Ballet West: National Choreographic Festival, Part II

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SALT II: In Concert at the Rose

SALT II, the junior company of SALT Contemporary Dance, had its first full length show at the Leona Wagner Black Box this past weekend. It showcased thirteen strong female dancers that approached the program’s seven works with artistry and technical skill.

The lights brighten to a soundless scape of several couples buttressing up against one another, shoulders to chins and chins to shoulders. This symbiotic relationship eventually gives way to more conflicted ones in local dancer and choreographer Eldon Johnson’s The Truth Of The Matter Is. Structurally this piece vacillates between animal-like movements, the spine continually experiencing a tickle that can’t be scratched, and brief moments of stillness, the dancers forming human still-lifes that are framed against a red cyc.

The large cast number settles into a duet with dancers Haleigh Larmer and Morgan Phillips that features innovative partnering that could be categorized as the great-granddaughter of contact improvisation and a cousin to contemporary ballet. It incorporates the idea that  ‘any body part can be a support structure’ paired with clear and clean lines splicing and undulating through the space.

Jessica Liu multitasks as dancer, SALT II assistant director, and choreographer of Preserved Peals, and shines in this duet with guest artist Ismael Arrieta. This piece starts with an upbeat song by Bahamas and a hit-hit-gesture rhythm. Liu is that rare dancer that showcases beautiful lines with grounded strength, and attention to detail while gobbling up the space. In this piece she manages to do all this while exuding a believable joy and feel-good happiness. It’s believable in part because I cannot doubt it would feel amazing to dance that well.

Arrieta does his part in keeping up with Liu, and displays his own brand of laidback California cool. The work has a middle section of weight, release, and rest, but does not dwell there, instead quickly returning to high wattage, sparkling movement. The dancers end by sprinting offstage.

Deditionem by Mady Beighley, Dust Seeds Clouds by Gabrielle Lamb and Tracing the Steps You Left Behind by Jason Parsons were well-investigated and deserving of singular attention, but suffered because they were all full-cast pieces positioned one after another and drew on similar movement sensibilities. The inclusion of a sock-induced slide is one of those sensibilities, (are bare feet bygones of yesterday?) and while this move worked well in Preserved Peals (because it had the fun and frolic of a Tom Cruise in Risky Business moment), it felt contrived in the other pieces.

Distinguishing characteristics of the Beighley, Lamb, and Parsons pieces are:

• The slight Pina Baush Rite of Spring-feel to Deditionem, complete with Hayley Smihula as the sacrifice in white.  The movie-esque score by Johann Johannsson helps elevate the drama and crystalize the stakes.

• Lamb’s piece uses the instantly recognizable music of Zoe Keating, which is just waiting to be used in concert dance again and again and again as it so clearly provides a dynamic structure and rich texture with which to base movement off. The score drives and fills and emotes urgency and modern-day drama. That being said, the choreography of this work has its own two legs, and ends with a beautiful solo by Lauren Bonan while the rest of the cast bears witness upstage.

• This was the second time I watched SALT II perform Tracing The Steps You Left Behind, and this showing felt more distilled and seasoned than the first. Amy Falls reviewed the first showing, and while much stays the same, the unfocused walking seems to have been replaced with a simmering undercurrent of control and predator/prey relationship.

A welcomed departure was Joni McDonald’s solo for McKenna Chugg.  While it did not take pains to explore theme or variation, it was refreshing in terms of costume (a bright red leotard), showcased a single dancer in the space, and ended abruptly.

The evening concluded with BODYTRAFFIC dancer Lindsey Matheis’ Chimera, and after reading that a chimera is a single organism composed of cells from different zygotes (in other words, one thing can in fact be many things combined), this piece is appropriately titled.  The work begins like Johnny Depp in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, full of mischievous wonder and magic, and ends as Depp in the snow scene from Edward Scissorhands, dancers bathed in white, both sculptural and yearning in the space.

In my wildest fantasy, guest artist Logan McGill would not be the only male and the one gifted the role of puppeteer in Chimera. He sauntered around the cast of women, controlling them with his gaze and movements, even at one point leading out two crawling ladies as if they were animals on leashes; but this is Matheis’ world, not mine.

Despite this grievance, Chimera is an interesting, even spell-binding piece that has lingering theatricality and an unpredictability that has stayed with me long after the lights went dark.  

Erica Womack is a choreographer based in Salt Lake. She is also an adjunct faculty member at SLCC. 

Ballet West: National Choreographic Festival, Part I

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Justin Bass: A Bag of Nuts

When I first saw the list of shows that loveDANCEmore would be reviewing this spring, I immediately “called” reviewing A Bag of Nuts because I love Justin Bass’s choreography. This show met my high expectations.

Upon entering the Rose Wagner, we were greeted warmly and directed through a door across the way, down a flight of stairs, and into Studio A/B. The lighting and the atmosphere were warm and soft.

Justin Bass introduced the event in a good-natured and straightforward manner.

Act I was "Walnut", which Justin described as being revamped from when it was first presented a year ago. The performance featured only small tweaks the second time around, and was as delightful as I remember it from last year.

Last year, Justin said he purposely choreographed this work to challenge areas that each featured dancer struggled with. I thought that was a great idea, and I loved how it contrasted with the common approach of featuring dancers’ strengths – both great approaches in their own ways.

"Walnut" began with the dancers informally stretching on the stage, a concept also employed in NOW-ID’s NOWHERE a couple years ago. "Walnut" progressed with choreography that incorporated the stretches, and I was glad for the way that created continuity.

The piece included solos, duos, and trios, and the three dancers flowed in and out of unified choreography. I especially loved the concept and execution of the dancers repeating a short series of movements with varying timing, so that sometimes they matched up, and sometimes they sped ahead of each other or lagged behind.

Elyse Jost had a pretty neutral vibe throughout "Walnut". Her demonstration of control with transitions from quick movements to moments of stillness and balance was impressive.

Elle Johansen seemed intense, ranging from annoyed to angry. The way she holds and moves her neck is uniquely hers. In this choreography she demonstrated attention to artistic detail with spinal undulations that were at times flowing, and at times rigid with resistance.

Tiana Lovett exuded a feminine boldness, or maybe even haughtiness; this was perfect for her excellently contrasting solo choreography, which alternated between straightforward movement and more coy gestures. A fellow audience member noted that Tiana’s interpretation made walking a worthwhile inclusion in a modern dance piece.

Act I ended with a unified snap of the fingers and fall to the floor. From the back row, Justin started the applause.

After a five minute pause, which I thought was the perfect amount of time, Act II began.

Justin’s choreographic style was the common thread that connected Act I and Act II, which otherwise didn’t seem directly related but nevertheless meshed together within the show.

The music of the second half of the show was especially noteworthy, featuring songs I would describe as sassy, spliced together with excerpts of speaking by current U.S. Republican political figures. This was well-done as far as the flow of the audio, and how the choreography flowed through the audio transitions.

In solos and duos, the cast of six performers took turns dancing in the center of a semi-circle created by the rest, who sat and watched attentively, occasionally raising a hand as if in question, or raising both hands as if in indignation. In transitions between featured dancers, the others got up and walked to a different spot in the semi-circle, which I liked as a way to keep things connected. The choreography featured a mix of awkward and sassy and demanding and proud.

The last piece within Act II included all six dancers in moments of unity and divergence. The last bit of audio was along the lines of “I think how you laughed at me just now is indicative of how the media treats women. I’m just going to ignore that. I'm bigger than that.”

I imagine some audience members wondered what Justin “meant” by Act II. I can’t speak for his true intentions, but I wonder if he was less trying to make a specific statement, and more just pointing some things out and having a chuckle.

At the end of "Walnut" last year Justin did a Q&A session, which I found to be very interesting. I wished that we had gotten to do one this time too. It’s tough for artists to know when to shut up and let the art speak versus when to let their fans in on what’s behind it all.

Overall, A Bag of Nuts was an enjoyable evening. I was pleased that the show was both interesting and aesthetically attractive – sometimes a tricky balance to find. I look forward to seeing what Justin Bass comes up with next.

Kendall Fischer currently performs with Myriad Dance. She has also enjoyed recent opportunities with SBDance, Municipal Ballet Co, La Rouge Entertainment, and Voodoo Productions, among others.

Molly Heller: very vary

Molly Heller’s “very vary” was just that: a very varied patchwork. For the duration of her hour-long dance, the cast of six - both members of Ririe-Woodbury and freelancers alike - approached Heller’s performatively demanding work with integrity.

Papier-mâché animal heads by Gretchen Reynolds lined the back of the stage, glowing orbs lit from within. According to the program, each performer identified with one of these six animals: a bee, a deer, a monkey, a lion, a wolf, a seahorse. The only decoration in the Eccles Regent purple box, the animal heads added a minimal yet detailed touch, and I looked forward to how the performers might further define relationships to them.

The opening section was organized chaos, the dancers slotting into varying identities from the start. The Pixies blared; Florian Alberge yelled, Mary Lyn Graves did a mockingly good petite allegro routine, and Marissa Mooney burped (this elicited laughs, but I could have recognized Mooney’s derring do in spite of this). Melissa Younker’s innocent inquisitiveness stood out to me; her character quietly explored a landscape that the others often experienced more explosively.

Much of the physical vocabulary in “very vary” was fresh to my dance-worn eyes. The dancers’ movement came in spurts and appeared image- or emotion-driven (rather than dance for dance’s sake). The quick darts between movements and also sections managed to maintain a certain logic in their dissonance.

While there were many compelling moments by each of the six dancers, I did find that some entreated their rites and plights more truthfully, or at least less forcefully, to me than others. Some arcs of investigation I read as honest, and even vulnerable; others verged on feeling put upon, or done for the sake of performance.

Physical humor triumphed. Alberge and Nick Blaylock had a duet to Elton John’s “Rocket Man” that was a hybrid of slapstick and modern dance, timed masterfully.

"Rocket Man" duet with Florian Alberge (right) and Nick Blaylock. Photo by Tori Duhaime. 

Mooney introduced a different brand of physical humor. Telling a story about a crowded train, she noted that overhead luggage should be placed in the overhead bins - as Alberge’s dancing body was implicated as the luggage. As the group wrestled her overhead in a tangle of their arms, Mooney spoke of feeling trapped. The humor in such parallels between the spoken and the physical was successful for me.

Near the end of the dance, the opening “chaos” section was reprised, with dancers swapping roles. Graves punched through what was originally Yebel Gallegos’ serious boxing routine. Sometimes the do-er fit seamlessly into the newly assumed role; other times, the do-er appeared to have donned ill-fitting clothes. In either case, adopting others’ identities was an interesting progression after seeing each performer make their own brand of choices for most of the dance.

The dancers then helped one another tie the glowing animal visages to the tops of their heads; each seemed to have come to terms with both himself and others, and was now able to exist singularly as well as collaboratively. I wondered whether the preceding parts of the dance offered ample segue to this conclusion, and additionally wondered about the connections to the specific animals each performer supposedly had.

The dancers and their animal heads. Heads by Gretchen Reynolds, photo by Tori Duhaime.

Some of my favorite moments were when the dancers traveled around the stage en masse, like a whimsical marching band. The first time this happened, Younker conducted them as they quietly raged on their imaginary instruments; as she yelled “Louder!”, I couldn’t help but picture Spongebob Squarepants' compatriots, led by clarinet aficionado Squidward in a madcap dash around Bikini Bottom.

The second time, having donned the glowing heads, the dancers alit for a final lap. Like a mystical gaggle of Hayao Miyazaki animations, they floated, dream-like, past us before their departure. The final image presented itself to me as a reflection, in the back windows which opened mid-dance on a perfect, lilac dusk. Now, as dusk turned to night, the magical creatures began to make their way to their next engagement. I watched the reflections of their glowing heads recede as they filed, one by one, out the back.

This conclusion was lovely and evocative, but hard work for me to connect to the rest of the very varied material. Instead, I found myself waiting for the night animals to come out to play, wishing they had sooner. The ending of this iteration of “very vary” worked well as an epilogue, but might still be missing its final chapter.

Amy Falls is the development coordinator at Ballet West and loveDANCEmore’s former Mudson coordinator.