Utah Presents and LAJAMARTIN team up

LAJAMARTIN is a physical theatre company currently based in Salt Lake City, with roots in New York and abroad. On August 6, UtahPresents partnered with Laja Field and Martin Durov, the company’s founders, for a virtual fundraiser. Under the guidelines of our “new normal,” LAJAMARTIN’s new work, Pandemia, was performed on the stage of Kingsbury Hall to an empty house, but live-streamed onto UtahPresents’ Youtube account. Donations received during this virtual fundraiser support the company’s scholarship for BIPOC artists, as well as new film equipment for UtahPresents as they will inevitably be presenting much of their upcoming season virtually.

Ella Kennedy-Yoon performing a solo

Film equipment is actually how I want to enter into dialogue with/about Pandemia. Multiple cameras captured the dancers from several angles. One was set up in the house of the theatre, catching what you’d presumably see if you were seated front and center. A second camera seemed to be on the stage, or at least in the wings, capturing the dancers from the side. I don’t know much about camera technology, but the quality of the footage was different from one camera to the next. The front and center camera transmitted a clear and crisp view, while the side camera was a little grainier, sometimes a little less focused, and the coloring was a bit duller. Whether or not this was intentional, it added an interesting and personal layer to the performance. The differing image qualities made me feel as though I was watching a documentary, sometimes seeing what was intended for me and sometimes catching behind-the-scenes footage (in one moment, UtahPresent’s executive director Brooke Horejsi was spotted in the wings). 

Pandemia was a series of movement solos featuring monologues, voiceovers, lip-synching and props galore. As the name suggests, it was a reflection on our current state of affairs and was stuffed with imagery and dialogue that highlighted the vocabulary, hashtags, protocols, misinformation, arguments, and feelings that have infiltrated our lives over the past several months... not just because of COVID-19, but also because of the uprising around the country in the face of continued social injustice. A party girl walked into a bar, drank a Corona beer, then downed a hydroxychloroquine pill. A doctor wheeled out an IV, lathered on hand sanitizer, and flipped through medical files. A janitor mused on her role as an essential worker while swiffering the floor. After each performer established their characters, they tumbled into movement essential to the LAJAMARTIN brand — thrashing, whirling, acrobatic. 

Jon Kim engages in some hair-ography

The company did not shy away from their feelings about Trump... which aren’t positive, by the way. There was no tip-toeing around the discomfort and discouragement that his rhetoric has left many of us feeling, and I was really grateful for such honesty. The solo that really emphasized their commitment to calling out Trump’s bullshit was performed by a man who flailed around a mock-living room after hearing 45’s asinine proclamations while channel surfing. The way he threw his body over the La-Z-Boy chair and around the floor looked how I’ve felt most days this summer: restless, hopeless, helpless. He eventually yelled at the TV, “I wish I could have a one-on-one with you, but you’d probably call the cops on me. Do I really even matter to you?” A pertinent proclamation from this performer, a man of color, who learned this monologue only two hours before the performance.

Mase Sangster in a passage that critiques the Trump administration

The original cast member, who I happen to know is not a person of color, suffered a neck injury the day before. Curious how and if the scene shifted with the change in cast, I asked Laja and Martin for the scoop. “The beginning actually was exactly the same... when we had the original cast member, we thought he would maybe be perceived as a Trump supporter, or how someone would stereotype a White man. Our interest was to look at him as a stereotype and then watch him flip it... obviously that changed with the new performer because he couldn’t pull off the same image. But we thought, why don’t we let him run with this, with his totally different energy? The important part is to understand that we wanted to leave a message...” 

I can’t imagine that anyone didn’t receive it. 

Alexandra Barbier is a performance maker who has taught courses in creative process, dance in culture, and queer performance art. Alex is presenting work in a group show, A shedding, on August 22 and 23. Contact her for details via abarbier.com.

SB Dance's Curbside Theater

I love Sam and Alex’s recent review of SONDERimmersive’s Through Yonder Window, and since digital conversations is kind of what we have right now, and we all exist in some strange no-time time, I’m turning this review into a conversation with theirs. 

Liz: Three friends and I signed up for SB Dance’s CURBSIDE THEATER. We all had different relationships to the company, T has mutual friends with Stephen, B had already seen the show and was experiencing it for the second time, and I went in with the thought of doing my first loveDANCEmore review in a couple years and also knowing Ari Hassett from dancing together at the U. Seeing performance and dancing has always been a very social thing for me, and it was great to be doing this together.

Performer Annie Kent (photo: SB Dance)

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. 

Liz: Yes, to the word “refreshing”. The ease of arranging this “dance appetizer” from SB Dance is part of the appeal. When I arrived at T’s house too many cars were parked at the curbside and I didn’t know how we’d make space. Panic! Stephen reassured me via text that he’d solve it when he got there. He pulled into T’s driveway with his small camping trailer with two yellow chairs bolted to it. The team jumped out, set up some lights and a mic, and off to the races. My life right now is way too much domestic and professional engineering, it was great to have someone else solve something.  

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.

Liz: A hot night, Stephen said we’d be doing a tango-inspired steamy series. Musicians Raffi and Ischa began a sultry rendition of Corcovado as Ari Hassett in a black jumpsuit took the chair. Her languid dance was focused inward, with a close peripheral eye on the near edge of the stage. I loved the first time she leaned off her center, holding onto the chair for support and slowly uncurling her leg at a 45 degree angle to the tall tree behind her. It was great to see her performing after some time off for an injury. She’s back and with a seasoned feeling to her performance. After Ari finished, Stephen deftly sanitized the entire trailer and chairs while sharing the impetus for this project; “Around May, I was sitting on my hands at home…”  

Alex: [Some of the cast of Through Yonder Window] 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?

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...

Liz: It’s so funny that Baz came up in y’all’s review, because after Ari’s dance, Stephen and Annie Kent gave us what he described as a Strictly Ballroom duet, complete with popped collar. I guess right now, we’re all making art in Baz Luhrmann’s brain? When their duet turned from sensual to playful, with spider arms weaving around each other and in and through the yellow chairs, I was all in. There’s still a part of me that is hungry not just for live art but for movement invention and being surprised by dance. I thought there were interesting moments in this second duet that I hope SB continues to build on as they keep performing.

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.

Liz: Attention to the whole audience experience is part of what makes SB fans such a die-hard group. In this challenging time of problem solving, SB brings that signature consideration. Pre-pandemic this looked like open bars, performers moving amongst the crowd, and some wild shenanigans. In a more staid way, SB retains that ethos by coming to us, keeping it simple, hopeful, and essential.

Liz Ivkovich is a former loveDANCEmore editor and brilliant performer and choreographer. She currently works for UtahPresents in development and produces choreography and scholarship in Salt Lake City.

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.