Eighth Annual Performance Art Festival welcomes digital experimentation from local and international artists

I finished watching the Salt Lake City Performance Art Festival (PAF) feeling like I had fallen into a special tunnel in the virtual space. A kind of tunnel that carries stragglers through time in spiraling swoops, where eggs grow from the walls sideways and sometimes burst into clouds of feathers unexpectedly. What I mean to say is that there were moments of surprise, moments where I forgot that I was watching a screen in my home, alone. 

So much of the Zoom world feels transactional, like a flatter version of real life. And yet, the PAF artists seemed to warp the expectations of the digital sphere. They offered a slice of life that was more casual, more intimate, and more rooted in the present. I was struck by the way each performer played and exaggerated time within their unique performance. 

The Eighth Annual PAF in Salt Lake was curated by performance artist Kristina Lenzi and featured both local and international artists. The weekend included nearly ten hours of performances with sixteen unique artists. For the intent of diving deeper, I will focus on six of these performances though each work deserves its own conversation and reflection.

In Paola Paz Yee’s piece the camera settles on a little egg suspended off the ground in black netting which is resting on a bed of grass. It is a beautiful, quaint egg. The frame only captures Yee's lips, the edges of her nose, and the occasional glimpse of her eyes. For fifteen minutes, Yee blows gently on the egg and the grass slowly glides past the screen exposing a square mirror below. With each breath I gain a greater view of the performer through an upside-down reflection. In this meditative passing of time, I am reminded of the soft power that resides in human breath — the strength and tenderness that a single exhale can offer the world. 

In a surprising shift of intention, Yee removes the egg from the cage and uses a nail to whittle away at the shell. There is a gentleness to her movements, as if she is caressing the egg. Yet, it is in this tenderness that fragments of the shell fall and scatter across the mirror. There is wonder and surprise as the egg, which appears soft-boiled, nearly maintains its form. Exclamations fill the chat. We as an audience are delighted by this strength and composure. But slowly the egg begins to sink and ooze from its original oblong form. What began in gentle breath has reached a darker progression. The egg slumps and collapses in an oozing mess. I can’t help but feel the significance of this destruction; the weight of the subtle violence that slowly destroyed the figure. 

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Eugene Tachinni sits at a table; his left hand lies under a layer of lightly translucent white fabric. With his right hand, he uses small yellow-headed pins to tuck and attach the fabric around his hand. It is almost as if a cast has been created for the fingers — connected purposefully and made permanent in space. The folds of the fabric become veins that run up and down his fingers. The pins appear like little blossoms on the fabric; their yellow tips sprout like daisies poking through the fabric. After his hand has been fully attached, he begins to trap a variety of other objects beneath the fabric. This includes scissors, a container of lip-gloss, and other trinkets — it’s a process of embroidery that embraces physicality. 

Tachinni offers a quiet patience and persistence. His fingers move with ease and focus that reveal a deeply-trained dexterity and familiarity with tactile craft. The pins create a decorative pattern and swirling designs of yellow. The performance presents a palpable tension between the meditative, gentle dance of his fingers and the stifling anxiety provoked by being trapped in space and time. His right hand moves with grace and gentle agility, while the left hand remains stuck, surrounded, and stagnant. 

Tachinni reflects, “In 2020…my home of eighteen plus years was taken from me. Well, it felt that way anyway. With two weeks’ notice our landlord sold his apartment complex which meant that our rent was going to skyrocket, which it did. While this performance doesn’t show the trauma of my experience, it’s about movement, how we get from one place to the next.” This movement is not showcased in large sweeping gestures or in the act of relocating objects across a room. Instead, Tachinni embodies the subtle horror of becoming trapped, bound in space, while the right hand never stops moving, never stops pinning. 

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In The Shower we watch the outside of a plastic curtain sway with the trickling water of a shower. For ten minutes, Gretchen Reynolds shares a simple, intimate ritual. It is short. It is clear. It feels like a shared cleansing. 

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An alarm clock rings with muffled bells. Cynthia Post Hunt runs up the stairs with great urgency. She resets the alarm, picks up a pillow and bangs it against the ground. The piece has begun in media res — we are thrown into the action of a critical situation. Things feels earnest and desperate. There are two cameras set up in the space. One faces down the stairs and captures Cynthia straight on as she charges up the steps. The second camera faces perpendicular to the second landing and captures Hunt when she arrives. The first camera bears witness to rushed physicality. By contrast, the second camera shows a resetting. In this shot, we see a different tenderness as the white curtains draped around the windows billow in grand arcs. 

The cycle repeats in small bursts. Hunt leans against the staircase, waiting. When the alarm rings suddenly, Hunt runs in rapid, striking steps around the stairs, returns to the landing, stops the alarm, picks up the pillow and pounds it against the floor in grand bursts. Hunt indicated that this piece was created in the wake of her grandfather’s passing as a reimagining of his last breath. I was ruminating on the cyclical nature of breath and Hunt’s rapid, heavy movements, when the pillow burst and a flood of feathers swarmed the hallway swallowing the camera. In a moment of distress, Hunt began to stuff the feathers back into the white bag in anxious, quick movements. Then the alarm sounded and Hunt was running again.

I was struck by the spaces of waiting — these moments of stillness suspended in time. This piece captures the progression to death in such an honest, vulnerable way. There are repetitive cycles that combine long periods of stillness, followed by urgency which leads into shocking violence. As time passes, Hunt strikes the pillow against the floor with greater gusts of force. An absurd number of feathers overflow into the space. There is an unfolding level of chaos. My heart beat pounds alongside Hunt’s footsteps. 

Often death is characterized as a slow and silent process, yet Hunt acknowledges the presence of violence and volatility that often exists in the dying body (and in the emotions of loved ones.) As the last several feathers burst out of the pillow case, the chat erupts in exclamations. Hunt picks up the empty fabric and smooths it with her arms over and over again. It was 9am on Saturday morning and I felt so connected to this community of attendees in the chat. We seemed to all breathe together in an unexpected, virtual kinship as the last feathers drifted down the stairs. 

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In Tell Me Something Good! Alex Barbier takes a moment to celebrate individuals in their achievements, self-proclaimed successes, and general existence. Prior to the afternoon performance, Barbier had circulated an online form asking people to submit their good news, everything from graduations, to new pets, to surviving another day in this world. As the performance began, Barbier was wearing a full-length red jumpsuit with matching, red silk gloves and red lipstick. The room was decorated floor to ceiling with rose gold streamers, creating the aesthetic of a DIY awards ceremony. 

The performance involved a cyclical process; Barbier opens an envelope, reads a piece of good news, spins a colorful wheel with puffy paint instructions, and then initiates a celebratory ritual. This structure offered a little chance, a little bit of unpredictability, and a great deal of playfulness. As an audience member on the other side of Vimeo, I felt invited to participate and celebrate. The chat was filled with bursts of exclamation as we collectively recognized and applauded the good news of strangers. 

Through the course of the performance, we celebrated a person who had “intentionally prioritized their needs” with a two-minute round of applause, recognized a fully vaccinated family with a champagne toast, and uplifted someone who had continued to be a creative moving body when they just wanted to cry in bed. I was struck by how comforting it was to celebrate individuals for the smallest moments of existing within the pandemic. In a time that has felt disconnected and remarkably difficult, it felt like a radical act to uplift moments of light in a shared corner of virtual community. 

Barbier, alongside her assistant Samuel Hanson, heightened these celebratory rituals to exuberant absurdity. They made an absolute mess with confetti, they had a “celebratory toast” by eating actual toast, and they draped tinsel on their bodies and rolled around in lethargic liberation. It felt significant to be fully present in community celebration; to pause and center good news and small moments of joy. This sort of ritualistic practice is fun and quirky, but also has the capacity to spark resilience and center relationships.  

Barbier promised that more celebrations would be hosted soon. I am still holding out hope that I will get to see a dove release — one of the festivities that the wheel never chose. To submit your own piece of good news or learn about upcoming performances, visit Barbier’s website.

Thank you to the many PAF performers for obscuring the digital space, for manipulating time, and for giving Salt Lake a moment to celebrate. 

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.

Mitsu Salmon presents "Desert Turtle" and a workshop at Rogers Art Loft

Turtles are homed wherever they go. But the desert turtle is also subject to the particular rigors of its environs: water is tight, the vistas are endless, and the temperatures, dramatic. Mitsu Salmon’s recent Butoh workshop, held virtually through Rogers Art Loft in Las Vegas, led participants through an exploration of the contained body in interaction with their environment via vivid guided imagery. Salmon’s culminating performance, Desert Turtle, investigated her family history as a conduit mediating self and place. The literal resonance and waves of windswept field recordings along with looping speech and song scored an ebb and flow of abstracted movement and direct narration. Desert Turtle was filmed in the Mojave desert and edited to represent varying degrees of surreality.

Photos by Amelia Charter.

Such a sere backdrop invites an equally dry wit: Mitsu welcomes audience members from an outdoor stage. (Those who have made it there, as many have not). The widening frame reveals empty rows; of course, we can’t have live shows during a pandemic. But you wouldn’t have made it there anyway — it’s the Mojave Desert. It’s off-road aways outside of Barstow, where Mitsu’s mother emigrated at a young age in the sixties with her family from Yokohama, Japan. She arrived to a strikingly singular landscape, yet its expansiveness made her feel a part of everything. This is an experience Mitsu is both stepping into and generously expressing, and interrogating from the outside in this performance. In the opening vignette Mitsu edited her moving figure as alternately present in, and absent from, the same scene, with the attendant sonic field equipment establishing her as a researcher: observing, recording, and synthesizing. Her colorful clothes stand out against the muted bichrome of desert and sky. She relayed after the performance that most of her costume pieces were chosen for that reason, but some, including a kimono of her mother’s and a jacket of her grandmother’s, are tied to family. The addition of sunglasses is somewhat like the turtle shell — a functional adaptation that also happens to provide self-containment and cool.

Mitsu also treats the geology and biota of the Mojave. She speaks to the prevalence of the creosote bush while immersed in its ecosystem, then enters into the film’s single structure. Inside, we are offered either creosote tea or shade-grown matcha, from a table set with an antique turtle teapot atop a tablecloth of moving footage of desert scenery.  She muses on the plants’ shaded growth, and the shadows of atomic testing. For participants of the accompanying workshop (such as myself), this might recall the growth and death cycles of plants enacted in week two, or the animal adversity of the fourth and final week. The quality of Mitsu’s delivery in Desert Turtle is measured precision and mastery — in its language, movement, and soundscape — while acceding to the structural meanderings of non-linear narrative. This mirrors her approach to leading the workshop: the rich specificity of imagery and choices, and the freedom, time, and guidance to engage them fully and follow where they go.

The final scene of Desert Turtle was transporting. An ethereal, textured song of layered voice brings the original sound work back to the fore. The film is cropped in closer on the dance and overlays a moving track of desertscape. This centers the intricacies of Mitsu’s dancing and inverts the foregoing relationship of movement to the natural expanse, in both plane and scale. I believe the last song, dance, and film could each be perfectly enjoyed and appreciated independently, but they beautifully coalesce at the end of Desert Turtle. The work presents the viewer with many memorable quips and stories, poignant ephemera like family photos and clothing, and vivid images.  By the final scene, you are feeling very full, and then it is only full of feeling. It is primarily an emotional upwelling, buoyed on the beautifully voiced layers of sound; while you revel in that, the many things you wish to hold on to from the performance get to quietly sink in.

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. Catch Nora’s classes and performances this spring through loveDANCEmore.

DEXO explores Utah's queer and Mormon past and present

Disclaimer(s): This was the first in-person performance I’ve seen in over a year. Not *that* remarkable at this point, we’ve all been in this same boat for a long time now. But, for transparency – because of that, and because it was a beautiful day, the last day of this longest winter, and because several dear friends were involved in the show’s production – as long as I felt safe there was no earthly way my experience of it could have felt like anything other than a gentle thawing of the heart. 

One Hundred Years Hence was a production of Deseret Experimental Opera (DEXO, currently helmed by Peter C. Larsen and Carly Schaub), with a libretto by Max Barnewitz. The opera follows the lives of M, living in the present day in the Marmalade neighborhood of Salt Lake City, and Elsie Pierath, a blind woman who inhabited the same house at the turn of the twentieth century. It draws a simple and earnest sketch of their complex lives and the many tangled threads that knit the two together. We watch the performance, directed and choreographed by Alexandra Barbier, play out in the setting of Gilgal Garden, a sculpture park built over two decades by one LDS bishop beginning in 1945, two years after the death of the real Elsie. The scriptural, poetic, and philosophical themes of the many large sculptures and engraved stones of that personal-crusade-turned-municipal-park lend another layer to the stories of M, a queer person rediscovering her footing in Utah after years away, and Elsie, converted by missionaries in Copenhagen and navigating a new and strange country in 1903. 

Emma Sargent as Elsie Pierath began the performance with a long slow walk down the garden’s entrance path, cane and suitcase in hand. She comes to rest next to the scene of M’s arrival at the Marmalade home of her new landlady Dorothy, who pours cups of tea and does a billowing dance with pink-clay bedsheets. The action of the show is both narrated and accompanied by the music/vocals of composer Nora Price, all pre-recorded and played over the dancers’ movement through speakers set up in the park. Elsie’s voice specifically is represented by opera singer Rachel Grider who, like her character, is blind. The voices of Price and Grider tangle over the shimmering, hazy luster of Price’s guitar. They are a beautiful complement to each other. Grider’s voice rings like a clear glass, Price’s swirls inside and around it as they thread both their voice and instruments through pedals and microphone effects in a recording process that dreamily echos, obfuscates, and gathers subtle ambient sound. Lyrics contemplate change and stasis, otherness and out-of-place-ness, and anxiety or comfort in these conditions. 

The movement of Elsie is deliberate, controlled, and more anchored in place compared to that of M (Atticus J Reo) Dorothy (Rachel Luebbert) and M’s friend Jess (Craig Mitchell), who move freely and with animated enthusiasm. (A note is included that, historically, Elsie likely wouldn’t have had access to a cane or autonomous mobility, she would have relied on others to get around. The change was made to help the performance adhere to CDC guidelines, and none of the other dancers are partnered either. All wear masks throughout.) This stylistic tension is used to greatest effect in an interaction between Elsie and M, who has found the old suitcase and begins rifling through it. The knitting supplies inside are tokens of Elsie’s status as a prize-winning lacemaker, and she slowly twists herself into one end of a spool of thread, letting it bind and constrict and dig into her. When M finds the same spool – she exhilarates in it, nuzzling and playing with it and squirming her way into a snarled knot to which Elsie is very quietly still attached on the other end. 

The middle phase of the performance delves further into themes of knitting and expands to touch on migratory birds, ancestral connections, and ecological peril in the Great Salt Lake. M and Jess perform an exuberant, sweeping dance and are joined by Dorothy. Barbier, who plays Elsie’s missionary sponsor Anders, joins to help them send dozens of brightly colored balls of yarn spinning and unraveling in a haphazard criss-crossing pattern, which Elsie becomes yoked in the center of. Upon arrival each audience member had been given a long piece of yarn of unknown purpose as our ‘ticket’, and at this point a pause is drawn in the story and we are invited to pull out our ticket and follow a demonstration on the technique of ‘finger-knitting’. I screw mine up horribly and give up quicker than most. Emma Sargent is particularly good and has done a whole potholder in a matter of seconds. The cast unravels their knitting and we dissolve back into the story. 

This middle act takes place in the grass at the center of the park in front of a large stone altar, the first act having occurred in the west half of the park and along the entrance path, and the third scene moves to the east half of the park through an archway of boulders. It’s a very tiny park though, and it only takes the audience a few steps to complete this traverse and enact a small migration of our own. Outside of this subtle directional movement in the specific and unique chosen setting of the garden, and the finger-knitting lesson, our role as audience remained that of regular performance attendee, observer and outsider. We were expected to be quietly watchful and attentive and there was delineated performance space, but no designated seating and we were free to choose our vantage point as we liked (beyond a request for social distancing). Gentler interpretations of ‘immersive’ like this are the ones I often prefer. I like an element of optional(!!) participation and the opportunity to slip into the water a bit, as it were, but the term is omnipresent and generally used with incredible vagueness. You could find yourself at a very formal site-specific performance, or at a compulsory-theater-games fun-house style experience (aka a nightmare if you’re me, which you’re not, so maybe that end of the spectrum appeals to you!), or anywhere in between when a production is advertised as such. There are exceptions of course, but I tend to feel interaction as an offering over a mandate is a nice choice. 

The third and final scene finds Elsie alone, Anders having moved away, and M, Jess, and Dorothy together, contemplating community and belonging in an expanding sense of queerness and ex-mormon identity in Utah. Elsie recalls the earlier dance of Dorothy when she steps starfish-like into the elastic of a fitted sheet and begins a final waltzing kind of dance with it. Alone, but not totally alone. The show’s final note was wholesome, and the few moments of casual chatting as we dispersed as sweetly precious and hopeful as the spring weather. The Saturday afternoon showing was performed in the rain, a very different experience and I heard, delightful in its own way. The final performance was unfortunately canceled. It was however, filmed, and will soon be released as a virtual performance through DEXO. 

Emma Sargent, as Elsie Pierath, arrives in America.

Note: I’d like to note that I did feel reasonably safe attending this outdoor in-person event, although my comfort level may not be yours and frankly, I might not have gone if I hadn’t had the enormous privilege to be recently vaccinated. Respect practiced by all for masking and distancing standards, and the care taken to ensure tickets and programs were distributed in a no-contact way were greatly appreciated and made it possible to enjoy the performance. 

Emily Snow lives in Salt Lake City. She is a dancer, choreographer, artist, musician, and member of the band Durian Durian.

Chitrakaavya Dance brings a new virtual evening

As a previous student under the direction of Srilatha Singh, the director of Chitrakaavya Dance, it was an honor to be able to view their new production, Aabhaaram. Precise, direct pathways of arms, combined with their vibrantly clear hasta mudras, or hand positions, are signature expressions of their Kalakshetra style of Bharatanatyam technique. This striking style was executed with ferocity throughout the performance. Beautifully intricate dancing that pulled me into greater appreciation for this ancient, living form of dance.

The concert, as Singh said in our interview, was in the traditional Margam structure, meaning “The Path.” In the first work, Pushpanjali, the dancer began in supplication to the gods, gently laying her hands to the ground, comforting the Earth that was about to be stepped upon. This blessing is the beginning of the Margam. Each directionional pathway was activated throughout the work by painting the space with flowing hands, emotive eyes, and the tinkling of bells at her ankles. A powerful beginning.

Alarippu was more about subtlety than pure strength. I was stunned by the dancer’s musicality to be able to follow with precision where the complex music flowed. Sharp head movements and shoulder articulations were at the forefront of this work, which felt more ritualistic in nature. As the work progressed, the grace and unfolding of the dancer expanded in a crescendo of facial expression, widening movement, and stark lines, imitating the towers inside the temple and blossoming petals.

Jathiswaram was an innovative work. This duet had satisfying symmetry between the two dancers that often broke into variation, only to meet again like planets in orbit. The polyrhythm between eyes, feet, and arms provided a dizzying display of mastery. What was most surprising was the variation of their legs, which not only stomped, but were sweeping, swinging, lunging, folding, retracting. They occupied all levels and areas of space, meeting the ground and reaching high to keep viewers’ eyes engaged in anticipation. When I mentioned this striking new style of bharatanatyam, Singh explained that this circularity of legs and hips were the result recent research by Dr. Padma Subrahmanyam, an expert in bharatanatyam dance. She reconstructed the Karanas style of movement from ancient texts from southern India. This new style displayed by the dancers was indeed an exciting new movement vocabulary, and it was a treasure to witness.

The next two pieces, ChandraChuda and Keerthanam – Tunga Tarange, were two longer storytelling dances. Singh, in her explanation before the pieces, told the stories about the gods and goddesses that inspired them. This context provided a helpful framework to view the pieces, as I watched the dancers embody these deities. The struggle between the god of Death, the devotee, and Shiva were apparent in their facial expressions and actions that pantomimed the divine drama in the prior piece. The fluidity of the dancer’s hands in the latter behind the beautiful blue backdrop evoking the river goddess, Ganga, and the grace and power of rushing waters in the latter.

Tillana was a bright finale to the evening performance with its sharp and bright movements, accented by playful leaps and brisk, clean movement, and pure joy. A heart-warming reflection on auspiciousness and closure to the evening, which is invoked upon the viewer in Mangalam. 

I reflected with Singh on the purpose of the Margam structure, which is to create a transcendent state. She said it is becoming more difficult to achieve the egolessness that this structure is meant to elicit in our social-media dominated culture. With our shortening attention-spans, is it possible to achieve a transcendence in five minutes? How will the Covid-19 pandemic further exacerbate this problem? What does that say about our humanity? 

Furthermore, how can bharatanatyam continue to be seen as it was intended, instead of as a sprinkling of diversity in the name of multicultural inclusion? Singh mentioned that not being able to see the full Margam structure in smaller performances is an injustice to what the art form can offer Salt Lake City. How can we further support multicultural dance forms in ways that feel more meaningful to the people in those cultures?

Aabhaaram remains available on the Chitrakaavya Dance webpage until April 15.

Meredith Wilde (she/her/they/them) is a dance artist based in Salt Lake City, UT. They received a BFA in Modern Dance from University of Utah. In addition to ballet and contemporary, Wilde has trained in Bharatanatyam technique and performed with Chitrakaavya Dance in Salt Lake City, UT. Wilde has been a company member for the Polaris Dance Theatre, Shaun Keylock Company, and Wasatch Contemporary Dance Company. Wilde’s choreographic work has been presented at Snow College, Pacific University, The Fertile Ground Festival of New Work, MADCO2, and OuterSpace. They were also the recipient of the “Audience Choice” award at MADCO2’s “Dare to Dance” Showcase, and is a recipient of the “Barney Creative Prize,” a commissioning award to create work for White Bird in Portland, OR.

A new film about jazz dance, reviewed

Uprooted is a documentary film that traces the origins of jazz dance, giving long-overdue credit to the creators who brought the style to North America and the prime movers who developed it. The film leaves us reckoning the good with the bad sides of jazz becoming codified and the Dance Boom of the seventies and eighties.

But Uprooted, subtitled “The Journey of Jazz Dance,” is more than a timeline. It is a parable of economics, access, recognition, and loss. The film is acutely aware of the historic brutality that brought jazz to North America through the slave trade and the makers that remained invisible while the form became popularized and monetized.

Filmmaker Khadifa Wong (interviewed here for loveDANCEmore) takes a stand early in the film on the importance of knowing who the historical figures are – their names, their contributions — showing clips of innovative social dancing at The Savoy Ballroom during the Harlem Renaissance; Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers in Hot Chocolate (1941); and Norma Miller in the Marx Brothers movie, A Day At The Races (1937). 

The forty-two-person “cast of experts” Wong interviews suggest a number of valid reasons for educating dancers on the roots of jazz. Yet, none so relevant as when an hour into the film Thomas F. Defrantz (Chair of African and African American Studies at Duke University) elucidates this achingly pointed reality:

African-American movement does get appropriated… And the people who created the work, can’t benefit from all of the things that might be available from this other space — Broadway or Hollywood, or there might be money or work, or the possibility to live in a neighborhood where schools are good for children — like that’s not available for the Black people who are developing these dance forms and creative addresses. So, it’s important to understand — this is what jazz is too.

Narrated clips of the Nicholas Brothers, Josephine Baker and others remind that the era did produce some hard-won notice. Choreographer and academic Danny Buraczeski, laments that in her time African-American dance pioneer Katherine Dunham was “completely devalued… even though what she was doing was extraordinary. She was a scholar, a researcher, and she made phenomenal movement. The Dunham technique is just breathtaking”

The documentary touches on why and when jazz dance and jazz music parted ways. Buraczeski is one of the few post-modern era jazz choreographers to meet the challenge of jazz music, with such works as his 1986, Lost Life: Four Scenes from the Life of Art Pepper (1986). He created the piece to the music of jazz saxophonist Art Pepper and Hoagy Carmichael. The top dance critics at the New York Times fumbled about trying to critique Buraczeski’s concert-style jazz work — asking more questions than providing analysis.

Wong and her collaborators bemoan the lack of informed criticism, delve into the foundational myths surrounding Hollywood and Broadway, and uneasily seek to define jazz — before pivoting to the Dance Boom of the seventies and eighties. 

As a jazz dancer of that era, I avidly sought out class from many of the experts interviewed in the film and some that were not — Lynn Simonson, JoJo Smith, Frank Hatchet, Matt Mattox, Ronn Forella, and Betsy Haug. I went to Chicago to audition for Gus Giordano, and took class at Hubbard Street (how did Lou Conte get left out of a conversation about jazz?). 

Of those teachers: 1. Lynn Simonson and anyone who taught at her studio (Laurie De Vito) taught a style not easily categorized and Lynn was one of the best and possibly only wholistic jazz teacher in the city; 2. Betsy Haug taught class with a cigarette burning, as she incorporated inspired and complex tap rhythms into her across-the-floor-warm-up (always with a live drummer); 3. The film thoroughly and accurately describes JoJo, Mattox, and Hatchet; 4. As the film sadly punctuates, Ronn Forella died of HIV-AIDS in 1989. Forella seems to have left no historical trace even though his class was genius — the perfect blend of a classical lifted upper body, Horton Technique strength, and the cleanest of leg lines, straight from the top of the hip bone. I do know that Chita Rivera took class with Ronn, as did Chicago’s award-winning musical theater choreographer Jim Corti. 

The interviews with more than forty experts must have been tough to edit down to less than ninety minutes. But I wonder how any conversation about Black dance history did not include the Bessie Award-winning Dayton Contemporary Dance Company. Founded fifty years ago in Dayton, Ohio by a Black woman — Jeraldyne Blunden, who died 1999 — the company continues to train top-notch dancers and produce “contemporary” work. In 2007, the artistic leadership was handed down to Jeraldyne’s daughter, Debbie Blunden-Diggs.

Sekou McMiller teaches an Afro-Latin Fusion class at Ailey Extension NYC. Photo by Vibecke Dahle.

Uprooted is fundamentally a look back as a way to look to the future. Hip hop seems the closest to the original intentions of jazz where the “uprok” brings the community together and precipitates improvisation and insider humor. The University of Southern California’s Glorya Kauffman School reminds of JoJo’s Dance Factory pulling it all under one roof. And choreographer Mandy Moore suggests that there is hope for another dance boom.

Wong and her collaborators appeal to viewers to sharpen our focus on the future as we continue to honor the people who were at the mercy of their times.

Kathy Adams, formerly the dance critic for The Salt Lake Tribune, writes about dance nationally as well as having been a mentor to us at loveDANCEmore over the last ten years. She is also active in local politics.

Click here to learn more about the film, which will be available to watch here and elsewhere soon.