SONDERimmersive's Through Yonder Window

SONDERimmersive’s retelling of Romeo and Juliet — Through Yonder Window — opens tonight inside the Gateway mall’s parking garage downtown. For $45, a car full of people (who are hopefully quarantining together) can view the hour-long installation without getting out of their vehicle. I attended a preview last night with Alex Barbier. The following is a conversation about what we saw. We took the photos as well.

-Samuel Hanson, editor

Sam: It was refreshing to get out of the house and see some work — odd to say refreshing about an hour spent in a windowless concrete garage. I found the process of guiding the car into place nerve-wracking, for some reason I was afraid I would run over a performer. 

Alex: Directing the cars how and where to park might have been the most complex choreography, though there was much that I didn’t see (the introductory voice-over warned us that it would be impossible to see every scene and encouraged us to focus on what was directly in front of us). I’ve been thinking a lot lately about audience expectations regarding dance performances. I’m tempted to tell people not to have expectations, but not having expectations is hard when you attend something as well-known as Romeo and Juliet.

Rick Curtiss as Lord Montague

Sam: I have been hearing lots of discussions about how coronavirus compares to the AIDS epidemic or the plague and I think that set up this expectation for me that the show would deal with the real tragedy of the situation — but it was actually quite lighthearted. 

Alex:  I imagine that, during the rehearsal process, there was so much to discover that didn’t have to do with the content… how to stay six feet away from each other, how to stay masked during costume changes, how to pass props without making contact, how to get close to the audience without breathing on them, how to direct the cars to park…

Sam: I thought a lot about that too. The performance reflected some of the irrational compromises all of us are making with ourselves and each other right now. The moment when — I think it was Romeo — stuck a sword through my open window freaked me out. I put on a mask. But in general it did seem that a lot of thought had gone into remaining socially distant. 

Alex: I thought the performers interacting with the cars was fun. They made a lot of eye contact through the windows, rolled around on the hood, wrote “Just Married” on our back windshield, and then washed the car (or at least the parts they touched) at the end.

Nadia Sine as Juliet

Sam: I kind of wish they’d left the paint. Leaving it would have been a riskier choice. Another image that I enjoyed but that also made me nervous: Romeo and Juliet chasing each other around our car, blowing up white balloons, and throwing them back and forth. I liked the idea of their breath made visible — their kisses but also their contagion. Another part of me really wondered if it was safe. I don’t say that to call them out. I think that artists have to try things in reaction to situation — and this is the situation we’re all living in. But that split within my own mind — between reading the image as an image and reading it as a possible, physical transmission of spit and the ensuing chemistry — to me that was the memorable moment of the evening.

Alex: I remember working hard to piece together the cast. Tybalt and Mercutio became clear to me after their wardrobe changes. Two of the men — I think Romeo and Lord Montague — had very similar builds and wore similar shirts. For some reason, maybe because this is a more experimental work, I wondered if the costumes were different every day and if they’d worn similar shirts today accidentally. But they were wearing Hawaiian shirts that remind me of the one Leonardo DiCaprio wears in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet and I couldn’t stop wondering if that was done on purpose. Leo in that unbuttoned shirt with his chest sweaty and bandaged is what you remember about his character, you know?

Emma Sargent and Hannah Fischer — Tybalt and Mercutio as ghosts

Sam: Oddly, what I remember about the movie is the fish tank in the scene where the lover’s meet at a party. I recall very little else. Maybe the most wonderful thing about Shakespeare is that he himself is so endemic. You can’t escape his work, and if you seek it out there’s lots to find. My favorite of his plays is The Tempest and I must have seen it dozens of times. On film, my favorite version is Derek Jarman’s which ends with Elisabeth Welch singing “Stormy Weather”. My favorite staged version was an English company, Donmar, that toured to NYC and did a staged version set as a play within a play inside a contemporary women’s prison. But all of them add up to something more and they accumulate in your mind as you grow older. 

I know Romeo and Juliet is your favorite of Shakespeare’s works. How do you think this will sift and accumulate in your larger experience of the play as time passes?

Alex: Oooh, the fish tank. Yeah that’s the best scene of Baz’s version. I will remember the experience of watching a performance inside of a parked car in a garage more than I’ll remember the content, I think. And that’s not intended to be a jab. But I do think that the aspects of Romeo and Juliet that make it memorable were missing (the longing, the intimacy, the hatred between the households… none of these were as palpable as in other versions but again maybe I missed them due to my parking spot). It didn’t feel like the story of Romeo and Juliet and their fair Verona was the point of this performance. The point, it seemed, was to act quickly on a project that reflects the current time (I’m making an assumption here, because I know that SONDER was in the midst of producing a completely different show until quarantine began). I would say it accomplished that, not only through the use of the masks and the social distancing, but also in the voiceovers that helped clarify the action. The script was reworked to reference hand-sanitizing, spreading disease, and other fears and tactics that have become commonplace since COVID-19 arrived. 

Sam: I don’t think the pandemic is ending anytime soon. This obviously isn’t the news we want but it’s the truth. Limitations can lead artists to new forms of creativity. I’ll be interested to see how people continue to solve this problem and keep making dances.

Alexandra Barbier is a performance maker who has taught courses in creative process, dance in culture, and queer performance art. She has performed with Anna Azrieli and Daniel Clifton, received funding from the Bastian Foundation to produce an evening-length performance, and received the endowed assistantship with the Beverley Taylor Sorenson Arts Program. abarbier.com.

Samuel Hanson is the editor and executive director of loveDANCEmore. 

Durian Durian at the Art Barn (Part Two)

After an opening performance on March 3 and a five-day exhibition at Finch Lane Gallery, Back and Forth Part concluded with an interdisciplinary closing performance. For nearly three hours, the Salt Lake community gathered for an evening submerged in film, multi-media sculptures, music, and dance.

I was drawn to the way this project spanned several days and invited the audience to revisit these themes during a unique, final performance. Essentially, the audience was invited to come “back and forth.” This invitation allowed the community to step into the process — we could explore what it was like to return to an artistic idea. This structure facilitated an awareness of the passing of time and what it leaves behind.

As I entered Finch Lane Gallery, I was drawn to the segmentation of space, based on the life span of the art. The back gallery housed the sculptures, art objects, and film, while the performances existed in the entry gallery. Between these two rooms, I moved between permanence and change. I began to consider the ways that different types of art are bound by time. One of the sculptures, entitled What They Become When They Stop Moving, was a snake of pointe shoes originally used by Emily Snow and Nora Price as well as Katie Steiner and Sammi Harmon. The art seemed calcified like a pre-historic relic, even though the dance had long since dissipated into the past.

The performance began with the band Hoofless, an electronic group with five musicians on violin, cello, drums, and electric guitars. The set began with a vibrational essence where a couple of notes were strummed repetitively bringing a groundedness to the room. Hoofless carried us to several different climaxes; the energy spiked with a chorus of yelling, descended to a gentle melody, and intensified once again. I looked around the gallery and noticed people closing their eyes in deep concentration, some bobbing their heads to the beat, and others sitting on the floor while swaying their shoulders. I felt utterly enthralled in the atmosphere of the music and its pulsation in the air.

After a brief transition, a group of Salt Lake movers began a dance improvisation score. They danced with the local band The 8eaut1ful5. The costumes featured an odd array of similarity and juxtaposition. Emmett Wilson, Josephine Bluemel, and Meagen Bertelesen wore almost matching, bright red clothing that featured an airy shawl and leopard print. While Hannah Kiel wore an outfit of neon and reflective pieces and Samuel Hanson had a dazzling, gold, speckled sweater.

The improvisation work was inspired by Sara Shelton Mann, who is an improviser based in San Francisco who is known for cultivating energetic realms and physical contact. All five dancers brought a unique essence to the physical landscape. The play of solos and duets offered intriguing layers of combinations. I found great joy in noticing the subtle difference and similarities in the partnering that appeared simultaneously. At one moment Hanson glided in the air suspended by Bluemel and then quickly dove across the floor with great velocity, while Wilson and Bertelesen engaged in a tender stroking, rolling, and embracing duet. At the same time, Kiel cut through the space with a staccato solo that moved in and out of the floor with a striking combination of ease and power. David Payne’s raw voice sung, “You are floating. You are the earth. You are floating,” that lingered in the air. And I felt almost as if I was floating in this moment, my senses completely enlivened. At times, I wished the dancers would make slower choices and allow moments to extend. However, throughout the duration of the score, my attention was totally captivated.

The last part of the performance featured Durian Durian; Nora Price and Emily Snow moved in and out of their role as musicians and dancers. Their movement was reminiscent of their screendance made in collaboration with filmmaker Dawn Borchardt on the Salt Flats. Their movement in the gallery offered sparks of familiarity as their gestures, shared touch, and footwork echoed the film. In the last moments of the show, band members, Koty Lopez and Payne produced a driving beat, Price sang with force, and Snow articulated her arms in swirling billows as her feet skimmed across the floor with grounded ease.

What remains after the art has ended? This question hung in my mind after the performance had concluded. Sometime it is a scuffed pointe shoe, some left-over DIY merch, or a film that can be replayed over and over, and other times it is crowd of people buzzing with the energy of live art, community spaces, and good conversations. Back and Forth Part left us with all of these.

Rachel Luebbert is a Utah-based dance artist. She also teaches and works in arts administration and programming, and has previously worked in Colorado, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C.

Durian Durian at the Art Barn (Part One)

Salt Lake City Art Council’s Finch Lane Gallery feels both cozy and spacious as I enter to watch The Back and Forth Part opening reception on Tuesday, March 3. The space has started curating more interdisciplinary works, specifically with an interest in time-based or performance art. Their decision to host a collaboration between Durian Durian and Dawn Borchardt felt like a fitting way to launch these Flash Projects (there will be two more events later in the year).

all photos by Aileen Norris

A gallery display in the first room discusses the origins of Durian Durian and their interest in blending dance forms with live music performance, as well as the “DIY” aspect of these artistic communities. The gallery space houses different art objects exploring these concepts, including a long snake of pointe shoes, starting at jet black and fading into a classic pink with the dusting of salt crystals on top. Another piece weaves items like TheraBands, Lambs' Wool, and pointe shoe ribbons into a pastiche of different dance objects. The gallery simultaneously rejoices in the traditions of ballet while also attempting to deconstruct them.

The performance aspect kicked off with a showing of the film created by Borchardt, a filmmaker new to Salt Lake City. Shot in the Salt Flats, the film splices together footage of Durian Durian performers Emily Snow and Nora Price as they dance smooth, almost meditative movements, mirrored in the sound score. Rarely touching, when they do partner, it tends to involve their hands. Borchardt focuses on close up shots of their bodies, creating an intimacy through shots of elbows, torsos, hands, and feet. Price and Snow find many moments where their momentum rocks from one foot to the other like a pendulum. This repetition lends itself to the title of the series: The Back and Forth Part. As I watched, I found myself wanting to see the two connect further. This gave each moment they would touch heightened power, although I still felt it could be explored more. The film clearly appreciates the moving body as well as the expanse of the natural landscapes of Utah, allowing for connections to be made between body and earth.

Price and Snow dance in front of bandmates Koty Lopez and David Payne

Once the film concluded, the audience was directed into the first room, where the band set up to perform. Joined by band members Koty Lopez and David Payne, Price and Snow performed both as musicians and as dancers. Their distinction between the two roles was set up by space, but the transitions felt natural and fluid, which allowed for a conversation between their bodies and the sound score. I found myself watching Lopez and Payne—who were not “dancing” from a traditional standpoint—and contemplating how their fingers tickling their instruments, their feet tapping out rhythms or adjusting sound boards, were part of the visual performance, too. Price and Snow performed the movements from the film, allowing the audience to see the difference in form from screendance to live performance. The music and movement worked well together, staying tonally similar, although there were moments of rapid repetition and satisfying stillness in the dance realm.

Price and Snow dance with their ballet shoe installation

Overall, the evening was a delight—a fresh collaboration that clearly was committed to craft without feeling heavy or overly maudlin. The performers spoke casually and freely with one another, breaking the barrier that proscenium stages often enforce. The gallery setting worked incredibly well for the evening, as it allowed for flow from one room to the next, from one medium to another, and from performance to conversation. I wish I had seen slightly more connection between the gallery space and the movement vocabulary, although perhaps it’s simply enough for them to sit side by side. Price and Snow did dance with the snake of pointe shoes and another Marley piece, but it felt separate from the film and band sections, which were impeccably cohesive. The concept of the Flash Project supported the interdisciplinary artistic endeavors Durian Durian sets out to achieve, which Borchardt captured and presented wonderfully in her film. I’m excited to see how the group continues to meddle with medium going forward, as they certainly have demonstrated the chops for it.

The Back and Forth Part gallery will be open through March 6 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., with a closing performance including more Salt Lake City performers on March 7 from 6-9 p.m.

Aileen Norris is a Salt Lake City based freelance dance artist. She holds an honors B.F.A. in Modern Dance and a B.A. in English from the University of Utah. She is a co-founder of Queer Spectra Arts Festival, and currently teaches, performs, and choreographs in the Salt Lake community.

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.