Giselle for a Twenty-first-century #MeToo audience?

Ballet West's Capitol Theater presentation of Giselle in February was a new re-staging of a familiar ballet classic that was well received by an appreciative audience. The sets, costumes, music, and dancing all showed the high level of artistry and technical perfection that is expected of a well-established professional company. The challenge with performing such a well-known work is that the audience knows exactly what the ballet "should" look like, and many are watching for flaws at critical steps or for deviations from their favorite choreography. Sayaka Ohtaki, who performed to a nearly full house on Saturday night, was totally believable in the title role. I could expand my descriptions about the nuances of specific dancers in a specific show, but this information is ephemeral. Instead I would like to explore the deeper meaning of this tale of love, betrayal, vengeance, and forgiveness in the context of contemporary issues.

There have been many stagings of Giselle, and a long tradition of modifying the basic story to add new meaning and movement to the familiar score and choreography. Some presentations are safe tributes to tradition while others have been unconventional and notorious. There are many ways to present the characters. The innocent maiden, Giselle, can die from a weak heart, or by suicide with Albrect's sword. Giselle can save her unfaithful lover Albrect by drawing him to the cross on her grave, implying that the willies are satanic, or by confronting the willi Queen Myrthe in a display of personal strength and determination. Artistic Director Adam Sklute's program notes state that he "wanted the characters in this decidedly nineteenth-century ballet to speak to a twenty-first-century audience." So what emotional impressions did the new Ballet West version create for me?

I always feel that Hilarion, the humble village boy, is far more virtuous than Albrect and the story makes him a victim of injustice. He is sincere in his love for Giselle, is kind to her mother, and his only offense is to speak truth to power by publicly calling out Albrect's deception. In this version, Giselle kills herself with Hilarion's knife making him, not Albrect, the proximal contributor to her death. Albrect benefits from upper class wealth and privilege, which allows him to betray both his fiancée Bathilda and the emotionally vulnerable village girl. Does this sound familiar? The character acting by the cast was ambiguous, it could have conveyed stronger moral and social messages. How did the villagers feel about Hilarion's presenting the evidence of the matching design on Albrect's sword and noble's hunting horn? The Duke's demeanor when leading his court and retainers off stage conveyed only the faintest hint of disapproval of his son's behavior.

Ballet West artists, photo by Beau Pearson

Hilarion's final dance was shorter and less dynamic than other versions that I have seen. It ended with him being pushed by two willis and stumbling off stage, rather than being forcibly and convincingly thrown into the lake. Why does Giselle save Albrect, and not Hilarion? Is this a legacy of structuring the dramatic plot to appeal to the upper-class patrons? Could artistic license have allowed Hilarion to ultimately escape and survive while still retaining the powerful leaps, turns, and collapsing to the floor depicting punishment by the willis?

Both revenge on the part of queen Myrthe and the willis and the female empowerment of Giselle were effectively portrayed in Act II. Giselle bravely positioned herself to protect Albrect and pleaded for him. An overall message of forgiveness was conveyed when Giselle handed Albrect a flower from behind the scrim representing the tombstone on her grave.

Should the twenty-first-century message be that a privileged man deserves to be forgiven for misleading his lover? Wilfred, Albrect's squire, helps in the deception and reminded me of the enablers of contemporary philanderers. The Ballet West program notes create sympathy for Albrect's betrayal of Bathilde by referring to an arranged marriage of noble duty, an anachronism today and never a justification for prosperous men to prey on vulnerable girls. Alternative endings to the ballet have shown Albrect in total despair after realizing the consequences of his actions, doing his noble duty and reconciling with Bathilde, or simply collapsed on the floor ambiguously as the willis fade away. Each choice of ending reinforces a different message. I believe that Mr. Sklute played it safe with a carefully staged presentation that exhibited the company's skills and acknowledged contemporary questions while not straying too far from long-standing conventions and tradition. I was able enjoy an exquisite performance and left the theater with much to think about.

John Veranth has been a mainstay of Salt Lake City’s dance community for many years as theatergoer, supporter, maker and performer. John and his wife Martha Veranth both perform and take class in various contexts around town and can be seen at many performances in the audience. John has danced character roles in various local ballet productions as well as collaborating on more experimental projects. He was recently seen in Alexandra Barbier’s experimental evening Take This With You at Commonwealth Studios.

UtahPresents' brings Guangdong Dance Company

Dear dance lover,

Whether or not you attended Guangdong Modern Dance Company’s Beyond Calligraphy at Kingsbury Hall on Tuesday, I have some questions for you regarding this idea of modern dance. It is inevitable that upon entering a lyft to be chauffeured to my classes at the U’s Marriott Center for Dance (an embarrassingly frequent amount of times because of my complicated relationship with time… more on that later), the driver will ask what kind of dance I do. When I respond with “modern dance,” I’m often bombarded with a litany of questions that I can never find quite the right answers to (fellow non-driving mods, I know you can relate). The most common being, “What does that look like?” The most concise answer I can give, after I’ve kicked myself for not just answering “ballet” to their initial query, is “a lot of things, it depends on the choreographer.” 

To Guangdong’s choreographer Liu Qi, modern dance looks angular, precise, and deliberate. It flows from one shape into another at a pace that’s slow enough that we see almost every detail of the transition, but also quick enough that the entire body of the dancer remains in constant motion. Incredibly strong with extreme attention to detail, the choreography increased in speed and dynamism from one piece to the next. This was true for the first act, at least, which included five dances that were “developed from the stylistic essence of different Chinese scripts” according to the program. I attended the pre-show calligraphy lecture and demonstration with calligraphy master Xie Feidong, hoping to glean insight into the creative process for this performance. Calligraphy’s influence on the movement was evident after Mr. Feidong’s presentation, which detailed the development of several characters over centuries, and I even left with a calligraphic creation of my own – the word “happiness” on red paper embellished with golden threads. Oh how I love a keepsake!

courtesy of UtahPresents

The second act was quite a contrast to the first, consisting of only one piece that moved entirely in slow motion. It spoke to my sloth sensibilities, the ones that cause me to miss the bus and rely on lyft as I mentioned earlier. As a self-identifying human sloth, I can tell you that there is a lot of pressure to speed up, get on with it, move at a more “productive” pace. Ten minutes into this piece, I sensed some of the audience wishing the same from the dancers. Truth be told, I cannot relay any of the choreography of this act to you. The dancers moved so slowly that I stopped looking at them. It felt okay to do this, like I had received permission to ignore the details of the movement and focus instead on the trance-like ambiance that was created by the combination of slow moving bodies, instrumental music, and video projections of serene nature scenes. I allowed myself to get lost in time and only occasionally snapped back to ponder if the constantly evolving video projections, which reminded me too much of a computer’s default nature screensaver, were significant landscapes of China or random stock images.  

Several of my friends in attendance expressed that they were expecting the performance to be better, one of which said that the movement seemed more balletic than modern. I felt conflicted in this conversation. Judging the performance as better or worse, good or bad didn’t seem relevant. It felt more important to acknowledge that we had just seen Chinese Modern Dance, which will inevitably differ from American Modern Dance. I’m currently gathering, through dialogue about dance pedagogy across the country, that Chinese perspectives and histories (and really, many other perspectives and histories that aren’t Eurocentric) are rarely shared in dance programs. Guangdong was established in 1991, approximately 90 years after the American claim on modern dance. How do we observe and study what “modern” means across the globe, acknowledging that cultures shift on different timelines because of different societal needs and demands, without imposing our Western/Eurocentric sensibilities? As eclectic as modern dance is, and as hard as we claim it is to concisely define, why are we so quick to discredit other cultural approaches to modern dance as, indeed, modern? Kudos to Brooke Horejsi and Utah Presents for sharing this company with us, and may we continue to expose our Salt Lake dance community to culturally diverse presentations and interpretations of modern dance. 

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.

Ririe Woodbury's Allegory

The phrase “a show for all ages” often means one should hope there are many children in the audience. The reactions of the young crowd for whom it is intended is part of enjoying the experience of family-oriented dance and theater. There were some children in the Capitol Theater for Friday night’s return of The Live Creature & Ethereal Things, though not many.  But this show did not hinge on their laughter and engagement for its emotional substance.  Ethereal Things is not so much storytelling for kids as a collaborative synthesis of the stories of kids. The show’s investment in the power and validity of kids’ stories truly presents an all-ages event. 

Ririe-Woodbury dancers performing at a school

Ethereal Things was created last season in partnership with Flying Bobcat Theatrical Laboratory and the Red Fred Project, which makes books with children living in extraordinary circumstances (rare diseases, critical illnesses, life-limiting situations) from the stories they wish to tell. This centering of the children’s perspectives, of their stories as they want to tell them, is the firm foundation of this imaginative show.   

The show opens on a stage with a narrator (the charismatic guest performer Tito Livas) and a single hospital bed. He introduces us to una niña. This is the first of many thoughtful substitutions of Spanish cognates or low-context words and phrases, the meaning of which is easily guessed by speakers of English, creating fluid and enriching code-switching. This niña is danced with total joy and commitment by Melissa Rochelle Younker. We are presented with the hospital bed because it is a real and important part of her world. But right away, the narrator presents a simple and beautiful exposition: he “listened to her, she became a bird, here we go.” Melissa transforms into the Purple Pájaro. There is ample space and time given to her total embodiment of a bird discovering the joy of flight, which is the perfect precedent for the remainder of the show.  

courtesy of Ririe-Woodbury

The full company joins this pájaro púrpura onstage with colors – and stories – of their own.  In an evening of works collectively titled Allegory, this is perfectly simple and apt. Together, they form a lively bird crew – The Jolly Troop. Some particularly inspiring moments from this cohort include a series of turning lifts beneath the moon and a lovely silhouette against the backdrop made by craftily wielding flashlights. Their costumes shared a visual cohesion, in fitted feather-print, but reflected individual character with whimsical puffs, hats, sleeves, and frills. Similarly, the dancers of Ririe-Woodbury can dance a perfectly unison ensemble, and are stunningly unique and distinct in their individual strengths. 

Ethereal Things showcases this quality. It relies on it. Although the narrator plays a critical role guiding the flow of the story, there is very little actual narrative. The story lives and breathes with the individual characterizations expressed in movement. Megan McCarthy’s blue bird is serene and elastic, and charmingly irked by the others. Brian Nelson’s sprightly yellow bird and Bashaun Williams’ cheekily grinning, meticulously-ticking red bird dance a mejores amigos/best friends section together to appreciative laughter. Company newcomer Nicholas Jurica doubles as a hilarious can-canning bad bird, which plays especially well off of bubbly Parisian orange bird Dominica Greene. We lose Melissa’s character at the end, with the simple but elegant device of a flight away up the theater aisle. It is poignant and understated.  It remains a show respecting the individual child, their interactions with others and their world, and their vibrant imaginations.

The premiere of Aberrations of Light following the intermission offered the tonal and structural counterpoint of a darkly pensive work. The video projections on the forward scrim featured somber abstractions of lines and nebulae against the dimly lit stage. The costuming was tasteful, distinguishing the company and talented guest dancers from Utah Valley University with appropriate subtlety. The movement was moody but not muted. Visual interest and the craft of staging a larger corps sustained the piece. It meandered ephemerally like the galactic dust and extremes of scale the projections invoked, but left the viewer with a solid impression of style and tone. Allegory seems like curious programming in featuring two such divergent works. But the breadth and distinction certainly made for an expansive experience.

Nora Price is a Milwaukee native living and working in Salt Lake City. She can be seen performing with Durian Durian, an art band that combines post-punk music and contemporary dance.

Repertory Dance Theatre: Emerge

This past weekend, Repertory Dance Theatre presented its fourth annual Emerge program, a collection of works choreographed by company dancers and staff. I appreciated that no unifying theme was forced on the show, so that each piece was free to be what it was.

The evening opened with “Indebted,” choreographed by RDT member Jaclyn Brown in collaboration with the performer, Angela Banchero-Kelleher. This understated piece featured gorgeous lighting and a regal yet simple feel.

“This Is What It Feels Like,” choreographed by company member Daniel Do and Mar Undag in collaboration with dancers Morgan Phillips and Nicole Smith, featured alternating solos and duets. The dancers moved with matching stylization, which was especially enjoyable to watch during a brief section of unison choreography. 

Choreographed by company member Lauren Curley in collaboration with performer Mikaela Papasodero, “Soliloquy” demonstrated impressive navigation of floorwork with a full long skirt, and lovely moments of uplifted posture and gaze.

I loved the flow of overlapping parts and the contrast of fast and slow movement in the group piece “Proto,” choreographed by RDT artistic associate Nicholas Cendese and dancers. Within the group, partnering between company members Megan O’Brien and Jonathan Kim stood out to me as feeling both natural and interesting, and I appreciated that one of their sequences together was performed twice within the work with different directional orientations each time.

“I… Me… We” was a delightful piece choreographed by company member Dan Higgins, who also performed spoken word live alongside the solo danced by Morgan Phillips. The vibe was generally silly, and the movement was floppy and weird in the best way – I imagine it would be fun to perform. Through eye contact and action-reaction pairs, there was a nice connection between dancer and speaker/choreographer, as if they were trying to figure something out together but not taking it too seriously and finding amusement in the idea that they weren’t really sure of whatever it was they were exploring.

“femme.” featured beautiful and well-rehearsed partnering between dancer/choreographers Ursula Perry (of RDT) and Laja Field. I interpreted the piece to be about female friendships until a friend pointed out that the title is a word that refers to an aesthetic presentation by a lesbian that fits into society’s typical conception of a feminine look.

After a brief intermission, we saw “Trick Mirror,” choreographed by RDT dancer and education associate Megan O’Brien in collaboration with the four dancers. The part of this work that I enjoyed most was the end, the dancers lip-syncing exaggeratedly to The Bee Gees while facing the audience at the front of the stage – I’m not sure what it had to do with the rest of the piece, but it made me smile.

“Trapped” (1974) by former RDT member Lynne Wimmer was well-performed by Tiana Lovett. I loved the small, sharp movements at the beginning, Lovett’s amazing leg extensions, the grand use of space, and how Lovett seemed to break out of her trap by the end of the piece.

Comparatively, “until you are no more,” by company dancer Jonathan Kim, was much less clear in its theme. For me, the most distinct and memorable part of this piece was a simple yet effective silhouette of purposeful walking, from the downstage to upstage at the beginning of the piece, and from upstage to downstage at the end.

The program ended with “The Hours,” directed and structured by Cendese with choreography and performance by twelve dance educators. This piece got exciting during a transition where three benches, which had been stationary for the first part, were creatively moved and interacted with – I would have loved to see this section extended with more choreographic exploration of this concept. Then the benches were placed in three rows and the dancers sat facing the audience like a congregation in church pews, and from there performed a very satisfying series of movement in canon.

Within the otherwise very professional presentation, I was distracted by the amount of backstage noise throughout, including multiple instances of doors closing, cast conversations, and, once, what sounded like keys being dropped. 

Overall, Emerge presented beautiful dancing alongside choreographic talent, coming together in a likeable show. I think it’s wonderful that RDT offers this opportunity for their dancers and staff to both create and share their creations. 

Kendall Fischer is the artistic director of Myriad Dance Company, and has enjoyed performing opportunities with Voodoo Productions, SBDance, Municipal Ballet Co., and La Rouge Entertainment, among others. Her choreography has been performed by Myriad, Municipal Ballet, and at Creator's Grid, and her dance film project “Breathing Sky” received the 2017 Alfred Lambourne Movement prize.

SONDERimmersive: Thank You Theobromine

SONDERimmersive’s Thank You Theobromine, in collaboration with The Chocolate Conspiracy, is an interactive dance theater production built around the story of a chocolatier who may have poisoned people. Groups of audience members tour downtown shop The Chocolate Conspiracy, guided by performers but allowed the freedom to explore within that framework. Attending when I did, toward the end of the show’s multi-month run, audience management was all figured out and the performers seemed well-rehearsed and well-connected to their characters.

On the sidewalk outside The Chocolate Conspiracy, audience members were initially greeted by Graham Brown, co-creator and choreographer, who gave a welcome speech that included carefully created guidelines for how to interact within the immersive production. Then, we were invited into a tent filled with objects that the sold-out, 30-person audience was encouraged to explore, while a performer took her time welcoming us, whispering to us secrets about characters in the story, serving us hot chocolate, and dividing us into five smaller groups with corresponding colored wristbands. This beginning was a bit underwhelming, and I overheard some audience members expressing impatience as we waited to enter the chocolate shop one group at a time. The excitement did intensify once we left the tent and entered the building.

Once inside, the performers were confident and firm with their verbal and physical guidance of the audience - pushing, pulling, coaxing, and demanding us to participate as they intended. They moved us from room to room, but we were also free to wander. The interactive component of the production involved both theater and dance, and there were often multiple scenes taking place at the same time, such that the music and verbalizations of one scene served as background noise for another.

One success in involving audience members in dancing included a phrase in which Rebecca Aneloski, “The Libra,” took someone’s hand and led them to the window and then back to the center of the room, easing them into the part where she instructed them to close their eyes, and then moving them through ballroom dance-esque postures and finally into a gentle yet sincere embrace. Aneloski then returned that participant to a bench and repeated the sequence with another, and then another. 

I was very pleased with the use of space, both in the sense of performers interacting with the venue’s architecture, and also in the sense of their utilization of the venue to create unique perspectives from which they could be viewed. One of my favorite instances of this was some group choreography on a stairway: dancers thrashed between the wall and railing, with the audience standing beyond and below, and then one dancer lifted another into a back-roll to walk sideways along the wall.

Another good example of the use of space was when Aneloski rolled off the balcony railing to climb down to the driveway below, where she and Lauren Payne threw each other around and clambered up and down the street-level doors, exhibiting impressive strength and choreographic creativity. Payne boosted Aneloski up to a second story window, first to open it and then to climb into it, and seconds later pushed me out of the way, from where I was leaning over the balcony railing to watch Payne below, so that Aneloski could slide across the railing.

Lighting was especially effective in the room farthest to the west upstairs, during a scene toward the end in which the performers guided all audience members to the center of the room under a single bare bulb before weaving pathways among the crowd. In this scene, Michael Watkiss impressed me with his intentional focus and emotion as he performed a ritualistic gesture phrase, seemingly directed only at me.

The most memorable moment for me was one which not many other audience members got to see. Watkiss pushed me into a bathroom and left me alone there for a minute until Elizabeth Golden joined me. Golden mirrored my body position and facial expressions until, without verbally directing me to do so, she was able to lead me to mirror her. As we mirrored each other, she told me she was glad it was me, and began to nervously discuss her hunch that if I stayed here to take her place in purgatory then she could move on instead of me. As our mirroring game eased into a comfortable rhythm, her gestures perfectly led me to open a cabinet to find a jug marked “rat poison,” pour it into a cup, turn on the sink to add water to it, and raise the cup toward my mouth. Just before I would have had to decide if I really wanted to play along enough to drink whatever it was, Aneloski burst into the bathroom, emotional with criticism for Golden’s intentions, and snatched the cup away and poured it out. Then Aneloski led me downstairs where she handed me a chocolate bar, thanked me for coming, and pushed me outside into the softly falling snow.

Overall, the performers’ commitment to character, and specifically their eye contact, was important to creating the overall impact of the experience. The program credited four writers for the project, and I could tell that the performers were motivated by a specific and detailed story. However, the work of the writers seemed somewhat diminished by the mysteriousness which was brilliantly cultivated within the performance. I’d love to see a bit more clarity of story and characters to balance out all the intriguing mystery.

 It is possible, however, that other audience members experienced greater, or different, clarity than I did, and the fact that each individual’s experience could be so unique is a magical element of this project.

SONDERimmersive’s Thank You Theobromine continues through Sunday, January 5 at The Chocolate Conspiracy in downtown Salt Lake City.

Photos above courtesy of Graham Brown.

Kendall Fischer is the artistic director of Myriad Dance Company, and has enjoyed performing opportunities with Voodoo Productions, SBDance, Municipal Ballet Co., and La Rouge Entertainment, among others. Her choreography has been performed by Myriad, Municipal Ballet, and at Creator's Grid, and her dance film project “Breathing Sky” received the 2017 Alfred Lambourne Movement prize.