Deseret Experimental Opera: Life Relegated

Desert Experimental Opera is full of enthusiasm and ambition. Their new show Life Relegated, at an empty space (formerly Urban Outfitters) in The Gateway Mall, brings together several bands and an army of local dancers. It’s a bit like a talent show, in the best sense. Things unfold under the auspices of a plot that feels intentionally loose - each band is “dressed” as one of Utah’s national parks, who, personified, are recently out of work and facing down the “Invisible Hand” of the market, as voiced by a Stephen Hawking-esque computer voice.

Zion National Park explores its religious identity, Canyonlands submits to advertising, and Bryce Canyon sells out to a pharmaceutical company for better health insurance. The ballads of these anthropomorphized landscapes are sometimes clever, but the writing never feels like more than an excuse for the gathering. The whole experience is familiar if you’re from Utah. A place that’s still nominally a theocracy can elicit a kind of vague solidarity among those who fancy themselves outsiders.

The best thing about this show is the chance to see so many local performers all at once. Bands It Foot, It Ears and Durian Durian both shine musically. It’s encouraging to see a whole new generation of dancers who seem to be establishing themselves in Salt Lake for good. Emma Sargent partners with a panel of broken red-rock in a solo that recalls Eric Handman’s heroic soliloquies and also, somehow, the rune-like gestures of Daniel Nagrin. Emma Wilson, Meagan Bertelsen, and Amy Freitas, who we’ve recently lost to Moab, shine in some of the wilder moments when bodies fill the space. These three know how to listen and thus how to take the lead in the large group improvisations which make the rock and roll in this rock opera visual as well as aural.

That things never quite coalesce is hardly a problem - although I do wonder what some of these artists might really have to say about the politics of wilderness. We do have a bizarre relationship to the natural beauty in the southern part of our state. That this production doesn’t have much more to say about it than the craft beer bottles that celebrate hoodoos and arches is perhaps intentional. But I look forward to some of these artists making a deeper foray into some of the thornier questions.

Deseret Experimental Opera’s Life Relegated continues through Sunday, May 19, at The Gateway Mall.

Samuel Hanson is the editor and executive director of loveDANCEmore. 

LMN Mov't No. 1 at Sugar Space

Long associated with DIY art-making and performance, warehouse venues demand a conscious balance between activating cost-accessible spaces and making them both functional and inviting to viewers. LMN Mov’t No. 1, a collaboration between Meagan Bertelsen, Natalie Gotter, and Peter Larsen, fully realized the production potential of Sugar Space Arts Warehouse more so than any other performance I have experienced there. The thoughtful staging under the technical direction of Larsen framed compelling works from artistically mature creators and performers. The white flooring contrasted with the dark drapes to delineate the stage and beautifully captured the shadows cast from diffuse lighting (otherwise often unequal to the space). Barn-door framing later shaped this same soft light into hard lines that effectively limned stage sections.

LMN Mov’t No. 1 was an hour-and-a-half-long work comprised of four pieces, fronted with the admirably concise artists’ statement, “The works seen tonight invoke the role of the individual and their surroundings, examining how we interact, work, and create with the world and other people around us.” After viewing the show, I interpreted the statement in the following way: “Experienced people making the art they want to make, with the people they want to make it with, in the way they want to make it.” This was, I think, a very successful composition from artists who are not defensive about their work’s intention and value, who collaborate willingly and meaningfully. It was certainly an exploration of human action/interaction within the scope of the intersection of subject and environment - but it largely did not demand that you acknowledge it as such. The theoretical underpinnings were less visible than the experience of dance, which I took to be a great sign of maturity and aesthetic confidence. I was personally struck with the notion that a solo can be a remarkable encapsulation of collaboration, and to a greater degree than ensemble pieces.

The opening solo, “Hunter,” illustrated this beautifully: the stage was set with a lovely tableau - two chairs, one holding a lush houseplant and the other a box fan, with several can lights loose on the floor. Bertelsen first activated the fan, and later played its grid like a harp (after the recorded notes of Alice Coltrane’s harp were several minutes past, a wonderfully subtle evocation); she adeptly inverted a long buttoned coat and turned on the lights, trailing them along the path of their floorwork, and, memorably, affectingly embraced the fronds of the houseplant, all of which made Bertelsen an immediate and sustained active agent in the space. Bertelsen’s performance seemed to simultaneously inhabit and connect on several layers of abstraction - the venue, the stage, and their body - with an ease informed by years of thesis research in solo improvisation. Under the direction of Brianna Lopez, “Hunter” fluidly passed through discrete ideas, each with a radically different movement quality and intensity. This was accurately and succinctly reflected in the program notes, invoking “the evolving role of subject and its surroundings” and “constant shifts of attention...through the explored body states and interactive environment,” a description which was met and exceeded.

The accompanying notes for “Carry From Below” were less illuminating. A quote by famous NFL coach Vince Lombardi was gender-inverted to evoke ideal woman as triumphant samaritan-warrior. It was presented without author attestation of Lombardi or otherwise, so I assumed the substitution to be choreographer Natalie Gotter’s. The conceit was very interesting - an act of reaction and also creation, claiming something in a way that thoroughly unseats it. However, there was little evidence of this notion in the work itself. I was inclined upon viewing to examine some aesthetic biases I personally hold - namely, the feminine-but-pragmatic ensemble conventions of hair half-back-half-down and similar pedestrian clothing (here, flowy florals) with black sportswear, accompanied by overtly lyrical singer-songwriter music. I realized I dislike these conventions not because they are traditionally feminine (which is wonderful as a deliberate choice) or not-quite homogenizing (which uniform costuming can achieve and individuated costuming can belie), or overly emotive. Rather, because they are so familiar as to provide a blank slate that the work then is responsible to fill, which “Carry From Below” never quite achieved. Partner contact appeared under-motivated, without the physical weight or gestural context to lend it gravity. The lyricism of Nico’s “I’ve Been out Walking,” paired with on-the-nose walking-path choreography, borrowed emotional content from the external musical modality without embodying its own.

The pure movement created by Gotter and the dancers, and their performance of it, was truly strong and graceful; notably, a solo moment by Christine Glidden and a duet by Xochitl Marquez and Ashley Creek, each of which I wished would have lasted longer. I did, however, appreciate being given cause to examine my biases and have concluded that at their root, my dislike of these conventional forms rests on how much harder this nullity of stagecraft makes it to appreciate the hard work and interesting product. I wished the identity theory cleverly used to such effect in the notes had been used visibly in the performed work - otherwise, I am not, as an audience member, able to credit its presence.

During the brief intermission, it felt as though the lobby might break into a contact improv jam. The local dance community was out in force to support LMN Mov’t even at a matinee, testament to the contributions of its creators to this scene. The second half began with a request to hold all applause to the end, as there would be transitions - an injunction that was perhaps unnecessary. For one, because it is always destined to go unheeded, but also because the slightly contrived visual continuity of lighting was superfluous. The works shown were all capable of standing alone, cohesive because of the strength of their refined craft and artistry.

Choreographer/performer Emma Sargent began  “Firmament” in an upstage corner, and immediately held every gaze with a series of progressively intensifying leg swings, her grounded torso static and shadowed. Thus obscured by her own legs, Sargent subtly stroked the floor with her toes, an image later mirrored with her fingers in a standing inversion, and in the final supine gesture of sweeping circling hands. These variations of levels and distal articulation were thematic touchstones in an utterly captivating performance. In contrast to the opening solo work, “Firmament” was fierce but also spare and contained, even insulated, which created a gratifying sense of observing, of beholding. Side light was brought in and out, which created shadows that contributed to the sense of communion and dialogue with the space. The quote included in the program was deftly chosen, speaking to natural universal enfranchisement in personal isolation from the artist Björk, and which, in consideration of the well-chosen music of Sigur Rós and Jónsi & Alex, bespoke a certain Scandinavian brand of lonely and lovely.

“Fractals” began with directed light illuminating alternatingly one far lateral third of the stage and then the other. Bertelsen and Larsen each occupied one segment, in well-chosen, completely matching minimalist attire that flattered their strong builds, and the two executed powerful phrases in silence as they were lit in turn. The lights came up, they met on center, and began a partnership of inversions, rolls, and lifts, laborious over-the-shoulder carries accomplished by each in bursts of energy. Gotter’s staging choices and movement creation/direction were extremely effective here. You were given no choice but to appreciate two driving forces whose encounters were continuous, dynamic power shifts without any internally acknowledged power disparity. It worked, and wonderfully, leaving the viewer to confront any expectations to the contrary and their internalized source. The dancers exited the stage only to be reproduced as projections on the wall in Gotter’s screendance iteration of the work.

“Fractals” was a very well-made piece, but I generally question whether a screendance paired with live performance is incorporated meaningfully, whether it literally or figuratively reframes the work in an additive manner, and if it does or does not undermine the live component. The video piece shown in ‘Part One’ of “Fractals” touched briefly on the continuation of a single movement from one dancer to another, and the accelerated reiteration of movements, like the oft-repeated handstand, which are attainable only through editing. These were prominent enough to enrich the texture of the evocative screendance alone, but not enough to appreciably speak to their conjunction with the live work.

‘Part Two’ of “Fractals” finished the show with a duet between Gotter and Bertelsen. They took their places with heavy footfalls in athleisure neutrals and knee pads, as though to promise floorwork and weight-sharing and good times ahead. They absolutely delivered, establishing an intensity borne out until the end. Bertelsen’s movement was controlled even at difficult speeds and phrases, her energy continuing beyond the line of the limbs, and with a steady gaze. Gotter’s initiated movement from the center, which then exploded outward, even in a posture as ostensibly staunch and static as a held développé to the side, with a gaze consistently fierce and challenging. Watching these very distinct but complementary artists embody moments of unison and contact was endlessly appealing - with endless appeal being a preferred way to finish a show.

I viewed an in-progress presentation of “Fractals” at the last Mudson at the Marmalade Library; I was intrigued then, and am very gratified to have had the opportunity to see how the work has evolved and grown. Indeed, seeing these local artists utilize local platforms to produce works of such full realization is an inspiring look into what is happening in the Salt Lake dance community. Much of the best dance I have seen recently has occurred at two branches of the public library system. The consummate accomplishment of this LMN Mov’t collaboration reminds me that the dedicated work of public servants and independent artists is creating and maintaining the infrastructure of this community in an incredibly heartening way.

Nora Price is a Milwaukee native living and working in Salt Lake City. She can be seen performing with Municipal Ballet Co. and with Durian Durian, an art band that combines post-punk music and contemporary dance.

Deseret Experimental Opera Company: 2047

The Bertelsen Manor was an uncommon venue for Deseret Experimental Opera Company’s 2047. Filled with childhood photos, piles of mail, and an old dog that wandered across the wood floors, the space was immediately intimate. I felt as if I was visiting a friend rather than attending a performance. Bolstered by this informal energy, the operas themselves were presented in the home’s attic ballroom.

Founded in 2013 by Logan Hone, Jesse Quebbeman-Turley, and Luke Swenson, Deseret Experimental Opera Company (DEXO) is an artistic collective that emphasizes cross-medium collaboration.  In this vein, 2047 asked four teams of a librettist, a composer, and a choreographer to create “micro-operas” addressing a simple but open-ended question: what will the Wasatch Front be like in thirty years?

“The Beekeeper’s Journal” followed a beekeeper and her apprentice as they attempted to manage a swarm of bees that commandeered a data center, putting both the beekeepers and the data retrievers at risk.  “Back Below” delved into the memories of Sarah and Rachel as they flew home to a Wasatch Front that no longer sees winter snow. A security system trapped an unhappy couple in “Open House.”  Finally, “The 55 brides of Brileen Young” profiled a group of polygamist brides as they prepared to travel east across the plains.

Written by Lara Candland and choreographed by Jasmine Stack, “The Beekeeper’s Journal” punctuated brief dialogues and audio of journal entries describing the mesmerizing beauty of a bee hive with movement accompanied by layered counting in various languages.  The beekeeper and her apprentice folded into mirrored positions, echoing and tessellating into each other with soft fluidity.  The warmth of these dance sequences contrasted the vacantly precise gestures employed by the beekeeper during the rest of the operetta.  Utilizing spacious silence, expressionless voices, and an ominous buzzing of hidden instruments, sound designer Jesse Quebbeman-Turley created an ajar landscape that was far from what I expected of an opera.  Ending with the suggestion that the bees had disturbingly embalmed the beekeeper and workers in sweet honey, I questioned what exactly the relationship was between the bees and the humans.

With an incisive libretto by Ilana Fogelson and crisp music by Hannah Johnson McLaughlin, “Back Below” focused on Sarah, as she returned to her family and home after twenty years away, and Rachel, as she attempted to introduce her daughter to a childhood home far away in place and memory.

Emma Sargent’s performance as Sarah stood out for its simplicity and sincerity.  As Sargent leaned her head against an imagined window, her movement and voice’s nuanced clarity was arresting. A foil to the quiet seriousness of Sargent, Nicholas Daulton’s Flight Attendant was delightful. Full of humor and charm, Daulton’s playful gestures poked fun at the familiar pre-flight speech. I actually laughed out loud as he signaled the chorus’s direction changes while in an one-legged airplane balance.  

Emma Wilson’s choreography for “Back Below” was witty and engaging.  Wilson deftly arranged the chorus with movements recognizably specific but heightened just enough to make them feel futuristic. They argued over seats and climbed across rows, wove their hands like blades of grass and jostled with the turbulence of the plane. Wilson tightly forged the movement to the story and music, creating a predicted future that felt darkly realistic despite its comedy.

At one point, a silver cord physicalized the connection between Rachel’s daughter and Sarah, tying one’s head to the other’s heart. Simple and poignant, the cord twisted to entangle the two, binding childhood creation of memory to adulthood’s remembering. I wondered how we will convey the memory of this place once it has changed beyond recognition. How do you tell a child about snow when they may never see it? As strange as that question sounds, “Back Below” reminded me that it is an unfortunately practical one to consider.

I couldn’t make up my mind about “Open House.” It felt like the collaborators couldn’t either. The franticly absurd energy of the two dancers portraying the rogue security system, their wonderfully silly bright red goggles, and a mid-action rave complete with LEDs, glow sticks, and light-up gloves primed me for a darkly surprising comedy. But the music and story took themselves very seriously. I wished “Open House” had gone more the direction of Carly Schaub’s quirky choreography; it was a missed opportunity.

Closing the nearly three hour evening, “The 55 brides of Brileen Young” opened with deep voices singing navigation directions from Provo, Utah to the Missouri site where the LDS Church places the Garden of Eden. Brides of all genders, dressed in a mixture of white skirts, silken nightgowns, and billowing sleepshirts marked with blue “b”’s, pantomimed preparing, searching, and gathering. Supported by an ominous drone recalling an electric generator, the brides seemed trapped in the repetitive forward motion of travel.

Luke Swenson’s allusive libretto related a series of vignettes in the life of the group of polygamist brides. One bride, a cappella, called the rest to prepare. Their answers were layered so thickly that individual voices were difficult to differentiate. One by one, the brides met each other mid-stage to matter of factly detail preparatory shopping and the quiet rigors of child rearing. Joined by a few audience members, the brides sang a rustic hymn and alluded to Mormon Sunday meetings, one of the many references throughout to LDS culture.  Introduced by the ward choir director, they called upon members, all with the last name Young, to “fulfill their destiny.”

Even when the brides were separated, they were distinctly united as if their lives had been entwined to the point of becoming indistinguishable. This feeling largely came from the dense compositions of Stuart Wheeler and from Meagan Bertelsen’s simple but skillful spatial arrangements. Voice and body were defined by those around them in a way that did not diminish individuals but instead honored dependency.

In a particularly absorbing moment, two bearded brides stood chest to chest, their bodies pushed into each other and sparely lit by a flashlight pressed between them. Lips nearly touching, they sang of an intimacy that softened edges and they echoed this intimacy in the boundary-blurring nearness of their bodies. The indefinable story coupled with the uncommon sight of such closeness captivated me. I relished the ability to wander through all possibilities of their relationship and did not want the tender moment to end.

As I wrote this review, I found myself talking through the show much more than usual, only able to process the performance through rambling conversation. Because only theme and medium loosely tied the four operas, 2047 did not lend itself to a neat concluding impression. Some moments made me sit up straighter and some didn’t. However, that was the draw: it was an evening formed around wondering and striving rather than arriving.

Mary Lyn Graves, a native of Tulsa, OK, studied dance at the University of Oklahoma. She currently dances with Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company.

Dollhouse

Gretchen Huff and Marissa Mooney both hold dual degrees in modern dance and gender studies from the University of Utah. Together they produced Dollhouse this past weekend, exploring themes of womanhood and femininity in and amongst the rooms of a historic home in the Avenues. Huff and Mooney, also the show’s main performers, led audiences on a planned, and eventually repeating, circuit through all levels of the house and four sections: “Maiden,” “Mother,” “Wild Woman,” and “Crone.”

Many of the rooms featured striking installations created by Kate Gourley-Thomas: a closet full of shelves lined with paper-dolls depicting many-bodied women and flora; a heap of aromatic potting soil in the living room over which hung a nest of branches encasing a chandelier; and a mass of gauzy webs crisscrossing a cellar room. Mooney co-created the cellar installation, in addition to creating one for the kitchen: spoons taped to every surface - cupboards, walls, drawers - each one cupping a fried egg.

In the opening “Maiden,” Huff and Mooney were clad in white bras and briefs, sitting at the foot of a bed. With strategically placed slices of frosted cake, they explicitly used their fingers to deliver icing from cake/nether region to mouth, staring the audience down sullenly. It was confrontational and occasionally uncomfortable, though maybe no more so than in another intimate setting where performers stare unrelentingly back at audience members.

They moved into an adjacent bathroom, where they did a duet in an enclosed shower that I saw flashes of through reflection in a mirror, beside a tub filled with lollipops and other candy and detritus. Sounds of their bodies knocking together and a building film of steam on the shower door indicated a strong physicality, as the two continued their exploration of the corporeal discovery of maidenhood.

Downstairs for “Mother,” Huff and Mooney donned aprons with Jessica Pace, who had been frantically frying eggs, and the three cheerily, but sarcastically, danced to Sam Cooke’s “Sugar Dumpling.” The dance commented upon outward appearances, specifically those of suburban housewives, belying troubled inner landscapes (reinforced by a conspicuous pile of prescription pill bottles on the counter). The pill-popping housewife may be a real, and worrisome, affliction, but I felt the depiction here oversimplified the invariably nuanced roles that a contemporary woman might actually find herself taking on throughout motherhood.

In the adjacent dining room, three women passed around a casserole dish of anecdotes on mother- , wife-, and daughterhood, from which they took turns reading selections aloud. These potentially autobiographical snippets offered compelling challenges found within these relationships. I wanted to linger more here (and did return after completing the full cycle), but we were ushered onward into the peat-scented, dirt-laden living room for “Wild Woman,” where Natalie Border and Meagan Bertelsen, in Pina Bausch-like white slips, awaited.

After circling around and rolling in the dirt with these two wild women, no longer constrained by kitchen appliances and the compulsion to clean, Huff and Mooney made the journey with the audience down to the cellar for “Crone.” Here, Samantha Matsukawa passed the time knitting in her rocking chair amongst the gauzy web installation. She joined in with Huff and Mooney for some gentle postures and gestures. “Crone” was quiet and contemplative, and in this way opened itself up more for introspection and interpretation than some of the previous and more visually graphic or overt sections.

“Crone” ended outside in the backyard, the performers watering handmade, silvery flowers that poked up out of the yard and out of the deck, before returning quickly into the house to begin “Maiden” again in the upstairs bedroom. I thought this last image of flower-watering, outside in the dark and cold, was lovely and wished the performers had explored this section for longer.

Upon re-entering the house through the “Mother” scene in the kitchen, I was reminded of Dollhouse’s focus on some feminine roles through an antiquated lens. Maybe it’s my own bias, due in part to the potentially privileged lack of constraint I feel regarding my own role in society, but the “woman in the kitchen” trope feels less to me like a concern of 2017 and more one of, for example, 1972 - the year Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, with other feminist artists from Cal Arts, opened Womanhouse in Los Angeles.  

Upon a post-Dollhouse refresher, I realized the performance I had just seen drew heavily, and even directly, from Womanhouse in several instances. Presumably, this was an intentional effort by Huff and Mooney to position their work within the feminist art historical tradition, but it was not attributed as such.

"How would you like your eggs done / this morning?," Robin Weltsch wrote, about The Kitchen for the catalog that accompanied Womanhouse. The Kitchen walls were covered in circular nodes that were at once eggs and nipples.

Faith Wilding created a pronouncedly non-functional shelter with her Crocheted Environment for Womanhouse, which featured web-like strands knit together to form a spidery cave, dimly lit by a single bulb.

Wilding performed “Waiting,” a contemplation on passivity in which she rocked back and forth in a chair reviewing her life from beginning to end.

The observation of such close similarities led me to believe Dollhouse wasn’t exploring its creators’ ideas and concerns, but rather recapitulating those voiced by women and artists decades earlier. Problematically, it was unclear to me both the extent to which this was intentional and, therefore, the desired effect. 

Regardless of clear context or positioning of intent, a viable takeaway from Dollhouse is that gender roles may be more complicated now than in the 1970s. Struggles voiced by mid-twentieth century feminists may remain struggles for contemporary feminists, though might crop up in new ways. Yet, strangely, more subversive elements from Womanhouse were absent from Huff and Mooney’s performance.

Judy Chicago’s Menstruation Bathroom demonstrated "an image of women’s hidden secret, covered over with a veil of gauze...and deodorized...except for the blood." Chicago observed, "However we feel about our own menstruation is how we feel about seeing its image in front of us."

Written by Chicago and Wilding, the performance of Cock and Cunt Play featured "two women, each wearing a plastic “part” designating their respective sex. The women “play” man and woman, engaged in the age-old battle about domestic and sexual duties and demands.  “She wants ”him” to help her with the dishes and provide her with sexual gratification. “he” is outraged by these demands and takes his rage out on her by killing her with his plastic phallus."

Even the eponymous dollhouse in the entryway lacked the subversion of Schapiro’s 1972 counterpart. Here, it could have been any girl’s plaything. Schapiro’s featured a rattlesnake, grizzly bear, peering men, and other threats and reversals lurking within its diminutive rooms.

Dollhouse’s self-awareness remains untenable based on provided information, and even assuming Womanhouse as the springboard, so do Huff and Mooney’s decisions to incorporate some themes while excluding others.

True to Womanhouse, though, Dollhouse “echoes the feelings of a Woman’s place”, as Schapiro first described in 1972. Perhaps those same feelings are just as resonant today, but the ways in which we voice them have shifted, as seen by Huff and Mooney's inclusion, exclusion, and divergence from Womanhouse ideas. After all, how we grapple with the present is unavoidably shaped by our acknowledgement of and engagement with the past.

Source: The Womanhouse Online Archive (http://www.womanhouse.net/)

Amy Falls is loveDANCEmore’s program coordinator and a regular contributor to the blog. She works for the University of Utah's School of Dance, her alma mater.