Ballet West: Swan Lake

It’s hard not to be impressed by Swan Lake. The heavy, dripping sprawl of its monumentally megalithic iconography is… eternally overwhelming. The music and choreography live outside of themselves in my brain, and maybe in yours too. Working its way from a dismally received premier through many revisions to its present form and engendering a vast cultural legacy and innumerable derivatives; Tchaikovsky’s most fêted handiwork has been performed for 142 years. I have learned it and performed it and seen it performed countless times, both live and in recordings from all over the world. And I have to say I’ve never seen one I truly enjoyed more than Ballet West’s current production.

The Capitol Theatre itself isn’t overly grand or spectacularly sprawling. But it’s cozy and charming (as prosceniums go), which makes it a wonderful locus for intimate, storybook detail and concentrated, emotional storytelling– a strength Ballet West has been cultivating with excellence in its story ballets of late. As in recent productions of Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast, they have again created a thoroughly illustrated, richly peopled world full of color and character and spirit, distilling something exquisitely different and special from a story I thought I knew very, very well.

Beyond nuanced updates to choreography, aesthetics, and staging, spectacular performances by the dancers made the ballet thrilling in a way that had me mentally calculating if I could return for a second viewing before I even vacated my seat. The company is full of skillful and smart actors; more and more, I seen in them the impulse towards a descriptive expansion of humanity and the slow razing and retrofitting of old prescriptive tropes. From the smallest page to the featured soloists, the production was awash in distinctive, fresh, and textured personality. Brought to life in vivid saturation by David Heuvel’s richly colorful costumes, they formulated a collective depth that kept the stage buzzing electrically the entire evening.

The parade of national dances in the third act, the princesses proffering themselves as candidates for Siegfried’s hand, was especially enlivening. Usually, that scene is when I find myself most empathetic toward our hapless Prince Siegfried in his exasperation with his matchmaking mother, the Queen (“Come on, another one? Really? Give it up mom.”). This time it hit me completely differently, like I was eight years old again and watching Act II of The Nutcracker for the first time, each of its series of divertissements wildly new and colorful and exciting. Here, each princess had a unique personality and all were terrifically funny in their various reactions to princely rejection. Throughout the Czardas, the repetition of grave, delicate gestures, the dance’s whirlwind finish, and the shivery intensity of Lillian Casscells, Dominic Ballard, and their ensemble had me on the edge of my seat. They smoldered and I found myself taking back every curse I’ve hurled under my breath at that particular folk dance in the past.

Even better was the Neapolitan. Jenna Rae Herrera is an incredibly warm, bright spot of sun in the company. I love watching her dance in every production, her joy always palpable and generous. It fills you and lifts you straight up. Here, both dressed in yellow and each with a tambourine in hand, she and partner Alexander McFarlan stole the show during their variation. The choreography for Ballet West’s version of the Neapolitan was fantastic and everyone around me was elated, cheering and laughing aloud as the pair’s antics took them spinning and dashing wildly around the stage.

Throughout the two acts that take place in the royal court, it was plain to see the great care taken in subtly re-imagining and reinvigorating the classic choreography to keep momentum moving, every successive dance exciting and unique. The buoyant whirl of courtiers in beautiful, airy blue costumes flooded the stage in Act I before pulling back to reveal a delicately piquant pas de trois. The wide, laughing grin on Tyler Gum’s face was a sharp point of touching sweetness as he partnered Sayaka Ohtaki and Katlyn Addison. The large, intricately pinwheeling dance of the young courtiers and Ballet West Academy students, led by Mia Tureson, was funny, cute, and marvelously well-executed. As others have noted in earlier reviews from this season, the young Academy students are impressively capable performers and always exceptionally well-rehearsed. Tureson in particular was absolutely sparkling.

And then there were, of course, the swans. Rising out of just the right amount of billowing fog, their synchronicity and intensity made hearts soar (and my eyes sting). Sharp head movements and powerful sweeping wings gave this flock a little more strength and animal quality than others I’ve seen in the past. In the dance of the Cygnets, I loved the sharp focus of heads cast to each corner of the proscenium, rather than the often-opted-for slow roll down and around.

Also exciting was seeing the degree of variation in the corps de ballet. The dancers both looked and moved differently. Each was distinct unto themselves, and the double-down on a commitment to diversity that Ballet West has begun to enact over the last few years is starting to manifest in an appreciable way on stage. They were perfectly, ferociously, and crystalline-clearly in sync, as I remembered all the times in my youth that I heard that a perfectly identical body of bodies was the only way to achieve eternal and ethereal beauty. The satisfaction and elation of seeing a corps de ballet of swans like this one was piercing. I sincerely hope Ballet West continues to push in that direction.

Chase O’Connell portrayed Siegfried with signature elegance. Lofting about in technical excellence, his natural connection with Beckanne Sisk made for some beautiful moments in the two white swan pas de deux. I will say, though, that he appeared more at home in the moments when things were going well for his character. Harried despair didn’t hang quite as naturally on him, his moments of circling the stage in anguish maybe a little dry.

Sisk fulfilled the expectations that always precede her and then some. Fiercely technical with buckets of personality, I fully admit I expected her to hit the height of her shine as the black swan rather than the white. Both were excellent, but in fact it was almost the opposite. Forgoing some of the frailty of other swan queens, she had powerful wings like her corps, which served her better in highlighting the strength of her choice to trust the hunter and the eventual tenderness of that connection. She hit all the most iconic moments of Acts II and IV with a force that sent the room spinning, a rushing wave of divine recognition as her image lined up with the primary referent that lives at the back of my brain.

Her black swan was all sass all the time. Not even bothering to construct a facsimile of Odette and quiver her wings, she took over poor Siegfried with sheer force. I might typically expect a more paced build-up of devilishness to those fourth-wall breaks and that moment all the trickery is revealed, but honestly I’ve always found it hard to buy that the hapless prince really didn’t know the shiny new girl at his party wasn’t his true love from the forest. Whether it was a conscious artistic choice or not, I preferred interpreting that his character really does just fail miserably for a moment. It makes the betrayal even more wrenching and turns the final resolution into something much sweeter and more powerful, with layers of emotional verisimilitude that are more relatable. At any rate, Sisk’s wicked and hungry eyes are just so winning that it was incredibly fun to watch.

In the end, of course, Odette forgives her wayward lover and he continues to whirl her around tragically even as she starts to weaken and fall apart. In one especially striking moment during that final pas de deux, Sisk penché-d to the full extent of her powers towards a kneeling O’Connell before crumbling with almost ugly ferocity into a deep lunge. That simple horrifying fall into gravity carried all the weight of the couple’s despair as the evil Baron von Rothbart herded them towards death. Finally, the swan maidens returned to human form, their curse broken with the new light of day, bringing the story to a satisfying close.

Principal Artist Beckanne Sisk as Odette. Photo by Luke Isley.

Ballet West’s Swan Lake continues this weekend and next, through February 23, at the Janet Quinney Lawson Capitol Theatre.

Emily Snow is a Denver native who now calls Salt Lake City home. She has most recently been seen performing with Municipal Ballet Co. and with Durian Durian, an art band that combines electronic music and postmodern dance.

Molly Heller + Moth Closet: HEARTLAND + Dance Party

The Heart is Already Whole.

At the end of HEARTLAND, Molly Heller addressed the crowd, thanking us for exploring the many experiences of the heart together. "We entered into this time with the understanding that the heart is already whole,” she said. In this brief moment, Heller acknowledged the completeness of each person inside of our complex and, at times, confusing hearts. Her current work, HEARTLAND, does just this: It affirms and teases out the complexities of the heart, offering no definitive answers but creating space for performers and audience members to increase the dynamic range inside their hearts. The part-performance, part-pop-up-dance-party organized by Heller was just one iteration of her ongoing body of research on the idioms, sensations, and experiences of the heart.

HEARTLAND (+ Dance Party) blurred the lines of performer and audience member, inviting the audience to participate in Heller's research, HEARTLAND, through a dance party at The Beehive in downtown Salt Lake City. The venue’s dark interior was covered in at least 100 pink balloons that varied in hue and size; the overlapping forms made me wonder if we had stepped inside a heart. I showed up barely on time, covered in snow, ready to dance it out on the dance floor, and curious as to how the performance would integrate with a dance party. Heller had described the evening as a complete experiment, and a “dance within a dance.”

Before the dance party started, Heller opened with the most formal portion of the evening. Formal is not quite the right word here, though, as the whole evening defied the conventions of a formal modern dance performance. Dancers Brian Gerke and Marissa Mooney joined Heller on “stage”; the two have been working with Heller on her HEARTLAND practice since fall 2018. Composer Mike Wall accompanied throughout the evening, both making music live and acting as DJ. With the audience watching from all four sides of the room, the three dancers took their space between four pillars in the center, with minimal distinction between dancer and audience. They did, however, wear shiny red and gold clothes that stood out in the low light. The three worked through their practice, moving in and out of trios, solos, and duets. They constructed a boxing ring of sorts with party streamers, just one of many pink party favors floating around The Beehive. Think: pink construction-paper hearts, pink sunglasses, heart candies, etc.

Heller has a distinct physical quality that manifests in HEARTLAND. She alternates between working with highly dense space around her, as if she's processing something unseen to the audience, and with a light, bright, carefree freedom. Gerke moved with his classic ease, but with a sense of effort and struggle inside of the articulation. It looked as if he was trying to move his shoulder blades and ribcage up around his heart. Mooney brought a bouncy, casual quality to the trio. All three moved with birdlike quirks and quick, leggy weight shifts. As they wrapped up their opening trio, Heller stood with her heart open to the sky for a long time. A low, pulsating bounce filled the room, and we all began to pulse with it. It was undeniable, the bass and tactile energy demanding that all who were present be affected by the music, by the dance. Thus began the blurring of lines and the most freeing dance party of my life.

Throughout the next hour and a half, the whole room bounced, flung, snaked, and dug deep within themselves; it was a safe space. One attendee remarked that she hadn't felt this free to dance in public in a long time. The performers danced the entire evening, mingling with all the other bodies. They occasionally danced on the benches around the room or climbed onto the stage where Wall was curating the music. Those who took dance breaks or chose not to dance bopped their heads, grooving in their own way on the sides. Almost everyone had a larger-than-life grin that only disappeared due to extreme focus on the dance.

As my quadriceps grew tired and my heart rate increased, I could not shake the sensation of unspeakable joy. There was something intoxicating about exhausting myself, moving and moving and moving and moving to the music, surrounded by other bodies. Based on my conversations with Heller, this is what she hoped HEARTLAND might offer: a way of locating oneself inside the noise. It is finding resistance and endurance, finding lightness when your chest feels heavy. It is honoring the weight of the body, the weight of the heart.

For those who stayed until the very end, Heller performed a tender yet defiant solo after the dance floor had cleared. She moved as if her arms and legs were attached to her sternum, as if they were extensions of her heart. She skipped and floated, claimed her power and fought for balance. In a final farewell, all three dancers performed a delicate score seated on the edge of the stage in front of Wall as he sang “Fade into You” by Mazzy Star.

Heller has promised more pop-up dance parties, and more iterations of HEARTLAND. She has another one coming up already at 12 Minutes Max this Sunday (February 17 at 2 p.m., in the main auditorium of the downtown Salt Lake City Library). HEARTLAND will also continue to develop beyond this: There is a film in the works, and the practice continues to reveal itself. Read more about the origins of HEARTLAND here and here, and follow its future developments here.

From left to right: Mike Wall, Molly Heller, Marissa Mooney, and Brian Gerke in HEARTLAND + Dance Party. Photo by Tori Duhaime.

Originally from the Midwest, Hannah Fischer is currently pursuing her MFA at the University of Utah. She received an Individual Artist Grant through the Indiana Arts Commission in 2017 and was an Associate Artist-in-Residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in 2014.

OSBA presents Jessica Lang Dance

"Anything is possible once enough human beings realize that the whole of the human future is at stake." The words of Norman Cousins, American activist and peacemaker, echoed over and over in Jessica Lang's “us/we.” A farewell piece for her company Jessica Lang Dance (which is currently on its final tour following an eight-year run), “us/we” was the first on a diverse program presented by the Ogden Symphony Ballet Association at the Val. A Browning Center this weekend.

A delicious visual experience, “us/we” was a series of snapshots that zoomed in and out on Brooklyn, New York. The piece, created with visual artist Jose Parla, featured colorful projections that filled a screen upstage, framing the dancers and at times covering them with projected light. In a phone interview last week, Lang spoke with this writer about the "layering patchwork" of “us/we.” "It's all tied together," she said, which became clear throughout the driving work.

The set included three large pieces of fabric hanging upstage, each piece mapped for specific images. In the first section of “us/we,” the dancers wore costumes made from cloth used by Parla during his painting process, which was captured on camera and then integrated into the visual design. Still images of his completed works were also used. Costume designer Moriah Black constructed a second set of costumes by piecing together graphic-heavy items found at thrift stores from all over the world.

“us/we” spoke to a sense of unity by joining different people, places, and histories, and resonated through the dancers, who didn’t spend much time standing still as they moved between club scenes, busking scenes, and many literal tableaus, and incorporated gestural movement resembling American Sign Language. Notably, the piece coordinated large groups for impressive, multi-person partnering that had a flair for the dramatic, blending ballet and cinema.

The snapshots of “us/we” moved quickly, transitions almost nonexistent between a dance scene set to Ram Jam’s “Black Betty” and a moodier contemporary sequence. Quick changes of pace, glimpses into relationships, and hints at iconic moments recreated the feeling of riding public transportation: I remembered visiting New York for the first time, and the thrill of watching the city rush by on the subway as my face pressed against the window.

After speaking to Lang about “us/we” and then experiencing it, I see it as a love letter to the company: It is the last piece Lang will have made with the dancers, before all move on to the next stage of their respective careers. Near the end of the piece, the dancers appropriately sang “Can't Help Falling in Love.” With crescendos and brief moments of quietude, “us/we” was a lovely symphony of New York, and by extension, the world.

As a presenter, I would have opted to complete the concert with “us/we,” leaving the audience with a sense of connection and desire for more, instead of ending as the show did with “This Thing Called Love.” In contrast to the rest of the program, the fun, swingy Tony Bennett tribute paled in comparison in both content and complexity. The superimposed emotional content of “This Thing Called Love” was also amplified by its placement on the program following “Thousand Yard Stare” and “The Calling.”

Arguably Lang's most recognizable work, “The Calling” is a beautifully clear haiku of isolation and longing. Julie Fiorenza performed it with articulate grace and a length that defied that of her actual limbs.

“Thousand Yard Stare” always catches my breath. There is something about the way the dancers need each other that speaks to more than just the grit and grief of war. It also speaks to a cultural grappling with loss.

When the dancers moved through the exposed stage, the wings and scrim removed, they were in clear relationship to one another, coming in and out of unison, their contact characterized by dependence. They reached, fell, and collided, moving through space as if it was dense with fog and resistance.

Compositionally, “Thousand Yard Stare” was the most readable of Lang's work on the program. In it, she repeated and recreated scenes spatially as well as gesturally, making it easy to telecast personal or imagined relationships onto the dancers. There was a moving moment when a dancer was left out of the fold, powerful because the dancers were rarely alone throughout the piece. Their mass of overlapping bodies quickly pulled her back in, lifted her over their heads, and, surprisingly, tucked her in between them as if placing a baby bird back in its nest.

It is easy to imagine why “Thousand Yard Stare” is one of the company’s most performed pieces. Set to Beethoven's String Quartet No. 15, Op. 132, its music and movement swim together in hope despite the inevitability of death.

The dancers moved as a unit, offering the audience a sense of humanity and redemption. It would be easy to make a dance that captures the brutality of war, but for “Thousand Yard Stare,” Lang was interested in a different approach. ”We still have to carry hope," she says. She chose the music in part because Beethoven wrote the piece while he was dying, looking at the end of his life. Lang’s care and empathy are visible throughout it, and it’s a piece that does for me what I aspire to do for others through my own dance-making: It softens me, nudging me toward an understanding of the things I do not know.

I inquired about Lang’s plans for the future, now that Jessica Lang Dance is completing its final season, and why she is dissolving the company: She intends to keep creating work independently. Managing a company required her to spend less and less time working in the studio, and more time performing administrative tasks.

It’s clear that working with the same group of dancers for nine years has given Lang the freedom to push the boundaries of her aesthetic. I admire her choice to dissolve what many may think of as the pinnacle of success in order to continue pursuing the complexity of her craft. Now, she will take what she has gathered from Jessica Lang Dance and move forward, making new dances with new collaborators. “There are other things I want to try,” Lang says, and her decision reminds me that we can always change paths, make new choices, and dig deeper into that which inspires us.

Originally from the Midwest, Hannah Fischer is currently pursuing her MFA at the University of Utah. She received an Individual Artist Grant through the Indiana Arts Commission in 2017 and was an Associate Artist-in-Residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in 2014.

Ririe-Woodbury: the live creature and ethereal things

Anyone who enjoys being hugged, or enjoys giving great hugs, knows that friendship is as much felt as spoken. In the newest production by Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, a collaboration with Flying Bobcat Theatrical Laboratory inspired by the Red Fred Project, this is made abundantly clear. Words intermingle with choreography and music to generate a rich environment that reminds us that movement can be as powerful as spoken language when it comes to conveying emotions and ideas.

Called the live creature and ethereal things, this performance is a flight through relationships, challenges, and discoveries told by the six dancers of Ririe-Woodbury who are joined on stage by actor Robert Scott Smith. The music by John Paul Hayward and costumes by Jared Gold add to the vibrancy of the production. As an interdisciplinary endeavor, a project that combines storytelling with music and dancing, live creature amplifies the synergies between narrative, character, and choreography.

In the first scene of the performance, a solo by dancer Melissa Rochelle Younker, the bird-like nods of her head and wing-like movement of her arms transform a person into an avian creature. When Smith walks on stage and opens a book that he is carrying, it transforms into a magical totem, lighting up the stage and sending more bird-like characters into the production. This idea that books can animate our environs finds an apt parallel in the ways the dancers become a flock of creatures or morph into mischievous playmates.

Throughout the production, the direction and dramaturgy of Smith and Alexandra Harbold, as well as choreography by Daniel Charon, sustain a perfect balance between fantasy and realism. Unison phrases of movement are used to convey a sense of solidarity and camaraderie among the bird-like dancers. Songs sung by Smith express the subtleties and nuances within relationships. Bashaun Williams stands out as a particularly compelling and charismatic part of the cast, as gifted an actor as he is a dancer.

Some elements in the production reveal that the target audience may be a lot younger than the adults who filled the seats on Friday night, such as the scenes that ask for audience participation and encourage us to repeat the simpler steps performed by the dancers. In some ways these moments connect to a theme of the show: our movements say a lot about our personalities and our attitudes, and perhaps by dancing together we can feel a sense of connection and belonging.

There are similar messages conveyed in the stories: “If you trust yourself, it will be okay in the end.” Or, “You can do anything you put your mind to.” Such statements of perseverance and hope reinforce the sense of dedication and joy communicated by the dancers. Their partnering sequences involve cartwheels and daredevil lifts, revealing how much trust and balance––physical and mental––goes into dancing. Their flocking conveys feelings of bonding and interdependence.

Other moments are hilarious, such as part of the book called “Running on the Wind,” by Dallas Graham and Meghan Waldron: “Sure I’m small, but so are poison dart frogs.” An added delight is listening to parts of this story in Spanish while projections on the screen share excerpts in English.

The final image of the dancers onstage as colorful pages from books flutter down from the sky evokes a feeling of wonder and magic: just as we can learn about people and places from the pages we read, we can also discover new relationships and ideas by engaging with one another.

Several times throughout the performance Smith asks the audience, “If you could tell the world a story, what story would you tell?” Like the performance itself, this question opens up possibilities to reframe and to animate aspects of our lives and our imaginations. And this may be an especially important message for younger audiences who come to see the production. The shenanigans of the dancers span from humorous to poignant, and like the authors who share their stories through the Red Fred Project, they are heartfelt, personal, and inspiring.

the live creature and ethereal things continues today, Saturday, February 2, at 1 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. at the Janet Quinney Lawson Capitol Theatre.

Kate Mattingly is an assistant professor of dance at the University of Utah. She has a doctoral degree in performance studies from UC Berkeley, and has had writing published in The New York Times, The Village Voice, Dance Research Journal, Dance magazine, and Pointe magazine, among others.

Repertory Dance Theatre: Emerge

Repertory Dance Theatre’s Emerge, which opened last night, is a series of little experiments, the stuff of which all good dances are made. Exemplary of a sense of play is company dancer Jaclyn Brown’s Trifle, in which she partners her non-dancer husband, Terry Brown. I didn’t see Jaclyn’s earlier work with her children, but I’ve seen many dances in this vein, from David Dorfman’s Family Project to Victoria Marks’ work with veterans. This trope can sometimes reframe the trained dancer, making them more interesting to watch. Occasionally, the tables are turned, and the so-called professionals are given a run for their money. 

Luckily both Browns are compelling performers and are even more compelling as a pair. Terry has a presence and talent unusual in the context of this shtick. Paired with Jaclyn’s comedic timing, this makes the piece worth watching both as pure choreography and as a study in what a dancer is or isn’t. The sharing of weight in Trifle evinces the listening required in a real life marriage. It’s refreshing to watch Jaclyn try to catch her husband off balance, and the simple motif of Terry squatting down as he mirrors his wife in traveling steps is humorous, endearing, and well-developed. For once, it’s the man who’s doing everything backwards, if not in heels.

MASC (part 2), by Dan Higgins, is perhaps the most ambitious piece of the evening, at least in terms of length. As the lights come up, painted white and corseted in gold, Higgins, Kaya Wolsey, and Micah Burkhardt swing their hips to a series of clubby tracks that mix electronic sounds, Afro-Latin drumming, and a disconcerting text about conquerors on the beach, pockets full of sand, and casual drug use. Is the commentary here meant to be about the history of colonization? (The performers appear to be white as well as being painted so.) Is some idea of sexual liberation at stake? What is all the unison about? MASC is amply rehearsed, but like its score, feels full of mixed messages.

In both MASC and artistic associate Nicholas Cendese’s Tsvey Fun a Min, I feel like the choreographers are trying to communicate something very specific with their costuming choices. And sadly, in both cases, that something totally eludes me. Cendese’s piece makes use of boisterous Yiddish songs by the Barry Sisters, whose music you might recognize from the TV series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. A fifties-era, ostensibly heterosexual couple gambols amiably around the stage in period garb. The man (Daniel Do) is in a dress and the woman (Megan O’Brien) is in a boyish pair of overalls. Here the reversal is straightforward. In MASC, all the make-up, latex, and swooping limbs of a Gaga dancer lost at Burning Man amount to a big question mark. In neither case can I figure out what the choice to queer the obvious costuming is supposed to do to the choreography. 

The highlight of the evening is Navigation, RDT artistic director Linda Smith’s solo for retiring dancer Efren Corado. Smith pieced together the solo with movement from some of the dozens of roles Corado has performed over the last six years. Corado nimbly samples the hairpin weight shifts of Limón and Cunningham, the exuberant footwork of Bill Evans, and much more that I couldn’t immediately place. All the while he navigates a grid of white Styrofoam boxes that cover the black marley floor. What we end up seeing is Corado’s nuance and endless reservoir of characters. He jumps, turns, and skitters, never once upsetting the take-out delivery boxes that mark out the arena. Rarely have I seen a solo so lovingly made for a specific performer. I’m not sure I could imagine anyone but Efren performing this dance. Like the chairs in Pina Bausch’s Cafe Müller, the boxes add a special absurdity to Corado’s gambit through the thousand and one choreographers. It’s like watching your favorite fictional detective (for me, Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect) give a final soliloquy while driving her car through an obstacle course. And the end, well, I won’t spoil it for you if you haven’t seen it yet…

Repertory Dance Theatre’s Emerge continues today, Saturday, January 5, with a matinee at 2 p.m. and a final evening performance at 7:30 p.m.

Samuel Hanson was born in Salt Lake City in 1988. His recent work has been seen in NYC at Triskelion, the Reckless Theater, Weis Acres, Green Space, Danspace through the Movement Research Festival, and in Utah at the Rose Wagner Center and in the Mudson performance series. He has performed for an eclectic mix of artists including Isabel Lewis, Yvonne Meier, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Mina Nishimura, Alexandra Pirici, Ashley Anderson, Diana Crum, and Yve Laris Cohen.