Onstage Ogden: Dance Theatre of Harlem

This year marks Dance Theatre of Harlem’s fiftieth anniversary. The company was founded by the inimitable New York City Ballet principal dancer Arthur Mitchell alongside ballet teacher Karel Shook at the height of the civil rights movement, in 1969, shortly after the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Mitchell cultivated his own dream of creating a platform for Black ballet dancers in the New York neighborhood of Harlem. That dream is still alive today, as seen in the affirming presence of a large company of people of color both excelling at and innovating within the Eurocentric art form of ballet, under the direction of those with a shared experience. This is not a white-run company that merely represents diversity in the form of a token person of color; Dance Theatre of Harlem (DTH) is both embodied and directed by a majority of people that may see themselves in each other. 

This performance reflected upon the company’s 50-year lifespan to date, and additionally memorialized the life of Arthur Mitchell, who passed away last September at the age of 84. The bereft dancers did not appear to let the passing of their fearless leader dim their dancing; rather, they performed innovative choreography with sincere confidence and beauty. 

Nothing compares to dancing in the processing of grief. I write this with the utmost respect for pillars of dance who have passed: I would rejoice (albeit with sadness) to experience only performances by those paying homage to the deceased for the rest of my life. It is so humbling to witness the transformation of complicated feelings into movement. In a way, I suppose most dances could be viewed through the lens of “The Body Keeps the Score”; the way in which bodies can remember teachers and ancestors whose bodies made and influenced them in a continuum of memory stored in bones. 

It was an honor and a pleasure to see DTH in Ogden, Utah, of all places. The show began with the most classical piece of the night, Orange, which featured costumes and lighting to match, and was choreographed by Stanton Welch, the Australian artistic director of Houston Ballet. Although the piece was very traditional, there were delightfully unexpected outgrowths, such as the swift wobbling of heads while dancers bourréed across the stage. Here, their heads, normally instructed to “float above the body” as if nothing was happening down below, mirrored the movement of the feet, that carried on in a more classical way. This combination seemed to caricaturize the very act of ballet, as if the dancers were really bobble-head ballerinas. The bobble-headedness, however, was filled out by intricate duets, including a kiss on the cheek from a male to a female dancer that yet again made me think that the piece was playfully highlighting tropes of ballet through the abstract premise of the color orange. 

The second piece, Change, channeled the past with the dancers - Lindsey Donnell, Daphne Lee, and Ingrid Silva -  “clothed in the legacy of their predecessors,” wearing leotards constructed as “a creative patchwork of tights worn by former dancers with Dance Theatre of Harlem.” The past was also channeled through the labyrinthine choreography by Dianne McIntyre, who was “inspired by women - Black, brown, and beige - who have refashioned the neighborhood, the country, the world, through their vision, courage, and endurance,” whom she calls “warriors for change.” The dancers moved beautifully together, running in place, dangling their arms out as if their bodies were crucified, crouching down and mapping out points on the ground, and dancing with grace through it all. Each dancer performed a solo with movement that was sometimes shared by the piece at large. The choreography featured a variety of styles, that were not just thrown in for the sake of contemporizing ballet; the styles referenced the women that the movement was inspired by with a depth of character and understanding. This piece had the reverence and gravity of a grand finale, which it could have been. 

This Bitter Earth was performed by Crystal Serrano and Choong Hoon Lee and featured a poignant mashup of Max Richter’s minimalist composition “On the Nature of Daylight” and Dinah Washington’s soulful rendition of the titular song. Choreographer Christopher Wheeldon‘s robotic duet read impressively, as though the dancers were actually programmed to dance together and with no one else. It was romantic in a sleek and silvery way. Lee often ducked under Serrano’s outstretched arm or leg, even mid-rond de jambe. It was only at the very end that the dancers crumpled into each other’s arms while Lee carried Serrano offstage, swiftly, before too much of their human nature was glimpsed. 

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa choreographed the grand finale, Balamouk, that truly was grand, if not a bit disjointed stylistically as well as compositionally. The large cast of eleven dancers magnified gestural movement, crossing arms over chests and flicking hands out to the side, jumping up and out in close proximity; I could have watched this tight grouping of people do these moves indefinitely. However, the dance proceeded to expand outward from the tight clump and oscillated from upbeat music and choreography to ominous music with dancing done amidst fog, then back to dancing exuberantly; then to a multi-minute sequence featuring one woman being lifted and pointing her finger out in front of her, that sequence culminating in a male dancer being pointed at by three female dancers. I was not sure what to make of this dance other than the stress I associate with “call-out culture,” as it went from a convivial tone in a group to a more accusatory mode of incisive, yet haphazard, pointing fingers. 

Each duet throughout the performance was juxtaposed in my mind with the famous pas de deux from George Balanchine’s Agon, which Arthur Mitchell famously performed with Diana Adams in 1957. The intensity of that duet, featuring a Black man and a white woman, was not unnoticed during a time when white supremacy was often enacted in the form of lynching and other more “grassroots” atrocities fueled by Jim Crow policies. I compare this past brutality to a slightly different yet still institutionalized form of white supremacy that exists today, where Jim Crow policies may be flagrantly masked as a war on drugs or terrorism or “cleaning up the streets,” and “grassroots” white supremacists are just as violent as those in the past, further emboldened by White House leadership. 

Mitchell stated that Agon was an exploration of “my skin color against hers,” and I would wager that it was also an act of extreme bravery on Mitchell’s part. The duet was performed just two years after Emmett Till was brutally murdered for having a forgettable interaction with a white woman, which was spun as a violation of how Black men were “supposed to” interact with white women. At the time, this kind of tragedy was not uncommon; parallels must also be drawn to how justice plays out, or doesn’t, today. 

It seems like it could be both culturally and personally healing for the dancers of DTH to perform duets as themselves, or as living beings, in addition to being representations of Black and white people in conflict. There is more to existence than that conflict, though, and these dancers seem to celebrate that fact in their practice. In his time, Arthur Mitchell was both the first African-American dancer in a major ballet company (New York City Ballet) as well as the first African-American principal dancer. His work, that not only made room for people of color in ballet but vindicated and innovated the art form, is continued by the current artists of Dance Theatre of Harlem. The company will continue to carry on, and will change, just as this program’s piece by that name did so powerfully. 

Emmett Wilson/Ew, the dancer is a body-based artist from Houston. They live in Salt Lake City, doing strange acts at drag shows, making and teaching dance for a variety of contexts, and working as a community garden coordinator. Their practice hinges upon vulnerability and resource-sharing to offer care and support to sustain community.

Ballet West II: Snow White

Snow White was one of the classic fairytales that I had never seen performed as a ballet, and my introduction to this production was sweet and pleasant. Ballet West II, joined by students from the professional training division and the Ballet West Academy, brought the story to the stage as the fourth installment of the company’s Family Classics series. Through this platform, ballets are edited down to approximately 90 minutes and feature lively narrations created with young audiences in mind. The previous three installments must have been very well liked; the Capitol Theatre was buzzing with youthful energy thirty minutes before the doors to the house were even open. 

The story is one you know well and this version mostly stuck to it, but with less emphasis on Snow White’s small seven friends and more courtly scenes than the Disney version. Clad in luscious costumes in shades of teal and gold, the court dancers grabbed my attention from the moment they appeared on stage. The couples confidently and elegantly waltzed around each other in sweeping unison, eliciting a large applause for an impressive lift during the finale. 

A requisite of fairytale ballets, the forest creatures were a crowd favorite and received many exclamations of “aww” each time they appeared on stage. The rabbit in particular had a fan base that grew with each double tap of its foot and shimmy of its hips. 

Snow White herself was as fresh-faced and unassuming as you’d expect a fairytale maiden to be. She had lovely stage presence and yet was eclipsed by the strong demeanor of the evil queen. Costumed in a stunning dark green gown (to represent her envy towards her stepdaughter, no doubt), the evil queen convincingly maintained the posture of a vain villain throughout the performance. Even from the balcony, I could see her lifted chin and sense her side eye as she snubbed each character she passed.

Two men guised as the Brothers Grimm comically pantomimed to the recorded narrations, which played before each scene was performed. I appreciated this duo and applaud their ability to elicit laughter from the children in the audience (as well as several giggles from myself - a critic of anything on the verge of hokey). What I loved most about this structure of short narrations between each scene was that the pantomime of the Brothers Grimm matched the pantomime of the dancers who appeared on stage afterwards. It was a very clever way to help children (or older audience members who aren’t familiar with dance) understand how movement can be used as a form of language. 

As a childless patron, I was a bit skeptical about attending such a family-oriented event and wondered how and/or if the content would be adjusted for its intended audience. I enjoyed the performance, and would argue that a reduced length and plot-clarifying narrations are a great way to get new audiences, regardless of age, interested in attending the ballet. 

Alexandra Barbier is a dance artist and performance-maker. She is a modern dance MFA candidate at the University of Utah and has taught courses on creative process, queer performance art, and dance in culture.

UtahPresents: Axis Dance Company

Axis Dance Company aims to change the face of dance and disability. The company of disabled and non-disabled dancers recently spent a week at the University of Utah, hosting master classes and discussions on fostering inclusivity within dance pedagogy and performance. On November 8, the company performed at Kingsbury Hall as part of the UtahPresents season.

The first act of the performance consisted of two dances, both of which employed familiar movement vocabularies of contemporary dance. Featuring one dancer in a wheelchair and two bipedal dancers, one of whom was missing an arm, the opening trio had an easeful energy and was full of interplay between softness and strength. Clad in gold-fringed costumes reminiscent of something Tina Turner would wear in her heyday, the three spun and wheeled around each other to “Clapping Music” by Steve Reich and a violin solo by Bach. The dancer in the wheelchair often juxtaposed the fluidity of the rolling chair by making very sharp and angular arm movements in the air. They spun the chair in several rotations as the other two dancers did pirouettes that transitioned to the ground for shoulder rolls and leggy floorwork. The floorwork dancers made a pattern on the ground with their legs that matched the other dancer’s arm movements in space. The juxtaposition of the movement vocabulary with the music and costume selections was a little curious, but the choreographer’s message was clear: all dancers can express the same movement intention, even if it’s through the use of differing body parts and/or with the help of an extra apparatus.

The second dance, a work for all six company members, displayed the dancers’ extreme athleticism. They dove through the air and performed flips on the ground and over wheelchairs. They formed a series of well-balanced tableaux of varying levels – taking advantage of the different levels of space that their bodies occupied – in which they performed strong, quick gestures with their upper bodies. The energy and movement quality shifted unexpectedly towards the end of the piece and we were gifted two intimate duets that had the sensual styling of Jiri Kylian’s Petit Mort or Alejandro Cerrudo’s Second to Last. Both duets were comprised of one partner in a wheelchair and one bipedal partner, each of whom took turns sensuously weaving around each other. Given that our society often de-sexualizes disabled bodies and questions the capabilities within interabled relationships, these duets were extremely insightful and were the highlight of the piece.

During intermission, I wondered about inclusivity in codified techniques (phrasing taken from company member Lani Dickinson’s biography). Do codified movements retain their names as their mechanics are adjusted for disabled bodies? Is there terminology for movements created for and by disabled dancers that non-disabled dancers in non-inclusive companies aren’t aware of? My thoughts were interrupted as the house music got louder and the lights in the house went dim. Not the typical transition from intermission into a second act, but fitting for what came next – a dance-theater piece that explored homelessness through a surrealist lens. 

The piece’s opening image was a collection of cleverly worded cardboard signs, characteristic of those held by homeless individuals in hopes of receiving aid from passersby. The dancers languidly entered and exited the stage in mismatched costume pieces, seeming dejected yet full of whimsy all at once. It eventually became clear that we were witnessing the character of Alice slip in and out of her Wonderland and also the poverty-stricken streets of California. The most striking image was a dancer dressed in camouflage with a sleeping bag around their legs and a cigarette hanging from their lips doing the worm with Alice seated on their back – a clever parallel between a homeless veteran and the hookah-smoking caterpillar from Lewis Carroll’s story. In comparison to the first two dances, this piece relied less on familiar dance vocabulary and there were fewer textbook choreographic structures. It instead leaned heavily into the dancers’ pedestrian or vernacular movements, and used space in a more natural and organic way. With this change in approach, I saw a company of people, momentarily forgetting that “disabled” and “non-disabled” were ever necessary distinctions amongst them. Which brings me to my final thoughts:  

I support fighting for inclusivity in systems that inherently (though not always maliciously) exclude marginalized groups, but I also value working outside of those systems. We can ask to be a part of systems that weren’t created with us in mind, or we can create new systems that better serve us. I think the first two dances did the former, while the final dance did the latter. It was nice to see a range of bodies participate in highly stylized forms that have historically been exclusionary. However, it was exciting to imagine how dance can transform if companies like Axis forge forward with new ideas of what dancing bodies can do and look like, instead of attempting to fit all bodies and abilities into previously formed models. 

Alexandra Barbier is a dance artist and performance-maker. She is a modern dance MFA candidate at the University of Utah and has taught courses on creative process, queer performance art, and dance in culture.

Ballet West: Balanchine's Ballets Russes

For the premiere of its 56th season, Ballet West is presenting a mammoth historic revival that also offers - and asks of audiences - something acutely new and different. Assembled for the 110th anniversary of the iconic and incomparable company the Ballets Russes, the bill includes three of George Balanchine’s oldest works, created during the years he spent experimenting with the Ballets Russes under the direction of Sergei Diaghilev: Le Chant du Rossignol, Apollo, and The Prodigal Son. 

The production, Balanchine’s Ballets Russes, is an impressive window to the inception of tools, images, and themes Balanchine would carry into the work he did throughout his lifetime. All of the flexion, angularity, layering of bodies, and familiar archetypes were evidently present even then, as were the first inklings of an ethos that would someday define an entirely new approach to ballet. These three one-act ballets are also an incredible view into the rich collaborative relationships fostered by the Ballets Russes, with opulent intricate costumes designed by Henri Matisse and Georges Rouault and scores by Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Prokofiev. 

Ballet West’s casting for each ballet was gorgeous and precise. I especially enjoyed Adrian Fry, Katie Critchlow, Sayaka Ohtaki, and Beckanne Sisk in Apollo, and Hadriel Diniz opposite Katlyn Addison’s steely, nuanced Siren in The Prodigal Son. 

The three ballets were presented sequentially, in the order of their creation dates, which allowed the audience to trace the progressing results of Balanchine’s experimentation and collaboration. While each ballet was a stunning and cohesive achievement in its own right, each is now also made exponentially more powerful and relevant both through juxtaposition and a new ethos of presentation. 

The sparks that made this program truly noteworthy were fueled by its endeavor to be not just a series of beautiful ballets rich in legacy and refined in craft but also an ambitious, eye-opening, and socially conscious course of study. 

A bulk of this attention fell to the revival of Le Chant du Rossignol. Bringing back this lost piece of history demanded a precise and nuanced balancing act to recover its essential charm and beauty, as well as demonstrate its influence as Balanchine’s first ever work for the Ballets Russes – without the undertones of racist exoticism that infused the original. 

Addressing the racial and cultural issues at play with even more up-front and earnest clarity than during the redux of The Nutcracker’s Chinese divertissement last year, Ballet West took an approach involving partnerships with multiple specialist and community collaborators to effect this modernized revival. The process was three-fold: a project of in-depth research and dialogue; concrete changes made in response to that work; and a campaign to provide enrichment, transparency, and accessibility for audiences. 

Following extensive research done by the restaging team of Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer, who recovered existing knowledge of the original production, Ballet West invited leaders of the Asian American community, including Phil Chan, of the organization Final Bow for Yellow Face, and local arts advocate Max Chang, into the rehearsal process to begin a dialogue and develop a path forward. This was followed by further discussions with and feedback from local schools and the general public, prior to opening weekend. 

It was wonderful to see Ballet West show up for this challenging, complex, and necessary conversation. It is also of utmost importance to note that Ballet West is responding to a pressure and cultural shift in the landscape that has been ongoing for some time now. The momentum begun and directed by dancers of color like Chan and his partner at Final Bow for Yellow Face, the New York City Ballet dancer Georgina Pazcoguin, may be attributed to the force now pushing companies across the country to expel outdated, harmful, or appropriative choreography in recent years. Final Bow’s website features a slew of information and resources for dancemakers looking to make more responsible choices and a pledge “committing [the signer] to speak up against Yellowface on our stages, and work[ing] to create more positive and nuanced representations of Asians in ballet.” Chan and Pazcoguin advise performing organizations in their re-staging of classic works, and, since 2017, have succeeded in gaining the pledges of nearly all major American ballet companies (information taken from the website and Instagram account of Final Bow for Yellowface). 

In Le Chant du Rossignol, these efforts culminated in the elimination of choices in costuming, choreography, and characterization that were deemed the most problematic. Ballet West has enumerated several of these changes, including the choreographic replacement of caricatured hand movement, shuffling of the feet, and bobbing of heads, and also specific changes to the makeup design for all characters to eliminate traces of yellowface and exaggerated exoticism. 

To me, these changes certainly appeared to result in a more respectful and educated perspective in performance. It felt less uncomfortable and upsetting than similar ballet productions I’ve attended previously. But, not being a member of the Chinese or Chinese American communities, it’s really not for me to say whether they went far enough in alleviating the damaging insensitivities of the past. I sincerely hope they did, so that those communities may feel seen, welcome, and respected. 

The final key to making these efforts truly effective was in the transparency and resources that Ballet West offered their audience to create an experience that far surpassed mere entertainment; the audience was expected to learn something. A program note four times longer than any I’ve seen before, from artistic director Adam Sklute, doubled as a history lesson; a letter from restagers Hodson and Archer about their process gave insight into their arduous treasure hunt, complete with juicy details from mythic figures of ballet past; multiple panels in the lobby covered costume design, reconstruction in conversation with representation, and the history of Chinese railroad workers here in Utah; and a letter from Phil Chan of Final Bow for Yellowface articulated the need for these kinds of changes and his experience with the production process (there was also a pre-performance lecture that I sadly couldn’t make it to). Many of these resources are also available online - they are fascinating and I would highly encourage anyone to make time to peruse them and then to visit yellowface.org for further context on the critical work that Final Bow for Yellowface is doing. 

It is incredible and exciting to see a company like Ballet West digging into and committing itself to a journey down this road. This performance was a very far cry from the experience I had just three years ago reviewing their production of Madame Butterfly for this publication, and I am grateful for the many voices inside of and outside this company that are pushing them into a new and better future. 

I hope to count on Ballet West’s future endeavors (looking at you, Nutcracker Arabian and sundry gendered stereotypes) following suit – no longer feeling indebted to a self-serving and self-destructing nostalgia but instead examining, creating, and re-creating with respect, accountability, and transparency. This willingness to adapt without preciousness and engage audiences and communities in meaningful conversation will be a vital new way for Ballet West to stoke fresh interest, provide leadership in the arts, and keep its legacy alive and vibrant. 

Ballet West’s Balanchine’s Ballets Russes continues through Saturday, November 2, with a matinee at 2 p.m. and a final performance at 7:30 p.m.

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.

SALT: When I am Lost, we Speak in Flowers

SALT Contemporary Dance premiered co-founder and artistic director Joni McDonald’s When I am Lost, we Speak in Flowers, beginning a three-weekend run at the Eccles Theater’s Regent Street Black Box. The audience entered on the heels of one of the last warm evenings of the year, through the still, quiet lobby, to join a sparse, quiet crowd. The performing area was littered with the heads of flowers and backed by two sections of chain link fencing as well as the theater’s tall glass windows that look out on the McCarthy Plaza. Everything was bathed in a glowing blue, the same as that used perennially by photographer Chad Kirkland for his gorgeous portraits of SALT company members. 

Hot tip while I’m setting the scene: anyone coming to see this show will be treated to a 2-for-1 complementary (and complimentary) art viewing – through the back windows, the recently installed Pages of Salt is visible from an eye-level perspective. The massive wave of panels by artist Ned Kahn had its grand opening just days ago, through the Salt Lake City Arts Council’s Public Art Program. 

SALT’s six dancers began seated in a line in front of all this with their backs to us as McDonald, who danced in as well choreographed this concert, walked in with a large bundle of additional flowers. The sound of chatter from a crowded room came over the speakers as they began. The group moved smoothly in unison, gliding through gesture and a series of overhead lifts with an unshakably sedated calm as the intensity of the recorded voices peaked and gave way to a humming choral composition by Andrew Maxfield. 

The structure turned here to a long series of duets aimed at “find[ing] the collateral beauty inside the struggle.” Most duets suggested the processing of trauma by, against, and through the dynamics of isolated romantic heterosexual couples in traditionally gendered archetypes. We saw a slowly drained and forsaken woman and her wandering-eyed man; the endlessly supportive muse and a man who just couldn’t stand up on his own; puppet-stringed tangling; a moment of abrupt, unexamined violence; and a group of women consoling one another, each subsequent duet laundered through the hammered smoothness of the company’s trademark movement style. 

It’s a smoothness that, purely as a quality of movement, is clearly desirable and beautiful to watch. The dancers of SALT are trained to move like an unstoppable liquid force, technically brilliant, pouring seamlessly into each successive and intricate phrase. At times, though, it is an aesthetic preference that feels a little bit lost - not finding its purpose within the narrative it constructs, steering content toward its own prefigured destination rather than the other way around. 

The most memorable scene of the evening came during a solo by Aubry Mason. Her portrayal of a long slide into a looping snare of dissociative hallucinations and paranoia was an extremely affecting and nuanced performance. Her movement spun like an uncoiling chain, and her interpretation both employed and transformed the smooth, seamless liquidity, unraveling it and filing it to a point. 

When I am Lost, we Speak in Flowers portrayed stories of trauma and support, was danced beautifully, and ended with a long, held gaze at what the dancers constructed from the eponymous flowers. The message was simple and total: from tragedy comes beauty. Beauty is the goal, comfort in others is the way. What was less clear is how SALT may feel about the operational particulars of its promise, or premise – why or how “beauty” grows, what finding it may do, what it doesn’t do, what does or does not count for it, what happens when it can’t be found, who gets to find it, what else can come in its place, and last but not least, why is it what we look for? 

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.