SALT: When I am Lost, we Speak in Flowers

SALT Contemporary Dance premiered co-founder and artistic director Joni McDonald’s When I am Lost, we Speak in Flowers, beginning a three-weekend run at the Eccles Theater’s Regent Street Black Box. The audience entered on the heels of one of the last warm evenings of the year, through the still, quiet lobby, to join a sparse, quiet crowd. The performing area was littered with the heads of flowers and backed by two sections of chain link fencing as well as the theater’s tall glass windows that look out on the McCarthy Plaza. Everything was bathed in a glowing blue, the same as that used perennially by photographer Chad Kirkland for his gorgeous portraits of SALT company members. 

Hot tip while I’m setting the scene: anyone coming to see this show will be treated to a 2-for-1 complementary (and complimentary) art viewing – through the back windows, the recently installed Pages of Salt is visible from an eye-level perspective. The massive wave of panels by artist Ned Kahn had its grand opening just days ago, through the Salt Lake City Arts Council’s Public Art Program. 

SALT’s six dancers began seated in a line in front of all this with their backs to us as McDonald, who danced in as well choreographed this concert, walked in with a large bundle of additional flowers. The sound of chatter from a crowded room came over the speakers as they began. The group moved smoothly in unison, gliding through gesture and a series of overhead lifts with an unshakably sedated calm as the intensity of the recorded voices peaked and gave way to a humming choral composition by Andrew Maxfield. 

The structure turned here to a long series of duets aimed at “find[ing] the collateral beauty inside the struggle.” Most duets suggested the processing of trauma by, against, and through the dynamics of isolated romantic heterosexual couples in traditionally gendered archetypes. We saw a slowly drained and forsaken woman and her wandering-eyed man; the endlessly supportive muse and a man who just couldn’t stand up on his own; puppet-stringed tangling; a moment of abrupt, unexamined violence; and a group of women consoling one another, each subsequent duet laundered through the hammered smoothness of the company’s trademark movement style. 

It’s a smoothness that, purely as a quality of movement, is clearly desirable and beautiful to watch. The dancers of SALT are trained to move like an unstoppable liquid force, technically brilliant, pouring seamlessly into each successive and intricate phrase. At times, though, it is an aesthetic preference that feels a little bit lost - not finding its purpose within the narrative it constructs, steering content toward its own prefigured destination rather than the other way around. 

The most memorable scene of the evening came during a solo by Aubry Mason. Her portrayal of a long slide into a looping snare of dissociative hallucinations and paranoia was an extremely affecting and nuanced performance. Her movement spun like an uncoiling chain, and her interpretation both employed and transformed the smooth, seamless liquidity, unraveling it and filing it to a point. 

When I am Lost, we Speak in Flowers portrayed stories of trauma and support, was danced beautifully, and ended with a long, held gaze at what the dancers constructed from the eponymous flowers. The message was simple and total: from tragedy comes beauty. Beauty is the goal, comfort in others is the way. What was less clear is how SALT may feel about the operational particulars of its promise, or premise – why or how “beauty” grows, what finding it may do, what it doesn’t do, what does or does not count for it, what happens when it can’t be found, who gets to find it, what else can come in its place, and last but not least, why is it what we look for? 

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. 

UtahPresents: SALT Contemporary Dance in "The Bridge"

As I was watching The Bridge, commissioned by UtahPresents, I realized it was what I have hoped to see from SALT Contemporary Dance all along.

The show was continuous and cohesive, which I loved. I appreciate the departure from SALT’s previous usual format of presenting collections of works by different choreographers.

The Bridge was based on a short story called “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce. It was apparent that this story had strong and specific meaning to the performers, yet the execution was not burdened by an attempt to be overly clear about the exact happenings of the story and characters. This allowed audience members to interpret the work through the lenses of their own personal experiences.

The dancing was strong, controlled, fluid, and beautiful. SALT features a roster of highly talented performers, and it was nice to see some different artists this time around. Most notably, Ching Ching Wong, whom I hadn’t seen perform with SALT before, was a soloist in this work, and deservingly so. The other soloist, Eldon Johnson, was amazing as always. The rest of the cast, mostly in roles more supporting than spotlighted, was excellent as well.

I can only think of one tiny, picky complaint about the dancers’ execution in this work: in a series of many repetitions of falling to the ground (choreographically, fascinating to watch), while there were many instances of full commitment, I wasn’t completely convinced every time. Granted, this was an exhausting section of the piece, and falling to the floor with apparent lack of control is not easy to do, from a mental standpoint not to mention the physical aspect. So I still commend the dancers for each successfully committed repetition they made.

I appreciate that the choreography, by New York-based Brendan Duggan in partnership with the dancers, was both unique and beautiful (in contrast with how some choreographers may create as if they assume those two qualities are mutually exclusive). The strengths of the dancers were well-utilized, without being showy to the point of distracting from the story.

The pacing throughout The Bridge varied perfectly to keep the audience captivated. A long intro allowed the audience time to tune in to the live music and the pensive lighting, and to connect with the mood being set, before the dancers were even seen. Movement began slowly, with Ching Ching Wong and Eldon Johnson walking, and doing other pedestrian movements, progressing into partner work that exhibited brilliant control and grace while succeeding at naturally conveying a loving and comfortable relationship. Later, momentum built, and the speed of movement and the number of layers existing at once increased. At the end, we got to see more partnering between Wong and Johnson, including some repetition from the beginning choreography, but this time with a different mood.

I was glad that this expanded upon the standard “A-B-A” format, which I feel like I’ve seen enough of. The similarities between the beginning and the end were enough to tie them together, but the differences were enough to add meaning, taking this choice beyond the choreographic crutch that A-B-A can be.

SALT Contemporary Dance in Utah Presents’ The Bridge. Set by Christian Bell; photo by Jake Eveler.

The set, by Christian Bell, was memorable and well-utilized. Two vertically hung curtains of ropes created divides which might have represented time and/or alternate realities. In one section of the choreography, the dancers brushed past the ropes causing them to sway mesmerizingly, adding to the chaos of the moment. At another point, several dancers each looped one rope around several others, creating a visual effect like drawn curtains, maybe symbolizing clarity. The ropes also tied into Bierce’s short story, in which the protagonist is tied up and about to be hung.

The lighting, by Jaron Kent Hermansen, was both visually stunning and effective at conveying mood and meaning. I appreciated how the lighting was designed in conjunction with the set, playing upon the ropes.

The live music, by Stuart Maxfield with brother Andrew Maxfield (both of Fictionist), was perfectly cohesive with the dancing. The unique and varied, yet continuous, sound supported the dancing, while being neither distracting nor boring. Stuart Maxfield worked in silhouette behind the dancers the entire time, which I felt connected the dance and the music, again without allowing the music to distract from the dance.

Overall, The Bridge was captivating, different, and beautiful. I very much look forward to seeing SALT keep up with this new standard that they have set for themselves with this project.

Ching Ching Wong and Eldon Johnson of SALT Contemporary Dance in Utah Presents’ The Bridge. Photo by Jake Eveler.

Kendall Fischer is the artistic director of Myriad Dance Company, and has enjoyed performing opportunities with Voodoo Productions, SBDance, Municipal Ballet Co., and La Rouge Entertainment, among others. Her choreography has been performed by Myriad, Municipal Ballet, and at Creator's Grid, and her dance film project “Breathing Sky” received the 2017 Alfred Lambourne Movement prize.

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.

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