Ballet West brings a winter digital interlude

On Thursday night around 9 pm, I sat down to watch Ballet West’s latest in their Winter Streaming series — Balanchine’s Rubies. At just over twenty minutes in length, an excavated chunk like this is exactly how much televised ballet I want to watch after staring at my other, smaller, screens all day. Selecting shorter one-acts and breaking up full-length evening works like Jewels may be helping BW stretch their pre-covid filmed content, but it’s also a really welcome choice from a viewer’s perspective. 

I watched the three-minute Director’s Pointe introduction video first. There’s a little background history, a little setting the tone, a crackling fire — Adam Sklute is having a great time. Although each week’s selection for the series is only up for seven days, these introductory snippets remain posted on the BW YouTube channel — if you’ve missed one you can still watch the highlight reel. 

In Rubies, all the Ballet West dancers are predictably gorgeous. The two leads, Katlyn Addison and Beckanne Sisk, carry the piece confidently. Addison shines, sharp and hypnotic. Sisk’s natural, jubilant snakiness makes her an obvious and perfect fit for her role. 

Beckanne Sisk and Hadriel Diniz in George Balanchine's Rubies

Rubies isn’t my favorite. It’s sassy, it’s silly, it’s impressive, but it’s just not quite my thing. I think perhaps when I first saw it as a young teen just discovering Balanchine and neoclassical ballet I appreciated its flashiness a little more, but as an adult who’s seen a lot more neoclassical work, been out of the professional game a few years and shed a few layers of loaded associations, I’m more drawn to the serene elegance of Emeralds and the effervescent precision of Diamonds. But, that being said, this was the perfect way to revisit it. 

Short enough to hold my attention and gently release it. Available on demand from my couch, dog in lap. The ability to pause to refill a beverage, text a friend back, rewind to watch a particularly stunning moment from Katlyn Addison — all together an infinitely more accessible format that prompted me to give a moment of my time to rewatching something I might not have opted to otherwise. 

It’s been said a few times over the last year, but I think it’s an ask that bears continual amplification — all the accessible, low-cost to free streaming options in performances and classes that have popped up in response to the pandemic are a good thing for ballet. It’s a development I hope we hold onto even once theaters are back open in full. It’s not going to dim the brightness of live performance. It won’t make those who are already regular ballet-lovers skip the ticket line or the class punch-card. What it could do is allow us to keep sharing more and more of our art with anyone and everyone who doesn't want to or can’t make it to us in person. If we’re serious when we say we want to bring in as many people as possible, and make ballet a more relevant part of mainstream culture — with all the attendant benefits that come with that — it would be foolish to think we can achieve it without allowing ballet to exist in the places and forms where it can be most widely transmitted. 

Catch Rubies through tonight (Friday), and be on the lookout for Diamonds later this season. 

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.

Home Run

The things I miss most about the theater are the requirements. I have enormous respect for the fourth wall not just because I routinely decline participation opportunities, but because it is a mandate to observe and a notice of import. In this new world, there is the fifth wall of my computer. This fifth wall is where all the things are: the legislative website where I am tracking unique abuses to trans people by our state government, the fourteen Canvas pages open for me and children, the playbill, the endless stream of texts, the sticky note about the Valentine’s Day parties on Zoom I’ve yet to plan as the room mother, “Class 6” from Brenda Daniels that I meant to do at 9 am.

All these things pull me away from what I like to do most – sit in the dark and quietly watch. 

Winter’s Light by Daniel Charon does its best to bring me into the dance. Rather than staging a majestic scene (as much screendance does) the videography reveals the body and patterning. It makes undercutting feet and elbow/wrist/hand sequencing more sensory; it shows how satisfying those things are when you get to do them yourself. The dance is like the best parts of a good class that you wish you could do together. If I wasn’t a dancer, I think the falling and recovering would still be more or less recognizable as beautiful. 

Photo by Daniel Charon.

Because my fifth wall comes with the expectation of being able to fast forward, I lift up my hand to the mouse when a gestural phrase begins midway. My impulse might be a worthy critique or it might cement my belief that part of the pleasure of viewing a dance is the requirement to do so. 

Next I’m watching Woes, the durational installation by Megan McCarthy and Dominica Greene which has paint reminiscent of Shen Wei’s Connect Transfer. Accidentally, I swipe the desktop and I’m kicked off the streaming platform. I’m sent a new link (nearly immediately from RW’s own fifth wall) but I miss Don’t Chew With Your Mouth Open. Please send me your own review. 

Still from Wash.

Next is Wash, an excerpt of a film choreographed by Joan Woodbury in the seventies. I have seen some of this footage before and I love it still. I have always thought these earlier collaborative projects from Utah’s modern dance scene are much zanier than today’s fringe works, in part because they take themselves less seriously. Claudia Sisemore once notably filmed Utah dancers coming out of a sewer and this scene is similar in tone. What would it be like to run through a carwash fifty years ago? What it would be like to do modern dance with traffic superimposed on your artificially pink body? Everything is inexplicably pink and orange. Everything is slow. It’s very Nikolais in that humans are forms as much as people. Maybe that’s problematic but it’s also sublime. A face becomes a T-Rex. You understand how Pilobolus became what they are. You wonder where Martha Clarke is now. 

I’m distracted because someone in the chat named TalkativeSelf says “omg wash is so good.” More unfolds, the credits of the film visibly shake. 

Martha Myers was known to say “if you want to show difference, use unison,” and Again by Bashaun Williams and Fausto Rivera does this. Their symmetry shows what I know about Bashaun and will miss watching live as he leaves RW — clarity of motion, depth without noticeable striving, and a central place from where the dancing happens. I can see Fausto performs with a different sense of weight and without the same aplomb. And that’s okay. These are two friends dancing. Fausto is settling, Bashaun is shedding. The dance ends in a hug that’s felt, even with the limitations of my device.

Fausto Rivera (front) and Bashaun Williams (behind). Courtesy of Wonderstone Films.

Full View is the last dance on the bill, by Molly Heller. It’s colorful and stylized — dancers in a pale green set (chair, blanket, phone, picture frame, potted plant) with an amethyst cloud hanging above. It looks like a modern dance taking place in the Wing (on my fifth wall, I google what will happen to co-working spaces after the pandemic?).

Many of the idioms in Full View have been present in other Heartland Collective projects. I think the exaggerated facial gestures, pronating, straining, and repetitive tics are meant to be the contemporary version of Wash: an absurdity that is familiar yet hard to perfectly place. Yet, as my sister has been known to say about current concert dance: “why are they impersonating disabled people? Why are people laughing?” 

I do think that ataxic movement has a unique feeling to a trained dancer and thus has gained visibility in concert dance nationwide. However, in our culture, recognizable contemporary dancers like Maddie Ziegler are taken to task for playing roles including autistic artists. With that context, I’m unsure why concert dance has become not only exempt from but lauded for co-opting some of the common movements of disabled bodies for visual pleasure. 

Perhaps my sentiment here is strong because in a non-pandemic world I have the pleasure of watching young adults with intellectual disabilities and movement disorders perform through my work as a teaching artist. One of my classes also made a dance with a cloud. In ours, the cloud rose taller and taller. In Full View the cloud turns from purple to white and sinks toward Florian Alberge whose hands gesture around his heart. After the sweeping solos and duets from varied directions, it felt like it was coming to rest in his lap. 

Ashley Anderson is the founder and director of loveDANCEmore and Ashley Anderson Dances.

Hughes & Vecchione's Choreofest and other local offerings

It’s been a weekend of catching up. Among other catch-up tasks (talking on the phone, cleaning house), I spent time re-acquainting myself with dance in Salt Lake City. It’s a continuous practice, and, it turns out there’s still a lot going on even if you’re unwilling to leave the house except to visit the grocery store.

12 Minutes Max which has always been one of my favorite ways to sample local experimentation. Now you can watch it from home, and in this case, several days after the fact. This edition had a dance film by Roxanne Gray, music by Logan Hone and a vintage film collage by Steve Creson, full of eerily timely images of medical science and flourishing pathogens. I also took in (for the second time ever) Salty Showcase, which offered two musical acts and a new dance film by Arin Lynn in which the sole performer, Tori Meyer, is revealed through tiny gestures and a slue of ever-changing and playful, if quotidian, outfits.

It was in this context of appreciation for how much is still available to engage with that I watched Christina Hughes and Angela Vecchione’s collaboration with Rhode Island-based collective Metamorphosis, which will be presented again on Sunday, January 31 at 5pm MST, as a part of their collaborative Choreofest project.

From what I’ve seen of the ongoing Choreofest offerings (of which I haven’t seen everything), the goal of the series is to explore what it’s like to make dances together over the internet, with an eye toward collaboration with new partners. I didn’t enjoy the Metamorphosis collaboration as much as an earlier iteration I saw in which Hughes and Vecchione worked with Faby Guíllen, who performed live from her home city in Mexico. What made that piece striking was that it stuck to a visual diptich — at first somewhat jarring — in which we saw the soloist dancing live from two different angles about 90 degrees apart in an anonymous-looking, seemingly random patch of urban space.

Faby Guíllen dancing in a collaboration with Hughes and Vecchione from last year.

In sticking to a formal constraint which pushes hard on the subliminal training on how to watch that we’ve all received TV and movies, the work with Guíllen maintained a sense of tension that allowed the actual choreography to be quite playful without feeling scattered or unedited. This piece would work well in a gallery setting. The work with Metamorphosis takes a different approach, attempting to collage the Zoom-meeting-as-stage (I was impressed with the way the six dancers “entered” and “exited”) with more traditional screendance tools (cutting on action, screen direction, cutting from one dancer to another doing the same phrase).

Although the result was less pleasing as viewer, as a dancer, I appreciate seeing the ongoing work — the trial and error in which all of us are currently engaged. I look forward to more.

A particularly pleasing moment of unison from the Metamorphosis collaboration.

Samuel Hanson is the editor and executive director of loveDANCEmore. 

RDT's brings new works by the company, and others

Repertory Dance Theatre’s virtual performance of Emerge premiered on January 16, 2021. In this sixth annual presentation of Emerge, company dancers and staff have taken on the role of choreographer. RDT takes pride in the opportunity it provides artists to practice the art of dance-making. The show consists of seven works created by Rebecca Aneloski (winner of the 2019 New Century Dance Project choreographic competition), Lauren Curley, Jonathan Kim, Jaclyn Brown, Dan Higgins, Daniel Do & Edromar Undag, and Nicholas Cendese. 

A stunning opening to the evening was Odes choreographed by Rebecca Aneloski. The original sound score composed by Michael Wall had a pulsating meditative drive throughout the work. On a minimally lit stage, the piece developed seamlessly, shifting between solos and duets performed by the dancers. The first duet between Daniel Do and Jonathan Kim exhibited beautifully intricate partner work. In a delicate yet captivatingly powerful manner, their bodies appeared to weave between and around one another hypnotically. This duet transitioned into an enthralling and powerful solo performed by Daniel which swiftly led to a dynamic solo from Jon. After another mesmerizing duet performance by Jon and Ursula Perry, the piece finished with a solo danced by Ursula accompanied by an instrumental version of “America the Beautiful”. This suddenly gave the piece an entirely different meaning for me, one that was slightly ominous.  I couldn’t help but notice the chilling connotation attached to the song in light of the current political moment.  

Jon Kim and Daniel Do, photo by Sharon Kain

Solace was a duet choreographed by Lauren Curley and featured more beautiful partner work between Daniel Do and Jonathan Kim. The piece begins with a subtle golden light illuminating the dark stage, which looks like a black void when viewing the piece through a screen. Slowly, the lights brighten to reveal more of the surrounding space. The camera angle shifts throughout the piece offering new perspectives of the human architecture morphing and transmuting on stage. Daniel and Jon danced with stunning strength and compatibility. Their connection was palpable.  

The moving camera angles continued to offer unique perspectives of Dusk Fades, a solo choreographed by Jonathan Kim and performed by guest dancer Kerry McCrackin. The sound score begins with exciting string music and is accompanied by frenzied arm tosses and giant strides across the stage. The music transitions into a mediative soundscape punctuated by the sound of ocean waves. The dancing takes on a suppler quality. This shift in sound and movement quality is paralleled by the shift in the lighting design from bright oranges and reds to deep purples and blues. All of these components culminate in the emulation of a sunset.  

One By One was a series of seven solos created for each company member by Jaclyn Brown. Carefully crafted with the dancers’ individuality in mind, the solos take us on a journey revealing the unique qualities possessed by each of the dancers. The solos were performed to live accompaniment by musical artist, Nate Anderson who played a variety of exciting electronic music. 

Kareem Lewis and Ursula Perry, photo by Sharon Kain

Knowhere was choreographed by company member Dan Higgins and danced by Ursula Perry, Kareem Lewis, and Elle Johansen. The partnerships were in a constant state of flux throughout the work. The trio morphed seamlessly into separate duets, solos and reassembled again as a trio. The soundscape mimicked atmospheric/space sounds that appeared to be embodied by the orbiting pathways taken by the dancers.  I couldn’t help but wonder whether the title of the work was reflecting upon these cosmic themes.  

Space in Sonder was a duet choreographed by Daniel Do and Edromar Undag. The performers Jaclyn Brown and Ursula Perry have danced together as company members since 2014. The longevity of their relationship as fellow dancers showed in their unwavering synchronicity. The partner work in this piece was beautifully balanced and powerful. 

Nicholas Cendese, artistic associate and development director of RDT was the choreographer of the final piece, Another Day in Quarantine.  The four-part theatrical work included a solo, trio, duet, and group dance all performed to songs by Doris Day.  Each segment reflected in some manner upon the experiences of Americans in self-isolation over this past year. The piece was a fun and light-hearted end to the show. 

Despite the turbulent year all performing artists and audiences have experienced, the silver lining of it all is perhaps the novel ways in which art is being dispersed and consumed. Though nothing will quite beat the live experience of concert dance, virtual performances, I’d argue do have their perks. As a viewer, you are provided with an entirely new perspective of the action unfolding on stage. The point of view offered by the camera in this year’s presentation of Emerge shifts continuously, offering insights into the performance that were never available before. 

Tickets to Emerge are still available on RDT’s website. Ticketholders are granted access to the performance via a personalized link that expires within a week.  

Talia Dixon was raised in Southern California. She moved to Salt Lake City in 2017 to study dance at the University of Utah. She plans to graduate with her Honors BFA in Modern Dance as well as a Minor in American Indian Studies in the Spring of 2021.

Municipal Ballet's digital winter offering

First introduced in 1892, The Nutcracker has been a Christmastime staple in the US since the mid-twentieth century. Municipal Ballet’s condensed and sophisticated take on the ballet, River of Rosewater, was released on December 23 via Youtube. If you stan a traditional Nutcracker, be warned: this version will challenge you. If you care to read retired New York Times dance critic Alastair Macaulay’s 10 Ways to Tell If Your ‘Nutcracker’ is Traditional (I totes don’t blame you if you decline), you’ll discover that River scores a 0/10. But this doesn’t mean Municipal has failed, and the 174 mostly positive comments prove it: 

“That was such an original and gorgeous interpretation!” “What a breath of fresh air!” “This had such a serenity to it!” “I didn’t want this to end! I couldn’t dare but stare without blinking!” “Charming, clever, and innovative... a joy to watch.” “The Arabian coffee and the Grand Pas de Deux took me to a level of awe I have not reached since the first time that I was in the Nutcracker!”

Ursula Perry as Clara’s grandmother, discussed below

The year is 1927. A bluegrass version of Tchaikovsky’s score begins playing. Clara is twenty-three years old and her pesky brother Fritz is nowhere in sight. Her godmother Drosselmeyer gives off the air of that curiously well-off aunt who has no children and frequently takes exotic trips. The party guests look like they walked straight out of a Great Fashion Designs of the Twenties Paper Doll book. Their dancing resembles the traditional party scene choreography (tap your heel, tap your toe, do a chassé, repeat on the other side) with the Charleston thrown in. A handsome male doctor that Godmother Drosselmeyer met during her travels appears and piques Clara’s interest, but leaves after receiving an urgent message. Cocktails are poured and gluttonously gulped, and I believe Clara’s ensuing dreams of The Land of Sweets are brought on by the amount of absinthe she consumes.

The Spanish Chocolate, Arabian Coffee, Chinese Tea, and Russian Candy Cane (get those fouettés, girl!) move at turns elegantly and energetically throughout the McCune Mansion, the sunlight from each room’s massive windows illuminating dust particles that shimmer as much as the dancers’ costumes. The choreography of these divertissements is not as extravagant as you’re likely accustomed to but the racial stereotypes are absent, which invites my favorite Youtube comment: “THE CHINESE VARIATION OH MY GOSH!!!!! THEY DIDN’T USE THE FINGERS!!!!” Snowflakes, flowers, and the Sugarplum Fairy make appearances, and mysterious doctor man returns for a pas de deux with Clara that mixes ballet with Fred and Ginger-esque partnering. 

Kathryn Morgan, as Clara, gets dipped

River of Rosewater’s omissions are curious when you consider the narrative it’s based on. The nutcracker dolls that flank Clara as she sleeps do not come alive, thus there is no Nutcracker prince to accompany her throughout her dream (maybe this explains the change in title). There is no battle between soldiers and mice. Mother Ginger is M.I.A. and I dearly miss her wild flamboyance that contrasts the polished, pristine nature of all who dance before and after her. 

New York City Ballet’s Nutcracker choreography inspired the version I performed for eight years as a child/teen, and when I wasn’t on stage, I was voraciously consuming NYCB’s VHS recording staring Macaulay Culkin (interesting side note: River’s Clara, Kathryn Morgan, began her professional career with NYCB). I was viscerally shook when Municipal’s dancers didn’t perform the choreography that I studied through the aforementioned ventures, but I love that they leapt out of the box. It was an original, visually captivating performance that was easy to consume in this overly digitally-saturated time. I especially enjoyed how much the camera moved throughout the film, capturing architectural and decorative details of McCune Mansion and frequently focusing on the facial expressions of the dancers. This is a short and sweet video to watch if you want to hold on to the final whispers of the holiday season.

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