Ririe-Woodbury: Return

Return, the third and final work of Daniel Charon’s “Together Alone” trilogy, premiered in the Eccles Theater's Regent Street Black Box. The space placed the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company performers in a new and exciting venue, so different from their home at the Rose Wagner. The audience sat in the round, which created an intimate, circular gathering. As the dancers entered, they seemed just an arm’s reach away; their breath could be felt, and every step heard. All of a sudden, strips of light that surrounded the dance floor lit up, creating a tangible border - immediately, the dancers felt detached, separated from the audience. They began moving with a floating, eerie quality that was abruptly interrupted by flashing red lights and a booming voice yelling, “Warning! Warning!” The dancers quickly left the space. This shift added a taste of urgency and tension, mixed with a layer of science-fiction, to the scene.

The dancers then began subtle movement that grew larger to a percussive, intriguing score by the Salt Lake Electric Ensemble. There was a shockingly beautiful moment as Melissa Younker balanced precariously on Bashaun Williams’ leg as he lay on the ground. Her body swayed slightly, from side to side, like an upside-down leaf dangling from a tree.

As the movement became larger and more intense, a constant entering and exiting of bodies developed, eventually giving way to several solos, duets, trios, and larger group phrases. However, each section was brief and interrupted as the dancers quickly exited. These fleeting interactions never felt fully realized. There was a constant, dissatisfying resonance of something left unfinished. As I watched the dancers leap and dive with flying, suspended legs, the performance space felt cramped, like we were looking in on an enclosed environment that was too small, too tight. Yet this bound, constricted space appeared to be an intentional critique of the effect of technology tightening the space around us. The dance seemed to say, “If we are not careful, we will be boxed in by our own devices.”

The piece continued with incredibly dynamic shifts through space and stunningly embodied movement. At one moment, most of the dancers left the space and Yebel Gallegos performed an exquisite solo. As his body rattled and curved, small droplets of sweat sprinkled off of him and twinkled in the luminous light. This moment of splendor led into haunting text, each dancer sharing a single sentence, a fragmented idea: “We had to move on”; “It was hard to tell”; “We have to do it again.” Each carried an ambiguously eerie weight and evoked an apocalyptic scenario. Each dancer seemed to be adding a significant thought on to the last, but they never looked at each other or acknowledged one another’s presence. They seemed so very close together, but also distantly removed.

Later, the dancers stood on opposite edges of the floor, looking out into the audience with their backs to each other. Two dancers at a time would say the same text in a conversation that felt incredibly mechanical. One pairing of dancers wanted to discuss something but the other grouping continued to repeat, “I can’t, I’m expecting someone.” This pixelated conversation was broken and dysfunctional. A tension was created, as something important needed to be shared and communicated but no one knew how to do it. As an audience member, I felt a deep craving for this human interaction to be fulfilled, but the dancers remained separated and unable to complete the urgent conversation.

These moments of intriguing narrative were followed by deeply physical movement. Megan McCarthy and Gallegos had a breathtaking duet. Their bodies rotated in quick, tightly controlled spirals and their legs swirled in luscious circles that carried them to the ground in exciting sweeps of momentum. Return was Mary Lyn Graves’ last performance with Ririe-Woodbury and her dancing was also exquisite throughout the performance.

The costumes for Return were designed by fashion stylist Laura Kiechle, who created the many different looks changed into throughout the show. The costumes introduced new moods and textures throughout. The dancers began in grey and blue shirts and pants that were a blend of Star Trek and post-modern. Later, the dancers filtered back on in all-black costumes that featured an intriguing exposed square on each back. At one point, McCarthy wore a stunning, long peach-colored dress. The final costumes were blue shorts and white shirts that resembled swimwear from the 1950s. The constant changing of costumes continued to introduce a new aesthetic to a continual play of together- and apartness. There was a truly striking development in the way that new costumes were introduced; only a few dancers would change at a time, the new look slowly infiltrating the stage in pieces, as if through a shift in time.

One of the most striking moments was as Gallegos shared lines of text in Spanish: “No hay nadie más en el mundo. No hay nadie más en la vista.” Younker repeated the lines in English: “There is no one else in the world. There is no one else in sight.” The two of them walked along the edge of the lit square and repeated the lines with slight additions and variations. It was striking to watch the others move within the square and to feel their deep separation as Younker and Gallegos spoke about being alone. There was an incredible irony in hearing their call and response in different languages and their inability to connect with each other, or those moving around them - almost as if there was no one left in the world.

Throughout Return, Charon played with the way technology affects, and will affect, human interaction. In many moments, I felt trapped in an episode of Black Mirror. Return presented an impressive collaboration of movement, spoken text, sound, lighting design, and costume design to create imagery of future humans as disconnected beings that exist together, but are mostly alone.

Melissa Younker and Yebel Gallegos in Return. 

Rachel Luebbert is a recent graduate of the University of Utah, having completed a dual degree in modern dance and Spanish. Rachel has also contributed writing to the College of Fine Arts’ blog, The Finer Points.

Ballet West: The Shakespeare Suite

David Bintley’s The Shakespeare Suite, the title piece of Ballet West’s spring season, opens with Kyle Davis as Hamlet and a chorus of four couples slinking across a maroon carpet, the women dressed like Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face and the men (save Davis) in kilts and mesh shirts. Davis and the chorus’s repetitive sharp gestures usher the audience into the comical world created by the marriage of Duke Ellington’s music, Shakespeare’s characters, and Bintley’s tongue-in-cheek choreography. The Shakespeare Suite humorously portrays the most famous Shakespearean characters from both tragedy and comedy in a series of vignettes set to Ellington’s big band sounds.

Christopher Sellars and Katherine Lawrence charmed in the first duet as a Converse-clad, pop punk Kate and Petruchio from The Taming of the Shrew. Lawrence’s eye rolls and huffing marches, all done in a fluffy wedding dress, argued with Sellars’ spiky-haired, jaunty prankster. Typically cast in sparkling but demure roles, it was exciting to see Lawrence’s amusing over-exaggeration.

The only solo of the work was Davis’s portrayal Hamlet, which both opened and closed The Shakespeare Suite. Beginning with a pinpoint focus off stage, Davis, whom I have not had the pleasure of seeing in soloist roles before, showed a confident coolness, even while going mad. His technique skillfully folded into the character, making him an apt guide for Bintley’s surreal world populated by beatnik Shakespeareans.

It was a treat to see Ballet West’s dancers portray characters so far beyond the scope of their typical repertoire. I hardly recognized Adrian Fry stalking across the stage as Othello, and Allison DeBona’s devious smiles made her a delightfully manipulative Lady Macbeth. The ballet showcased a rarely revealed, comedic side of Ballet West. With all its character and wit, The Shakespeare Suite doesn’t try to be more complex than it is; it’s a romp, a gleeful amusement both for the dancers and the audience.

Soloist Jenna Rae Herrera and Demi-Soloist Joshua Whitehead, as Titania and Bottom, in David Bintley’s The Shakespeare Suite. Photo by Beau Pearson.

The first work of the evening, Jiří Kylián’s Return to a Strange Land, was the most benign. Dedicated to John Cranko, Return to a Strange Land presents two pas de trois and two pas de deux, each featuring Kylián’s often imitated style of smoothly intertwined partnering. Costumed in academically simple blue or gold leotards and soft-hued tights, the dancers begin on an autumn-colored stage, piles of leaves in the background, as they wind and unwind their arms, tangling their bodies until interwoven connections emerge. A dancer is lifted in an arch and spun into a deep plié while her partners draw connected circles around her. When the dancers do separate, they rush away from each other, flying around the stage like the leaves piled upstage.  Eventually they come together again, knotting themselves into moments of delicate, embracing balance as their kaleidoscopic shapes, perfectly symmetrical yet complex, emerge and disappear. The partnering is intricate but was deftly handled, especially by Chase O’Connell. Paired with Emily Adams, whose musicality is entrancing, the blue pas de deux was clear and heartfelt without being overly earnest.

Principal Emily Adams and Chase O’Connell in Jiří Kylián’s Return to a Strange Land. Photo by Beau Pearson.

Artists of Ballet West in Jiří Kylián's Return to a Strange Land. Photo by Beau Pearson.j

Principal Emily Adams and Chase O’Connell in Jiří Kylián’s Return to a Strange Land. Photo by Beau Pearson.

I will confess, I was most excited about Ballet West’s spring season because of Summerspace, Merce Cunningham’s masterwork that premiered at the American Dance Festival in 1958. The work was created with Cunningham’s unique collaborative process in which composer, choreographer, and designer each created independently, only coming together at the premiere of the work, a process still imitated as the work is reset on new dancers. Summerspace features colorfully dotted unitards and a backdrop designed by Robert Rauschenberg, as well as a spacious score composed by Morton Feldman. This type of collaborative process is obviously risky, but in this case yields a work where each element is fully realized, able to simultaneously stand on its own and interact with the other elements. Granted, it’s a great help for Summerspace to have had such accomplished collaborators. To quote Feldman, “Say you’re getting married and I tell you the dress won’t be made until the morning of the wedding. But I also tell you it’s by Dior.”  

Though it was the oldest work of the concert, Summerspace was the most unconventional, challenging both physically and conceptually for a typical ballet audience. Its clarity and simplicity made it an easy work to watch, however. Dancers charge through the space with impossible sequences of spins and springs. Spacious lines that lean toward balletic, speedy turning sequences, and simple patterns of skips, triplets, and leaps are juxtaposed against abrupt stillness. The music drifts in and out, filled with silence, almost fluttering past your ears. Ballet West’s cast was spritely in their charming interpretation, and their youthful verve was dazzling. Katlyn Addison’s open presence anchored the work. She kept the lift and speed of Summerspace from flying away, grounding the performance with her voluminous dancing.

Summerspace was clearly a challenge for Ballet West’s dancers: the movement passages are physical non-sequiturs, technically brutal in their composition. But seeing such accomplished dancers struggle is its own reward. In one moment, Katie Critchlow balanced on the subtlest of relevés, shaking as she shifted her weight to one leg. There was a sense of concentration that I have never seen at a Ballet West performance, an almost palpable air of risk. That the dancers were able to maintain humor and playfulness made their attempts and successes even more intriguing to watch. More than once the audience giggled and burst into spontaneous applause, reactions that are as rare as they were delightful and well-deserved.

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

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.

Repertory Dance Theatre: Current

Repertory Dance Theatre’s Current included five dances presented one after the other, after the other, and yet... another, because they were all made recently; they are a reflection of “right now”; they are current.

To begin, the silhouettes of Justin Bass and Tyler Orcutt spoke their way across the stage beginning “Still Life With Flight” by former RDT member Sarah Donohue. The faces of the dancers were illuminated once they landed their popping (not locking) bodies on a bench. They shifted ever-so-slightly with harmonized pulses of their torsos that incidentally occured to execute the larger movement of wringing hands, crossing legs and shrugging, casting quick glances at one another before interlocking to perform cartwheels over the bench. Through a series of turns en dehors with their legs in arabesque (legs held behind, turning counterclockwise) the two moved around the bench, holding each other often and expertly.

Cut to Ursula Perry dancing to herself in a mirror with a scrim hanging downstage, creating a hazy, sepia effect. “Aloneness,” choreographed by Francisco Gella, contained a lot of unison phrases, all considering its subject of solitude. Or, not solitude - loneliness. The choice of being alone. I sometimes get lost on the bridge connecting etymology to physicality; are the movements representing different definitions of aloneness? Are they enacting solitude? They wore black so they must have been mourning the loss of community. Nothing was certain save for the calm and careful movement of Perry, who pierces space with her gaze. Even her fingertips and shins saw what they were moving towards.   

“Flood” began with the company in line, facing the audience, shifting together on the pads of their feet, creating a “tiny dance” of utmost specificity. (Choreographer Nichele Van Portfleet is specific.) The dancers wove in and out of this line throughout the piece, pushing and displacing each other from the line, and carefully buttoning up their shirts in a mime-like fashion ending with a gesture to form a suffocating collar made of flesh and bone (their own hand). This sequence communicated internal flooding - perhaps a flood of information, perhaps something else entirely. I was reminded of “The Green Table,” choreographed by Kurt Jooss, depicting pre-World War II “peace” negotiations and their ultimate futility. In both pieces, the dancers embody caricatures of those in power, whether world leaders or parts of themselves. The performers in “Flood” were not at peace with themselves nor with one another. They were often on the edge of physical stability, twisting themselves with movement overlapping and interweaving dynamically, likewise putting me on the edge of the seat beneath me.

Justin Bass and Jaclyn Brown in "Schubert Impromptu" by Francisco Gella. Photo courtesy of RDT.

Next on the program was a bonus duet by Gella, aptly called “Schubert Impromptu,” as if one of many Schubert compositions was picked out of a hat to entertain us after “Aloneness” and “Flood.” Justin Bass and Jaclyn Brown appeared to have been directed to move in sync with the music, and it was very satisfying, if not predictable. At one point, Brown slows down a cartwheel on her forearms over Bass, leaving me impressed with her ability to resist gravity. The two wore black, like the costumes in Gella’s previous piece. Some of the movements were similar, but, in “Schubert Impromptu,” there were no mirrors reflecting long beams of light into the audience, slicing through the space between stage and seats. “Schubert” seemed purposefully intimate - the dancers’ light did not come to us, but we could go to it for a diversion or a shelter from darker subject matter.  

“Material Tokens of the Freedom of Thought,” choreographed by Angela Banchero-Kelleher to the music of Wojciech Kilar, ended the evening. Many of the movement phrases in the piece were punctuated by the dancers pausing at length to look out into the audience, arms placed at their sides, forming a slight oval around them. They stood this way, waiting for their turn to move again, and in these moments I saw their eyes searching, perhaps to find the meaning of “mother” in the midst of the fan-like movement surrounding them.

Current flowed - or careened - like a recital. One can only do so much to connect a playful duet with a reconciliation with one’s deceased mother to a socio-political abstraction to an exploration of being “alone together,” without any transition other than closing and opening a curtain. However, the members of RDT moved through the evening with grace and deep breaths. They exhibited a cohesion that prompted the friend accompanying me to wonder if some of the choreography throughout all five pieces was extremely similar, if not the same.  Each moment of contact carried with it a familiarity stemming from continued physical practice as a company. The dancers are fully integrated, if not the dances they are dancing.

Emma Wilson received her BFA in Modern Dance at the University of Utah and has since been making solo works, choreographing for Deseret Experimental Opera (DEXO) and working as the Salt Lake City Library’s Community Garden Coordinator.