Alvin Ailey II at Eccles Center

Ailey II recently visited the Park City Institute for two nights as part of its 25-city 2016/2017 world tour. The twelve-member junior company presented two programs; I was able to attend the second performance which included two works from the company’s repertory, one premiere, and concluded with Ailey’s most influential and iconic work, Revelations.

The show opened with In & Out, choreographed by Jean Emile (formerly of Nederlands Dans Theater). Unfortunately, due to weather and traffic, my companion and I missed several minutes at the beginning. Although I can’t give an assessment of the entire piece, what I was able to see offered an impressive introduction to the tremendous level of athleticism and talent in the company. The young dancers of Ailey II are lithe and powerful, and the range and speed of their virtuosity was on brazen display in In & Out.  

The piece wove in and out of abstraction and suggestions of more particular characters and circumstances in an effort to depict “the ups and downs of contemporary life.” A widely ranging score divided the piece into six sections of divergent style and attitude, the overarching connections between them somewhat obscure. Emile’s choreography was big and energetic with quirky articulations, drawing on a mix of styles that showed off the dancers’ technique as well as plenty of individual personality.  

In & Out was followed by Gêmeos, a duet choreographed by Jamar Roberts of Alvin Ailey’s main company. Courtney Celeste Spears and Jacoby Pruitt engaged in a teasing clash of personalities to the jazzy funk of afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti’s Egbe Mi O.  

With the help of mimed gestures and a dance battle vibe, Spears and Pruitt portrayed a competitive but playful dispute between two people in a close relationship. After the performance I learned that the piece is based on the choreographer’s relationship with his brother and their struggle to relate as an athlete and a dancer while growing up. On stage though, the contest played more as a lovers’ quarrel. There was certainly a flirtatious quality to their taunting and the split-gendered casting exploited different tropes in the score and mimed gestures to craft a sense of a male/female relationship with a pretty traditional feel. It’s unclear to me the degree to which this change was intentional, or whether it was meant to be read as any two independent beings dealing with their contrasting personalities in conflict and then resolution.

Above all, Gêmeos was fun to watch. The music encouraged movement that vaulted cheerfully to an infectious rhythm, staying grounded while agile and free-flowing. Technique and steps were less visible in the choreography than the more universal story: a driving beat and the urge to move in order to feel good, express personality, show off and entice. Watching two such extraordinarily nimble bodies devote their larger-than-life skill to dancing with such joy was captivating, but I personally felt that the piece could have done away with some of its scaffolding. The your-turn-my turn pattern and too-frequent pauses devoted to preening, peacocking gestures didn’t add much more to the relationship dynamic that wasn’t already visible in the movement.   

For the evening’s penultimate piece, NYC-based choreographer and former Alvin Ailey dancer Marcus Jarrell Willis took us on a moving journey through the landscape of the inner self. With the concept of the work generated by Willis’s experiences growing up and attending the Ailey School, Stream of Consciousness arranged six dancers and Max Richter’s recomposition of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons into a segmented piece that gave physical representation to the burgeoning labyrinth of feeling and discovery inside a young mind.

The piece utilized a structure similar to the idea behind the evening’s opener and also Revelations, which was to follow. The scheme is one of multiple fragments that are not explicitly narrative but portray with fleshed-out characterization disparate facets of feeling and identity, which taken as a whole, tell the story of a larger human experience. Drawing on the particularly vivid anxieties and epiphanies of adolescence, Willis illustrated a story that was immediately and intensely familiar. The restrained hint of school uniform in the dancers’ black and white outfits grounded their identity in a tribute to youth, while the lack of forced narrative, setting, props, or defined roles lent universality to their emotions.

The choreography employed an inventive lexicon and effortless musicality to make Richter’s sometimes ubiquitous style sound fresh and impossibly well-matched. As with the first two works, the use of stylized iconic gesture was prominent and comedy was injected liberally. The wiggling of a dancer’s behind that caused uncontrollable spasms of laughter in the young boy seated next to me was delivered next to piercing images that invoked memories of the angst and alarming pleasure of growing up in my own mind.

Finally, Revelations closed the show with its inimitable power and glory. The piece is an adored cornerstone of the main company, and it’s interesting to see the second company take this most famous work on its grand tour. Full disclosure: I’ve seen recordings of Revelations before, but this was my first time experiencing it live in its entirety. While I personally took immense pleasure from viewing Ailey II’s performance, I wonder how it would match up to a showing by the main company’s dancers who have had more time to grow into its history. On this night, particular moments of transcendence came from the quaking threads of supplication during “Fix Me Jesus”, the swaying, undulating procession leading into “Take Me to the Water”, Gabriel Hyman’s masterful and explosive interpretation of the solo “I Wanna Be Ready”, and the resonance of effusive and uncontainable joy during the final gospels of “Rocka My Soul”.

As it has for decades, Revelations continues to be a stunning example of a work canonized not just for its relevance to a particular season and setting, but one that provides a truly timeless account of a people’s heart and soul. Its production still feels seamlessly innovative though its devices have become common referents today, and its ability to carve out portraits of deepest sorrow and joy is equally luminous. The Ailey dancers of new generation are trying out their own interpretations of this classic, offering a youthful and gutsy fire, and the experience of seeing this treasured and critical work in person was a gift.

While the first act of Ailey II’s program in Park City provided an exhibition of jaw-dropping talent and the exceptionally high energy of this group, the second half was ultimately stronger, buoyed by the power of Revelations and the well-synthesized and stirring Stream of Consciousness. The ethos of Alvin Ailey’s description of the cultural outlook behind Revelations - “sometimes sorrowful, sometimes jubilant, but always hopeful”- could well be applied as a tagline to the rest of the program and even the company itself. Just as the movement style of all four pieces catered heavily to the particular grandness and articulate strengths of an Ailey-trained dancer, the thematic content of each fell in line with one fervent prescription for triumph in optimism, faith, and harmony of the soul.  

Emily Snow holds a BFA from the University of Utah and has spent several seasons dancing with Central West Ballet in California. She is currently performing in Salt Lake with Municipal Ballet Co.

Gileadi Dance Co: Mr. Blue

An ambitious new project by Utah Valley University graduate Miriam Gileadi presented its debut offering this past weekend, utilizing the bare-bones stage of Sugar Space Arts Warehouse for an intimate introduction with Mr. Blue. Performed by its architect and seven other dancers, the one-act work was the product of an award granted by the Body Logic Choreography Festival last year. Gileadi has energetically parlayed this sponsorship into an opportunity to unveil a new enterprise of her own, Gileadi Dance Co (GDC).

Mr. Blue is a short work in six sections, billed through GDC’s promotional materials as an exploration through a variety of mediums of “the inner mind affecting outer expression” and the “ripple effect of an impulse”, as well as an address to “the pivotal issue of socio-political awareness and the importance of speaking up and standing out.”

The six women and two men were costumed in a collection of white button-downs, suspenders, vests, trouser pants, and ties- a variation on the typical formula dancers use when they want their costuming to declare loudly “These are regular people just like you!”, put together with a slightly formal twist and a side of androgyny. Lighting design was minimal, which was fitting for the exposed space. Sonically the production interspersed brooding ambient electronic music with moments of speech, song, breath, soft murmurs, and fevered laughter.

Beginning with a welcome, Gileadi requested that we consider the social agreement of our position that evening- the space we share, our role and hers, whether or not we were really listening- her direct surveillance of us a mirror to our own observation. As she voiced the dictum that we “must keep up to be kept up”, a line of dancers interrupted from stage left to take turns manipulating her body from speech into movement. From there the group explored the “ripple effect of an impulse”, following first Gileadi and then each other. The dancers moved with vigilant eyes and increasingly violent locomotion as individual instincts converged and were imitated, adapted, and manipulated.

At a peak moment a dancer added her voice to the fray. She cried a ragged indictment of some old absconded transgressor and the others followed suit, pacing fretfully and bubbling over in a world of their own concerns. Ultimately a cue reconvened the dancers downstage where they undressed, revealing nude undergarments- notices of an inner truth freshly “naked” in the world. While the use of simultaneous stream of consciousness vocalization to create a sense of internal conflict and isolation, and the literal uncovering of one’s body to convey the disclosure of one’s true thoughts and feelings are not particularly innovative or unique devices in modern dance, the strategy was effective in illustrating its point.

A solo danced by Adam Jensen had him wracked by an internal shaking alarm as he gasped half-thoughts of “the stories you have been told” and “I have to, I have to do it all.” His limbs whipped his body in every direction, wide eyes trailing invisible demons, until he finally collapsed to the floor from a dramatically sustained backbend.

At this point the tenor shifted as Jake Winkelkotter entered to lift Jensen’s body and soul from the floor, followed by Nora Price and Tara Jo Meredith. The two men danced a duet of communication through touch. First they studied each other by hand, then with other muscles and bone. The women’s pairing took on a different tone, more spirited and almost combative at times. Both duets were a conversation, actions and reactions moving the exchange forward. Here as throughout the performance, the dancers’ phrasing mostly progressed through and against a backdrop of sound. Occasionally though, the movement would drop into a groove with the music’s rhythm. These moments in synch provided satisfying punctuation- I wished there were a few more of them.

Twosomes transitioned to a three as Gileadi reentered with a softly sung melody that led them back to a downstage line. They began again as separately moving entities, but when the trio came together there was a new sense of team and teamwork, an assembling and shared manipulation of phrases. That feeling was underscored in a very literal fashion as a track of the performers prerecorded and layered voices discussing the building of Mr. Blue itself came over the speakers.

The final transmission of Mr. Blue was the simplest and actually my favorite. The eight dancers of the company all returned to the stage, one by one finding their partner and holding them, singing to them. Their soft humming croons took them away, each couple a little planet orbiting off through the curtains.

I didn’t necessarily feel that the work fulfilled the portion of its stated intention on speaking to issues of socio-political awareness or the courage of “standing up and speaking out” to shape one’s community. Mr. Blue certainly explored people coming together and “experiencing this world from an internal place…figuring out how to connect from there”*, but engaged those ideas on a more individual and interpersonal level. Still, the general sentiments of “Aren’t things better when we understand each other?” and “Don’t you feel better now that you’re not alone?” are ones that I hazard a majority of people could empathize with easily. And the didacticism of that message is certainly heartfelt and agreeable if not especially stimulating or extraordinary.

Gileadi’s choreography was able to lend the concept a nicely structured measure of balance. Movement flowed easily and sequences followed classically effective structures of tension-building and resolution. Kaleidoscopic groupings filled up space and were able to sustain dynamic levels of action, although I never really reached the edge of my seat. A challenge, especially in projects that rely heavily on the experience of process, of exploration, collaboration, and experimentation, is that it can be difficult to translate compellingly the excitement of those internal discoveries to the audience. Although for GDC, finding the path from inner to outer expression is the name of the game, so I have no doubt this enterprising group will continue searching for that bit of magic.

Gileadi also currently performs with both Body Logic and SB Dance, and has traveled to Israel for a summer program of study with the Batsheva Dance Company. I mention her study at Batsheva because the primary language of that ensemble, a conception of movement theory known as Gaga, would seem a likely influence on Gileadi’s current work. The idea in GDC’s mission of the “internal mind inform[ing] the external body” is one that fits right in with the foundational position of Gaga that a greater understanding of internal sensations and controls necessarily leads to an expanded ability to release and function outwardly. Even from my limited experience with the practice, I noticed reflections in Gileadi’s choreography in the spirit of the shifting textures and mechanisms, wild elastic articulation, dynamic force, and underpinnings of exploration and receptivity that are so characteristic of Gaga teaching.

Gileadi Dance Co. is scheduled to participate in the upcoming spring Mudson showing with a work entitled “Communa”. The name appears to suggest a continuation of themes set forth in Mr. Blue. Those curious to follow the development of this fledgling project can find GDC and new works in progress by other Utah dance artists at loveDANCEmore’s event at the Marmalade Library on March 6th.  

*Quotes for this article were taken from GDC’s website, marketing materials, and program notes. This one originated in a promotional video for Mr. Blue.

Emily Snow holds a BFA from the University of Utah and has spent several seasons dancing with Central West Ballet in California. She is currently performing in Salt Lake with Municipal Ballet Co.

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.

Ririe-Woodbury: Winter Season

Ririe-Woodbury recently performed its Winter Season at the Capitol Theatre, just a few blocks from the Rose Wagner (the Rose is RW’s rehearsal residence and where they most often perform). The evening included four separate works that dually complemented and contrasted one another, all curated like a well-balanced meal, including vintage and contemporary portions as well as environmental and social side dishes.

The company typically performs the work of the late choreographer Alwin Nikolais around this time of year. However, Winter Season did not include a Nikolais piece; alternately, “Physalia”, choreographed specifically for the company by Alison Chase and Moses Pendleton (who together created Pilobolus Dance Theater) in 1977, was reconstructed as this season’s playful, postmodernist dance.

The work was a delightful float through oceanic ecosystems. The Portuguese man o’ war jellyfish, also known by its scientific name Physalia physalis, and other sea organisms were all embodied with sustained, acrobatic movement by the dancers dressed in speckled, spandex bodysuits to clearly create unified shapes with one another.

Guest dancer Ching-I Chang Bigelow had a darker solo in which she was sprawled on the ground, belly down, her whole body precisely flapping and slapping like a fish out of water.  Mary Lyn Graves was separated from the group with a crouched, sticky foot solo. The piece was dated with the projection of various still images of deep ocean life that weren’t necessary, as the dancers already evoked  those images so fluidly.

“You and the Space Between” was choreographed by Miguel Azcue of the Swedish company Memory Wax. The piece began strikingly with sound, curtain, then lights, revealing Alexandra Bradshaw and Bashaun Williams center stage. They performed a mirrored duet, and were joined by the rest of the company paired off in duets, all moving one another’s body parts in a disjointed way as if they weren’t used to touching one another. Then, the dancers descended to the ground where they were captured live on camera from above and projected onto the cyclorama.

They moved through scenarios playfully, jumping from one horizontally-moving body/platform to a higher one, play-fighting, swinging from each other’s legs, and generally appearing to be in a video game. Eventually, everyone but Graves rose to standing, leaving her alone amongst the tops of heads on the video projection. This eye-level-to-bird’s-eye split was a compelling way to reveal two perspectives, literally and metaphorically, but after many minutes the comparison became belabored.

“Super WE” was created in collaboration between Tzveta Kassabova and Raja Feather Kelly in 2013, making this performance the Salt Lake City premiere of the work. On Saturday night, Yebel Gallegos and Graves took the stage. They rapidly executed phrase-work in circles, bobbing their heads while bent over, and trying to hold hands while also smiling at each other. The duet was fast and friendly with a frantic edge supported by Kelly’s original sound score: birds tweeting joined sporadically by a repeated “ha-ha-ha-ha” á la Laurie Anderson’s song “O Superman”. The dancers themselves sat down and began chanting “ha-ha-ha-ha”, effectively commandeering the soundtrack by making it themselves.

Graves and Gallegos had a litheness like that of the dance’s choreographers and their unison movement emphasized physical rituals - locomotion, holding hands, pointing, sitting in a chair – that the majority of humans do: sometimes robotically, sometimes with abandon, sometimes with gusto, always amidst personal dialogues, and creating meaning beyond the action itself.

I would like to take this opportunity to honor that this season is Bradshaw’s last performing with Ririe-Woodbury. The inclusion of many University of Utah dancers in director Daniel Charon’s “Snowmelt” prodded me to imagine a future member of the company, perhaps even one of the students on stage, and how they might fit into the current community of RW dancers. Bradshaw’s strong, elegant presence will surely be missed, though it is an exciting time for the company to continue to re-create itself.

“Snowmelt” concluded the evening starkly, but without very much explicit commentary on the subject of snowmelt itself due to global warming. The projections accompanying the piece depicted pieces of glacier falling into water, wind turbines, snow literally melting, a log on fire, the sun through orange haze, and bird’s-eye views of a freeway system. Sometimes the image would flip upside-down. The images were all very sharp and similar in compositional quality to the “natural” scenes of Utah displayed on giant screens in the new 111 Main building in downtown SLC. Both are highly produced and curated to demonstrate some kind of institutional acknowledgement of the natural world juxtaposed with the industrialized world. Charon’s piece did seem to acknowledge the interrelatedness of the two worlds, but only with the projections themselves which dominated the performance. “Snowmelt” was danced with rigor and physical acuity, but lacked moments of stillness to punctuate the movement or connect it to the projected images. I am interested in experiencing this highly kinetic piece without projections blatantly telling the story instead.

Winter Season was a cohesive yet eclectic evening of dance. We were plunged undersea, then swept up to the ceiling, pressed into reality of rhythm, and finally, confronted with a taste of our nature and nature itself.

Emma Wilson is a graduate of the University of Utah and a regular contributor to loveDANCEmore. She frequently jams with Porridge for Goldilocks and was a choreographer for Red Lake at the Salt Lake Fringe Festival this past summer.

Taylor Mac at Kingsbury

On Saturday night, I did not want to go to the theater.

My week had been busy and I’d already seen a show. I was having cocktails with friends who I never see outside of a lobby. Right before getting in the car someone said “this is the point in the night we always reach and we decide whether we are dancers or human beings,” implying that humans would stay and revel in their friendships, while dancers pile in and rush to shows they feel obligated to see.

But with a sense of obligation I went, like most dancers do.

Sometimes I wish I’d opted into being a human person who stays out on Saturday night. But last night, I didn’t regret my choice for even a second. As Taylor Mac, a drag performer and playwright, shared an excerpt from “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music,” I recalled that going to the theater is not only about a willingness to risk your evening but also about the periodic rewards that come with doing so.

This particular excerpt performed a brief history of civil rights through the lens of popular music from 1956 -1976. After feeling tortured by most shows that have similar aims (me engaging with a performer as they deal with identity politics) I was for once, a joiner, a willing participant:

I sang. I did unison gestures. I exaggerated cries to demonstrate the absurdity of white fragility (as Mac said, “this will go on a lot longer than you want it to.”) I threw fake red rose petals on the audience member acting as a deceased Judy Garland, her pallbearers taking her (starkly serious) out of the theater as Mac sang “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” The one thing I didn’t do was throw a ping pong ball at Mac and the Dandy Minions (costumed pedestrians facilitating some of the evening’s events) to represent homophobia. I felt like it was a “what would you do moment,” and I let my ball roll to the floor.

My willingness to involve myself appears to exist outside of a vacuum. I first heard of Mac’s work when modern dance choreographer Faye Driscoll was part of “The Lily’s Revenge.” A Variety write-up of that show indicates that “what could potentially be a grueling experience [is] something cool and fun and even communal, if you’re open to the possibility.”

Part of that success is found in the form of drag itself. Drag already lacks a topical earnestness in its willingness to upend the surface of identity. By contrast, earnestness is presupposed in dance, particularly in activist works. That earnestness may make intellectual sense but is, most of the time, misery for audiences. In drag, any questionable or weaker commentary folds into the persona of the presenter but I think some of us make a mistake in assuming queens are who they purport to be. Mac is no more obligated to be in accordance with the political topics addressed by the evening than a Butoh performer is obligated to be a contemplative Buddhist.  

But political topics aplenty are addressed over the course of the two and a half hour concert. From the jump, a center section is asked to become an urban area reserved exclusively for seating people of color, demanding white flight to the suburbs (standing room only). We are also asked to tweet government leaders in Flint (where water is still contaminated and where the costume designer for this project recently taught). Near the end, we listen to a Ted Nugent cover while problematizing homophobia and slow dancing with someone of the same sex to trigger Nugent’s metaphoric death. In this range, some moments are inevitably more resonant than others. While tweeting is largely ineffective, the junior prom moment is evocative and beautiful. This politicized ebb and flow (covering Stonewall, marches on Washington, even the death of Prince) coincides with the representation of band members themselves, a group that seems to represent a wide range of both genre and geography*. How these political events shake out in the 24 hour version of the same concert only beg more questions about what comes out on top.

To be fair, Utah Presents didn’t do many favors in securing me as the audience member I became. Utah’s culture prescribes a mandate that prior to a performance, ticket-holders receive abundant warning about adult content and telling us that we should prepare for a long show with no intermission. I resent this and want to mention here that these e-mails leave out an asterisk that should read: “we have to say this because the people who fund art don’t actually engage with it and that’s a long-term political and historically religious problem and furthermore, ignore this message, because this show is not only transgressive, it’s fun.” Mac additionally addressed this during the show by requesting that we give an ovation for the curtain speech (administrative labor is labor!) but also admonishing the naming of wealthy sponsors who may not, in fact, need our earnest thanks.  

I’m willing to wager that not only would more people have attended if presenters marketed a less undermined truth but also that they’d be willing to engage with more local art-making that uses the same concepts or methods as the artists they present. For example: when Ragamala toured to Kingsbury they invited local Bharatanatyam openers for (presumably) audience development. Why then were there so many caveats to this concert instead of an equal invitation to the Bad Kids (although some of them may have been the minions described above) or to Janice Janice Janice, a grad student performing university thesis work at Metro? Whether or not there was time to include them as in Ragamala, there was most certainly the opportunity to offer them the advertising they need in support of their work to make it as effective and ubiquitous as this particular evening.

Maybe that sort of connection is to come tomorrow, Tuesday January 17th at 7:30pm in Kingsbury Hall when Mac meets with Bill T. Jones and Niegel Smith to dialogue about art and activism. The event is free but requires tickets.

Ashley Anderson directs loveDANCEmore using the resources of her 501c3 “ashley anderson dances.” ashleyandersondances.com