Another view of Queer Spectra Arts Fest

I. The Festival

When I left Mexico City and arrived at Salt Lake City in 2020, everything was closed there and here. No restaurants to go to, no museums to visit, no shows to attend. The virtual events were the only option; though none were as fulfilling as experiencing things live. I knew about Queer Spectra Festival and was curious to have the opportunity to go, but life happens… I missed the 2020 and 2021 editions. So, in 2022 I obligated myself to attend, and writing a review was the perfect pretext to do so.

Photo by Rogelio Peña.

On May 21, I had the chance to attend the first of two performance showcases at Sunset Studios. This festival is more than shows, exhibitions, panels, and workshops. It is an experience built for everyone. From the very first moment I stepped into the building, I realized that this organization has meticulously taken care of its mission. They had created a space where everyone felt welcome: a happy, bright vibe floating around the room, with many smiles and a feeling of belonging.

Interestingly, Queer Spectra has been one of the most diverse cultural/art events I have had the chance to attend. Based on past experiences, not even institutional spaces like UMFA, UMOCA or Finch Lane Gallery, have achieved such a gathering of BIPOC people, white people, LGBTQIA+, visually or/and audition impaired, and other identities together in the term of a full day of activities, excited to share, talk, witness, create belonging — to listen and be listened to. This is remarkable.

II. Videoart/Videodance

G Y P S U M by Jessy Christ was a beautifully poetic and elegant videodance; unfortunately, the light filtrating in the space killed the sublime visual experience this work was offering. For the rest of the videos, the organizers did magic to cancel some of the extra light affecting the projection, but this first work was the victim of a show happening in the middle of the afternoon.

Bits and Parts by arin lynn is a cute, fun, and magical work that shows the video skills of the artist through a feeling of joy and cheerfulness that so many times goes missing in contemporary art. (I say that especially for myself, acknowledging this lighter tone does not come naturally to me.) Having the artist as the video's protagonist, interacting with animated forest animals and traveling to space in an animated rocket, stole laughs and smiles from the audience. While watching, I questioned how extreme art (and more specifically, the art market) has defined what fine art is. What is contemporary art? Is it defined by the solemn colonial standards of the art world. Is this art? Is it not? Who says so? I loved this work for making these questions bursting into my mind

Is Collector’s Box by Ali Lorenz and Mia Martelli a dance film? Multimedia film? Performance video? For some reason, the video brought me a feeling of nostalgia. The images took my mind to the eighties and nineties video aesthetics. I believe this work was edited digitally, but the effects, the pop sound, and low-tech image references threw me back to those lost decades. Though a little long for my taste, the work’s interesting visual effects and artistic choices left me wondering how the collaboration worked between these two unique and different minds.

III. Performances

Sunshine, All the While by Nick Weaver is not foreign to me. I’ve watched it in the past in its online version. Weaver’s piece presented a duet with a ladder, a very attractive element to me. A space inhabited by two bodies collaborating with physics to build the illusion of partnering work. Transparent, straightforward, and honest, this short work uses elements like video, sound, and objects to catch the viewer’s attention to the internal feelings of the performer. There is no doubt that Nick is quite a performing arts creature. He’s a fascinating mover, and I am very curious to know more about the evolution of Nick’s work in the future.

Nick Weaver with his ladder. Photo by Rogelio Peña.

Finally, the last piece, Our Right Hearts by Eliza Kitchens, Hunter Hazard, and Becca Speechley, is a bizarre work. And I use this word with no disrespectful. I adored the odd feeling it caused me; we need to feel uncomfortable more often. The three performers wear dresses and carry a robot toy and Christmas lights wrapped around a pole that, further along in the piece, will hold a glass disco ball. Sound starts. Julie Andrews’ voice caused a flashback to my early teen years. (Yes, this cultural reference colonized a portion of the urban middle class in Mexico.) I got to know Andrews’ films because my lesbian friend (that had not yet accepted her own sexual preferences then) introduced them to me. What I experienced through the singing, dancing, manipulation of portable LED lights and a song by Taylor Swift was una ofrenda de amor — a loving offering building community. The performers made a community of three, but also built a community with us, the viewers. This was the perfect piece to end the program. This festival is doing fundamental work in for Salt Lake City.

Our Right Hearts featured Eliza Kitchens, Hunter Hazard, and Becca Speechley. Photo by Rogelio Peña.

Originally from Mexico City. Stephanie García holds a Contemporary Dance AA and BA from the National Classical and Contemporary Dance School of the National Fine Arts Institute (INBA), studies in Cultural Management from Universidad de Guadalajara, and a Cultural Management and Cultural Policies Diploma from the National Arts Center (CENART), the Organization of American States (OAS), and the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM) in Mexico. She is a performer, choreographer, performing arts director, cultural manager, producer, and Co-founder and Co-Director of Punto de Inflexión Dance Company and PROArtes México. Stephanie has danced with several of the most important choreographers and venues in Mexico, performed in eleven countries of America, Europe, and Africa, and choreographed more than twenty original dance/multi-/inter- disciplinary pieces. She was co-founder and co-director of Sur Oeste Arte Escénico for ten years. A beneficiary of programs like IBERESCENA grant (Iberoamerican Performing Arts Fund), Prince Claus Fund (Netherlands), and seven times awarded by Mexico's National Culture and Arts Fund grants from 2006-2019. With seventeen years of dance and arts administration experience, Stephanie has been considered by the press to be one of the most prominent dancers in Mexico. Garcia is currently an MFA candidate and Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Modern Dance program at the University of Utah.

loveDANCEmore was thrilled to present Stephanie’s work in last October’s Sunday Series, curated by Jorge Rojas.

Salt Lake Ballet Cooperative premiere performance

The sun was hot in my face as I walked down the hill to the amphitheater in Bountiful’s North Canyon Park to see Stay, produced by the Salt Lake Ballet Cooperative in collaboration with DEXO. Nested at the bottom of a hill within the scrub oak, the venue provided an informal atmosphere where dancers in warm-up clothes prepared themselves on a platform stage of rolled out Marley. Musicians tuned instruments as the sun slowly went down over the trees, and the dancers returned in soft tan and pink costumes.

Salt Lake Ballet Cooperative, photo by Kirsten Law Photography.

The show opened with soft waves of movement, forming an ensemble out of the dancers in twisting, floating shapes. This energy continued throughout the show with a mix of lyrical and instrumental music accompanying the arching and sweeping limbs of the performers. The pieces blended together smoothly as dancers transitioned on and off the open stage, framed by the backdrop of the sunset. In Moments of Doubt choreographed by Sayoko Knode highlighted the technical abilities of the dancers while offering unexpected transitions and risky partnering. Chunk4Chunk choreographed by Ellie Hanagarne reminded me how simplicity in group structures can create delightful shapes and forms. Throughout every piece the dancers moved with beautiful reaching extensions to create strong unison moments and solos.

Of particular interest to me was Gratitude in Chaos choreographed by Caroline Sheridan. It began with a quick, sassy solo matching the daring energy of the flute and defined by the clear confidence of the performer. She was joined by another dancer and their relationship quickly took on the sense of a competition, moving very closely to each other but never looking each other in the eye while performing precise, striking jumps. A second duet emerged that twirled and wound through the space like strong winds through the canyons as the music shifted towards more positive and playful tones. The final cross-diagonal jumps and turns were grand and joyful in such contrast to the first solo that spoke of an evolution from small, precise, almost fearful actions to a big, open-hearted embrace of the space and each other.

The finale engaged the band members of Durian Durian in the movement with a stunning duet on the grass in front of the stage. Starting as a solo, the performer made tight gestures around her face and head, evoking images of wiping away tears, giving up, trying again, building tension and speed. This resolved as the second performer entered, inviting a soft rocking and holding between their two bodies that reminded me how community can help us through moments of exhaustion. The tangibility of the connection between the duet performers made it hard to look away from even as the ensemble dancers swirled through group forms on the stage behind them.

Courtesy of DEXO.

For me, this performance felt like dance for dance’s sake. Many of the pieces I would describe as pretty dancing to pretty music and most of the titles seemed to come from the lyrics of the music rather than any content in the dance. What was clear, however, was the celebration of the work of the dancers and the desire to bring their community together. For their first produced show, I felt the Salt Lake Ballet Cooperative did a great job of this. The informal setting allowed people to move around during the show and I saw many children up on the hill dancing in the grass trying to match the performers or the music. I think if you are inspiring children to dance, you must be doing something right.

Kara Komarnitsky grew up in Salt Lake City and recently graduated with a BFA in Dance from Ohio State University with minors in Environmental Science and Business. Her work approaches the complexity of human interconnection with the planet, pulling inspiration from the natural world and environmental research. While her primary medium is dance, Kara regularly uses projections, film, sound, and interactive technology to create immersive performance experiences. Her piece Tales of the Deep (2018) recently won third place in the Midwest Climate Summit’s Climate Stories Competition and her thesis, Interconnect (2022), received an Honorable Mention at the OSU Denman Research Forum 2022. Other places her work has been presented includes the OSU Student Concert, OSU BFA Showcase, and the Ohio Dance Festival Professional Concert.

Interdisciplinary Arts Collective presents new work at a steel factory

The audience arrives in a steel factory's yard comprised of stacks of large steel bars, machinery, and dirt. We are greeted by a young man who hands us goggles which are mandatory for the performance. To his left is a keyboard with four keys taped down and dried orange peels on top; it produces the sound of a continuous chord. This is the work Organ2/ASLSP by John Cage, and other iterations of this piece have played and are now still playing for decades. The sound and this idea create a sense of whimsy and connect the work for me to other places and times. The performance begins, or rather it has already started, but this is when we first see the performers. The steel factory doors open, and it seems we have arrived at a funeral. The performers are dressed in ponchos and protective gear and don't quite seem sad, but rather their mannerisms express boredom; occasionally, they open their arms which reference a wing. The coffin is decorated with cloth and fake flowers, and a story is read like a eulogy, but rather it speaks of sorcery. A musician plays the guitar while looking out into space. The reading finishes, and the performances disperse around the factory. The audience is told and encouraged to move around. All over the space, simultaneously is group choreography, duets and solo dances, the playing of various instruments, and climbing on the metal structures. For some of the performers, the initial expressions of boredom have turned to that of engagement, which draws me in along with the flashes of gorgeous movement. Yet some performers, like part of the audience, still seem lost, looking around to see what is next. The funeral and then the explosion of exploration that followed spoke to me of how creation and destruction are different sides of the same coin. 

A Wall for the Body, a Circle for the Soul, a Fruit for your Memory draws from John Cage's Musicircus along with Jeanette Winterson's novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, and of course, the location itself of the steel factory. 

Musicircus is the invitation to bring together various groups, allowing them to perform simultaneously, resulting in the sense of wonderful chaos; as John Cage says, "You won't hear anything, and you'll hear everything." John Cage's Musicircus also inspired Allan Kaprow's Happenings. Allan Kaprow terms Happenings in the 1960s, a member of Fluxus and a student of John Cage. Happenings, despite its name, is pretty structured and often has combined elements of painting, readings, and dance staged as live-action. All of those aspects were part of A Wall for the Body, a Circle for the Soul, a Fruit for your Memory. The over two hours of the performance contained elements such as group choreography on the driveway, music gatherings, the reading text, and various Happenings. For me, the most exciting moments of the performance were reminiscent of Happenings. For example, when the performer wraps herself in feathers, the eating of the oranges, and the incredible moment at the end where a performer jumps out of the coffin, you realize they have been there all two hours. The audience at the end is then asked to join the dance party. These moments were exhilarating and felt unexpected. 

At first, I wasn't sure why the performance took place in a steel factory, what is the history of the site, and why it was used in this way. As someone who appreciates site-specific research, I did at the time want the performance to reference more the literal inquires of the site itself. Yet through time, I saw the power of the symbolic nature of the space in terms of steel factories as places of creation, building, and assemblages. The performance delves beautifully into questions of creation and notions of sexuality, such as the oranges which symbolize Jeanette Winterson's novel, a coming-of-age story of a lesbian girl. This is expressed by the fruit and the sensuality underlying many movements and actions. At times the work seemed very organic and flowing. At other times stiff or robotic, which I related to the mechanical of the factory.

A Wall for the Body, a Circle for the Soul, a Fruit for your Memory doesn't aim at linear logic; rather, the meaning is open to the audience's interpretation. It becomes a Rorschach test of what we choose to witness and how we link together the dots. For example, themes I saw throughout the work were flight and birds, soot, glamor, childhood, sexuality, and the creative process. But perhaps other audience members would have seen and interpreted different components since you can't see all the performance at once. I felt most invested in the work when the performers were deeply committed to their actions, even if that was absurd, silly, and confusing. Yet when the performers lacked confidence or seemed self-conscious, my attention as an audience waned. For example, the performers didn't always seem assured in unison with the group choreography. Yet when the performers jumped into the work, so many amazing moments emerged throughout the show. For example, a performer covering herself in glitter, a group telling personal stories with gestures, dancing and singing with electric fans, humming in a group while huddled, and so much more. Overall, it was a delight to watch the work, and I am grateful for this kind of experimentation taking place in the art community in Salt Lake. I appreciated the ensemble work, the drawing from an array of evocative sources, the myriad of wonderful and surprising moments, and the playful and deep investigation.

Mitsu Salmon is a current loveDANCEmore artist in residence. She creates original performance and visual works, which fuse multiple disciplines. She was born in the melting pot of Los Angeles to a Japanese American mother and Caucasian father. Her creation in differing mediums, the translation of one medium to another, is connected to the translation of differing cultures and languages. Salmon received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2014. In 2005 she graduated from NYU where she majored in Experimental Theater,  studying theater and visual arts. She has lived in India, England, Germany, Amsterdam, Japan, and Bali.  She has presented work at places such as the Chicago Cultural Center, Highways, Performance Space 122, and internationally at Hebbel Am Uffer in Berlin, London Performance Art Festival, and Urbanguild in Kyoto, Japan. She has participated in artist residencies at Taipei Artist Village, Villa Pandan Harum in Bali, High Concept Lab, Links Hall, the Chicago Cultural Center and Oxbow. She was awarded best collaborative multi-disciplinary performance by Newcity in 2015, Individual Artist Grant from the City of Chicago, and a touring grant through Midwest Nexus in 2018.

Voices of Queer Identity

Queer Spectra Arts Festival returned last weekend to Salt Lake City with both online and in-person performances. The 2022 theme, Tell It Like It Is, invokes the words of social activist bell hooks when she said, “the function of art is to do more than tell it like it is — it’s to imagine what is possible.” This year’s theme invited submissions that recognize the challenges that the LGBTQIA+ community faces and celebrates the strength of queer faith, family, and art.

The festival’s second showcase displayed a broad range of performance art, from spoken word to screendance. The diversity of mediums created a jukebox-like viewing experience, shifting themes and topics between each performance. Undertones of religious conflict and environmental strain carried through the show, addressed by drag artist Luzsaint who read “the desert doesn’t care if it leaves holes” from their poem “Floor Boards.” Questions of “My God” and commentary towards the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints clearly reflected the experiences of queer youth growing up in Utah.

Funny features such as Kit Francis’s comedic act Face Changer balanced the show, amusing the audience with jests and gimmicks. Although a simple concept, as Francis used everyday objects to shapeshift between characters the audience was asked to question the masks worn over queer identity and invtied to step into a fluid gender expereince. Aileen Norris’s video performance Ping Pong Brain similarly displayed a comedic struggle against external pressures, as she repeatedly failed to mount a piece of cardboard on a wall. These performances were successful because they were digestible and light, which Francis later discussed in the Q&A as a difficult approach towards queer art in a community that is burdened by heavy complex problems.

Still from Fluid Man(?)

The show’s two screendances carried the bulk of the show’s emotional weight. Based in Kolkata, Sangram Mukhopadhyay’s Fluid Man(?) used a voyeuristic close perspective to defamiliarize self embodiment. Fluctuating between undulating convulsions and tracing his own body in stillness, Mukhopadhyay displayed a full journey of self exploration. Transitions, created by Hannah Fichser and Ira Kaufman, also explored a body in flux. Accompanied by the sounds of Kaufman’s chimes and their words, Fichser used visual metaphors of tension and release to capture Kaufman’s experience within their gender transition. These screendances highlighted introspection through symbolism while showing great vulnerability from both Mukhopadhyay and Kaufman.

While most performances in this show extended a hand towards empathy and sympathy, one outlier stood apart from the rest. Tori Meyer and Nora Lang provided the only live dance performance of the evening with their piece Saggy Titties. Beginning with linear pathways and deconstructed movements, the dancers eventually unfurled blank nylon slings from their jacket sleeves, prompting them to pendulum and swing across the stage. Eventually ending the piece stripped down to only mesh underclothes, the two ended in an amorphous web of each other's stretched appendages. Unexpected, dynamic, and abstract, this piece gave the audience an inquisitive gaze into alternative queer art but clearly served the artists’ satisfactions foremost.

Still from video documentation of Saggy Titties. Courtesy of Queer Spectra.

As Queer Spectra reorients itself after the pandemic, it traded a broader scope of geographic representation in favor for a Utah-centric festival. This narrowed focus gave greater opportunity for the audience to directly relate with the performances. For a festival that seeks to retain and attract queer artists to Utah, this year’s Queer Spectra successfully created opportunities for queer voices to “tell it like it is.”

Brianna Bernhardt is a recent graduate of the University of Utah’s BFA program, as well as being a spring 2022 loveDANCEmore intern.

Ririe-Woodbury's Spring Season

The drive to the new Mid-Valley Performing Arts Center involves a turn off Redwood Road to a straight shot down 5400 South’s Flex Lanes – the middle lanes in the road are marked solely with dotted yellow lanes and a light indicating which direction of traffic is allowed to occupy that lane at any given time of day. Ririe-Woodbury’s latest show Lo and Behold involved a similar journey — a turn from solid colors and fast, straight lines into something more permeable and ambiguous. 

Photo by Stuart Ruckman.

The final show of their 2021-2022 season opened with a new piece by Daniel Charon in all his (Doug) Varone-iest glory. Swirling limbs, interweaving pathways, and a ringing minimalist score from John Adams held The Break of Day firmly in the light. With no attempt at pretense, the piece was just bodies moving beautifully and joyously in their own physicality. 

A final eddy in the movement gathered the dancers into a quietly-decelerating cluster, with lights fading and Adams’ gramophone slowly winding down. This signaled a tonal shift in the show towards more shadowy, somber fare. Culture Mill (a performing collective based out of North Carolina and headed by Murielle Elizéon and Tommy Noonan, with collaborator Clint Lutes) choreographed Bodystorm. The piece was partially funded through the Parkinson’s Foundation, with the movement “informed and transformed by interactions with local people living with Parkinson’s Disease.” I would have actually liked to see those local people on stage alongside RW’s six young, able-bodied dancers, although I will acknowledge that I don’t know the specific functioning of that collaborative interaction or its constraints. 

Bodystorm opened with Corinne Lohner walking onstage in silence, with the air of someone about to speak. The piece was scattered with quiet moments where the dancers seemed to choose silence just as words were about to leave their mouths. This resulted, at times, in a lovely shift and play between the silence supplementing, clearing space for, or obstructing what the dancers’ bodies were trying to communicate. There were also gestural moments that veered uncomfortably towards the repetitive-flailing-limbs trope in abstract depictions of mental health and disability. The score (arranged by Noonan) featured a polyphonic sampling of popular music and vocalizations layered on top of a gorgeous piece by early electronic music pioneer Éliane Radigue. Radigue’s music was primarily interested in slow patterns unfurling and evolving over extremely long periods of time. The listener’s interior experience of that time passing (and the effect it had on their disposition) was an integral component of her work. What was missing from Bodystorm, then, was perhaps a commitment to that journey through time — either a willingness to sit with the stillness for as long as it took or the ability to maintain a through-line of the energy in transitional moments without rushing forward or dwelling unnecessarily. 

Photo by Stuart Ruckman.

The show concluded with Yin Yue’s In the Moment Somehow Secluded — originally choreographed for the company in 2020 but delayed in its premiere until now. I mention the pre-pandemic genesis because the piece’s frequent use of juxtaposition between individual dancers and the (at times adversarial, supportive, or entirely disengaged) collective seemed to reference a Romantic understanding of Lone Isolation that we have put aside with the advent of our hard-earned understanding of Social Isolation. I tend to read program notes only after watching a piece, so I would learn later that this ostensibly had nothing to do with the choreography’s explorations of internal processes and how “subconscious personas” influence reality. But the forcefulness of the individual versus group imagery stuck with me. I still can’t decide if it was a welcome respite from post-COVID discourse about the State of Society today, or if it was a distracting holdover from a less nuanced time. Beyond that, the movement itself was beautiful if not deeply engaging, with some exceptional solo moments from Alexander Pham. 

The lighting design (Jessica Greenberg and William Peterson) deserves a special shout-out, especially in the latter two pieces. The generally heavy atmosphere and corresponding dark stages for both dances were cut and at times transformed with strips, pools, daggers, and waves of light that moved and shifted beautifully. The costumes, in a recent stylistic trend I’ve seen with RW towards what you might call “color-blocking athleisure,” were slightly underwhelming. I’ve been watching so much DIY dance lately that I found myself craving more extravagance from a company with the budget able to meet that desire. A conversely wonderful trend in recent RW shows is the incorporation of visual art exhibits in the lobby, and we were treated this time around to a lovely display by Nora Lang.

Indigo Cook is an independent artist in Salt Lake City. Learn more about Indigo’s work by reading our January digest.