SB Dance's SURRENDERELLA

Stephen Brown has created a local following based on the premise that his work is different in its engagement of adult sensibilities and its challenge to the presumed insulation of concert dance.  Audiences have come not just to expect but to desire his use of profane text and sexually explicit interactions. On those terms, this weekend’s performance of Surrenderella allowed a packed house to observe his new creation, more or less, with amusement.

The show places a basic outline of the well-known fairy tale inside a caricature of BDSM culture. Payden Adams as a submissive Cinderella is the audience’s guide through a world of bawdy mice, step-sisters in ankle restraints and over-the-knee silver boots standing in for glass slippers.

Winnie Wood theatrically directed the show, where dialogue & tableau almost outnumber choreographic moments. Most of SB’s moving material is peppered between narrative touchstones and relies on repetitive sequencing using aerial apparatus to extend the illusion of bondage. At times he also borrows from (and subverts) more traditional dance-makers like Alwin Nikolais as his use of costumes (in this case, red pleather boots) abstracts and distorts the body.

As movement and text brush alongside one another it becomes clear that nothing too deep can occur in this particular version of the tale. Each time an idea approaches a conceptually risky place, the strained content is relieved with either contradictory classical music or an obvious joke, including Nathan Shaw as “The Captain” breaking into musical theater choreography to diffuse a potentially tense scenario. Most of the laughter and applause coincided with physical humor — feigned ejaculation, audible urination or an extended commentary on testicles — but also at the presentation of pleasure as alternatingly hysterical or absurd.

Clearly SB doesn’t want Surrenderella, or his work in general, to be taken too seriously as he sets up relaxed atmospheres where audiences can order wine before taking a seat or have a dance party with ushers in tutus. Other national choreographers have found their wheelhouse in this territory as well, but with arguably more wholesome humor. Monica Bill Barnes is one example of another choreographer suggesting that dance as comedy is simply more desirable than what most theaters are presenting. If the joyous audiences of herself and SB are any indication, they may be right. But even if met with enthusiasm, these approaches beg questions about the necessity of falling in line with popular culture and identifying median humor as a means of audience retention. Certainly, BDSM is not a topic SB has uniquely identified (50 Shades of Grey?) although it is one he’s capitalized on, with success.

Surrenderella runs through June 20th at the Rose Wagner Blackbox. Tickets on arttix.org

“What We See” from learning to loveDANCEmore volume 8

The latest edition of our performance journal, edited by New Media Coordinator Samuel Hanson, will arrive this coming week. Volume 8, displacement, features the work of many talented artists and critics from Utah and beyond. It’ll be available at Daughters of Mudson, get your tickets here. To whet your appetite, here is a piece by Ashley Anderson, which deals with how we see dance from ballet to Monica Bill Barnes.

What We See: Thoughts on Ira Glass, Monica Bill Barnes and The Rite of Spring

Several weeks back I got to see Monica Bill Barnes and Anna Bass perform Monica’s choreography as part of Ira Glass’s show at Kingsbury Hall, and later on I got to see Ballet West’s Rite of Spring. Both experiences left me asking questions about what frames my experience as a viewer, and also placing myself in the position of other audience members. The writing below is my way of grappling with my identity in relation to my peers in an audience. I am trying to see what they see, which is a task I don’t always consider while writing (or thinking) about dance.

I have long loved Ira Glass’s radio show This American Life on NPR. The show transports me to other parts of the country, but also to empathetic and interior parts of myself. When I had finished my MFA and was feeling extremely deflated at the difference between the work I was creating in the supportive environment of a liberal arts college versus my first apartment in Philadelphia, This American Life was one of the only things I enjoyed about my week trudging to and from a day job as a paralegal.

When I learned that Ira Glass was sharing the work of Monica Bill Barnes as part of This American Life performances and later, planning an entire tour, I got heated. My feelings about her works I’ve seen are best summarized by a piece by Andrew Boynton in the New Yorker (November 13, 2012). The title of the article is “Dance that tries too hard”. I’ve always felt that the jokes were just to get a laugh, and that it made me feel talked (or danced) down to. In addition to my hesitance about the creative work itself, I became frustrated that Ira Glass got to  “discover” modern dance for all these people in the audience. In descriptions of the project, modern dance, a vast tradition, was deemed generally unlikeable or un-gettable, by Glass himself. It made me wonder why people couldn’t discover something without it having been curated as extremely palatable for them. What if, instead, I was the person curating someone’s first viewing of modern dance through some of my most favorite things…

…Emily Wexler with walnuts pouring out of her skirt in Yvonne Meier’s Mad Heidi or better yet, her black boots narrowly missing colorful glass bottles in her own solo Fact or Fancy inspired by her grandmother’s radio program of the same name.

…Naughty Bits by Jen McGinn where some dancers wear tails, feathers or priest collars while performing the most difficult and intricate musical patterning I can imagine.

…Children’s Dance Theatre teenagers embodying Water Study and trying to explain to their parents the importance of silence and breathing.

…Katie Meehan lying on the floor listening to the Beach Boys playing out of a seashell covered television; Leah Nelson & Cortney McGuire pulling dresses over pregnant bellies before a re-staging of a duet they made as fivefour; Linda Denise Fisher-Harrell performing Cry in rehearsal in the smallest studio at the American Dance Festival; Dawn Springer breathing life into cover song after cover song in a token of one’s affection; Tara McArthur first performing Duet for Ririe-Woodbury, looking so unbelievably cool; Miguel Gutierrez working on Retrospective Exhibitionist in the small basement studio of the Dana Science Building at Hollins University as my childhood best friend Sarah Crass strides through having no prior knowledge about the artist she will witness and no suspicion of how well-known this piece will become…

Why would those introductions to modern dance be things that anyone would get “less” than highly choreographed jokes? They might not be inherently better than the introduction provided at Kingsbury Hall that night, but would they be as awful as Glass made the rest of “dance” sound?

A week or so later, in the Capitol Theater I watched Ballet West’s The Rite of Spring. The evening featured the title work by Nicolo Fonte, Forgotten Land by Jiri Kylian and Divertimento No. 15 by Balanchine. I experienced the same phenomena of an audience viewing something fresh while I saw different things living inside the dancing.

In the opening piece by Kylian, the audience gasped as the dancers did backbends or offered any kind of yielding in their partnering. What they found surprising I found to be comforting, as I could see inside it the dancing of Jose Limón and Helen Tamiris, or Alvin Ailey’s careful groupings, Doris Humphrey and every other modern dance choreographer who was inspired by the Shakers. While I know the piece is uniquely inspired by visual art, I can see inside of it numerous dances that share the same themes or physicality.

This isn’t to say the choreography is derivative because it wasn’t, it was complex and fascinating. But, in my viewing of both concerts, dances became houses for memories of other performance experiences. And in both cases, the people around me seemed, for the most part, to be watching something new, something singular rather than simultaneous. It almost gave me envy, of what I might experience if I had seen somewhat less.

After Kylian, an overlong Balanchine piece rolled around. The friends I was with asked how I could possibly like something so boring and conventional. My only reply was that based on my experience in ballet class, it seemed like it would be fun to do. I’ve always loved the slightly off kilter petite allegro of Balanchine because I’m good at it; that’s why I was watching his work enthusiastically. Maybe Balanchine is my Monica Bill Barnes, something I find infectious or likable despite my objections to the particular hierarchical structures of ballet including endless pas de deux and stationary corps. It’s something I like just because it makes me personally happy.

Ballet West’s final piece, a new Rite of Spring by Nicolo Fonte, was another exercise in viewing a real life performance simultaneously with other things, namely, Pina Bausch’s dancers running through the dirt and my toddler son watching a T-Rex brutally murder a brontosaurus on a VHS tape of Fantasia in the living room of my childhood home. For others in the audience this Rite, leather clad and featuring an industrial set characteristic of the choreographer, was their first taste of a narrative that, to me, was already distinctly experienced.

Despite it’s newness, ballet audiences can recognize The Rite of Spring the same way they recognize a Bolero, as a system where new ideas can play out rather than a purely new work. I remember in college learning that during the reconstruction of the original Rite, pointe shoes were examined to explore the steps. We all called it “Ballet CSI” but really it’s more magical than that, and speaks to what I’m after here–– that steps performed fleetingly do hold a lot more of a moment inside them than we offer credit for when we engage in conversations about the way in which dances disappear in time. While this wasn’t my favoriteRite, it does remind me just how many exist and that’s a kind of gift.

Despite my preferences, or those of the New Yorker writer mentioned above, the audience at Kingsbury Hall and Capitol Theater on those nights seemed to be eating up what was presented, whether it was because of a witty radio host or an astute artistic director. The landscape of performance is inevitably dominated by what we are told is likable or good rather than what we may find on our own.

As I write this I can already predict the response from my peers: “but don’t you think Ira Glass opened the doors for people to think differently about dance?” My answer is unequivocally no–– it only opens doors for people to think differently about Monica Bill Barnes, a person they’ve now been given permission to understand. I significantly doubt that anyone left Kingsbury Hall choosing to look into what modern dance offerings were made by comparable regional artists. Similarly, I’m curious if Ballet West audiences were motivated as viewers to seek out other Rites, or if they simply enjoyed the work of Nicolo Fonte, who will make many more ballets for the company, then left the theater.

All of that is fine. Beyond my curiosity over my relationship with other dance goers, I ultimately left both theaters glad that people enjoyed dance. It’s the same way I felt when my young students at the American Dance Festival enjoyed Pilobolus. You couldn’t have payed me to watch the concert, but when something seems magical or fresh to you, it just is.

Ashley Anderson is a choreographer based in SLC. Her recent work has been presented locally at the Rose Wagner, the Rio Gallery, the BYU Museum of Art, Finch Lane, the City Library, the Ladies’ Literary Club, the Masonic Temple and Urban Lounge.

Upholding Tradition, Defying Definition in BW’s Innovations

Ballet West produces Innovations each spring as a platform for the company’s dancers to explore their own choreographic pursuits alongside more established guest choreographers. While a great opportunity, it is still rare nationally to find full evening programs devoted to dancers’ own choreography. Ballet Arizona, Ballet Arkansas, Ballet Idaho, Ballet West, and Kansas City Ballet are a handful of companies that present such a program in their annual season.

Innovations inspires initial expectations for me as a viewer: that the evening’s works will innovatein some way: structurally, choreographically, musically – in any or all of these ways – diverging from the typical classical, neo-classical, or contemporary ballet. Some work diverged more than others from these existing categories, but all presented mastery in their crafting.

Emily Adams’ Homage is a narrative work, inspired by Salvador Dali’s “Homage to Terpsichore.” A conflict between the dancers in flowing pink and their shadow-like counterparts emerges both through emoting and a sharp contrast in movement qualities: Adams’ choreography lends itself well to storytelling. While Homage falls more under the classical umbrella, Adams (somewhat of an Innovations veteran) shows that she is capable of producing a full act ballet that understands narrative arc. Adrian Fry’s Pulse, which draws inspiration from qualities of the human heart and a commercial for Google Play, is abstractly movement-centric. The dancers weave in and out amongst each other to create a pulsing quartet. Abandonment of narrative, alongside the Dvorak score, feels in this case neo-classical , and the choreography stays within the realm of classical ballet. However, Fry’s choreography does prove a deft vehicle of expression in Pulse, even if not one of exploration.

Katlyn Addison’s The Hunt was the most successful piece in terms of risk-taking and divergence from familiar forms. Addison places live drummer Cameron Hodges onstage, which contributes to a heightened sense of urgency and more physical abandon. The dancers place emphasis on both elevation and groundedness, a certain qualitative divergence. Structurally, Addison does not provide a rigid narrative, but the dancers engage in constant movement dialogue with each other and the drummer. Addison’s choreography draws from a variety of influences, both modern and African dance forms; this reinforcesThe Hunt’s sense of purpose to convey a new idea.

Professional guest (and resident) choreographer Nicolo Fonte’s Presto is shorter and features a smaller cast than much of his other work in Ballet West’s repertoire. Yet even in this distilled format for four dancers, Presto is an iteration of what has become a contemporary ballet stereotype: mostly classical movement with affectations (a flexed foot, a tilted pelvis, a claw-like hand), a minimalist score (Ezio Bosso, in this case), an exposed lighting grid, and “futuristic” costuming (silver lamé). Presto is clearly distinct from and more contemporary by definition than the likes of Petipa, Nijinsky, and Balanchine; however, it exhibits ideas that have become so familiar in the Era of The Contemporary Ballet that I question if these qualities of a work continue to exhibit innovation on their own.

Professional guest choreographer Garrett Smith’s world premiere Facades could be described as “Jiri Kylian meets Phantom of the Opera.” Facades combines Baroque aesthetic and music with elements found in classical ballet, contemporary ballet, and even commercial dance. The costumes have Baroque and classical silhouettes, yet are flashy and made of non-traditional materials (the men’s “waistcoats” were sheer, tutus were red and sparkling). The canvas drop painted like an ornate gilded mirror provides an interactive visual aid for the exploration of reality and its reflections or distortions. Smith draws upon classical choreographic devices, yet strays from conventions. The entire women’s corps de ballet, though in classical tutus, appear kneeling in profile and continue lying down for a gestural sequence highlighting body-halves. Male/female partnering sequences employed head tics and quick parallel swivels that were more wind-up doll than pas de deux. Use of a narrative thread is ballet at its most familiar, but the other layers ofFacades are Smith’s own innovation.

All the works in Innovations show excellence in crafting of movement or narrative. But the works that stand out and stood up to my expectations of innovation drew upon many influences to create a unique statement. Recognition of tradition may always be important to ballet as a form, but ballets that feel truly “contemporary” will continue to defy definition.

Photo by Luke Isley of BW artists in Garrett Smith’s Facades

Amy Falls used to be a bunhead, and is still a ballet enthusiast. She coordinates loveDANCEmore’s Mudson series. This review is published in collaboration with 15 BYTES.

Children’s Review: Crumb & the Pirates

On a special day at my preschool, at the university, we wore our theater clothes. We went to see dance and every one was my favorite because I liked all of them. The seagulls did the seagull dance, the pirates did the pirate dance, the fog did the fog dance. The noodle did the noodle dance, the fish did the fish dance, the dog did the dog dance. The dog’s name was Max. The seagull dance was the silliest because they did this *shows some sort of wiggly movement while laughing*. Pirates were swinging on ropes and I want to dance like that one day. But, I have to be older.

Zachary Womack is enrolled in the Fine Arts Preschool at the Tanner Dance Program.

LINES at Eccles in PC

It was a cold, rainy evening in Park City, but the Park City Institute’s George S. and Dolores Dore Eccles Center was abuzz for the evening’s performance by Alonzo King LINES Ballet. LINES was founded in 1982 by eponymous choreographer Alonzo King and creative director/designer Robert Rosenwasser, and has contributed greatly to the form of contemporary ballet in its Bay Area home, as well as nationally and internationally. In addition to influencing the form through his own choreography, King is also noted for his teaching style and school, whose faculty who imbue critical thinking and freedom to make choices in their approach to ballet as an ever-evolving, relevant art form.

LINES presented three of King’s works on the evening’s program: Concerto for Two Violins (music by Johann Sebastian Bach);Men’s Quintet (music by Edgar Meyers and Pharaoh Sanders); and Biophony (music/soundscape by Bernie Krause and Richard Blackford). All three works exist in the same movement oeuvre: classical balletic forms with modern sensibilities and more turns, balances, twists, and flourishes than would seem humanly possible. King’s dancers, known for being exceptionally long-limbed, execute choreography at breakneck speed and with a coolness that belies the work’s intense physicality. Most notably in Concerto for Two Violins, the dancers radiate the music of Bach from their whirling appendages; an internal focus is common in their approach to choreography, and as each note appears generated by their instrumental bodies, external presentation is almost rendered unnecessary.

All three of the evening’s works are choreographically intricate and each dancer’s virtuoso is individually captivating. But concept appears to have stagnated at LINES: Biophony is King’s latest work and a collaboration with bio-acoustician Dr. Bernie Krause, but it feels less innovative and less interesting than the two older works. Biophony relies heavily on its sound score of animal and nature noises in an attempt to provide a different take on King’s signature style.

To be fair, Biophony’s soundscape does inspire some different, quirkier movement choices, such as a contorted crab walk or twisted, pecking arms. But while the dancers hone in on movements of the animal kingdom convincingly, these choices appear heavy-handed when presented in tandem with a sound score of chirps, squawks, and screeches and as after-thoughts amidst King’s complex choreography. A lecture demonstration on animal habitats comes to mind.

Park City Institute executive director Terri Orr, in her pre-curtain welcoming speech, recalled an anecdote from her conversation with the LINES booking agent. The agent expressed concern (perhaps feigned, but still mentioned) that the company was too “urban” and “edgy” for Utah dance audiences. I am now unsure whether to be insulted as an educated audience member, or concerned about the way the company is being billed to presenters.

LINES’ prominence in the contemporary dance world is indisputable, but in order to be billed as anything close to “urban” or “edgy”, the work presented must be more than digestible contemporary ballet, animalian soundscape or not.

Amy Falls is a choreographer, performer, and the Mudson coordinator for loveDANCEmore. This review, and others by loveDANCEmore are in collaboration with 15 BYTES.