordinary and extraordinary, folding me into their world.

Fox begins with a heavy stage left; a mass of dancers that resolved into duets and solos, to dissolve again into the group. Beckanne Sisk and Rex Tilton discovered the unseen edges of the music with sharp flicks and easy extensions as they dance together, alone, and with others.

 A single light shone from upstage down at the audience. At times it became the moon, at others an interrogation. And when it struck the dancers so that we saw them - strength of movement, sweat lines on leotards - they could see us. Performers and observers, we were there together. 

A woman contorted in the center of dancers arranged like a flock of geese, while they watched. At moments, they tried to join her, only to stop and watch again, with cold eyes.

The piece seems to end when the group melts off stage. It begins anew with falling snow, and a lone figure (Chase O’Connell) who is joined for a brief moment by a woman in a gray leotard and soft slippers. 

I feel odd singling out these few artists whose faces I recognize. If each dancer had performed their own part alone, it would still be captivating, a mash up of the ease of release technique, the intense exploration of Gaga, and iconic ballet lines.  

Yet, it was the company’s commitment to really being together on stage that lingers in my memory. I had the feeling that one gets when seeing someone hold their baby - that they are actually touching another person, not performing what it looks like to touch someone.

This connection between the dancers was so lovely in its ordinary-ness that the performance became extraordinary.

Liz Ivkovich moonlights as loveDANCEmore’s New Media Coordinator and daylights at the UU Sustainability Office and Global Change & Sustainability Center.