Reflections on Marilyn Arsen's Summer Workshop

Back in July, I had the opportunity to take a workshop led by Marilyn Arsen, a performance artist that has been creating live performance work since 1975. Marilyn’s work focuses on minimal durational work. Her work seems simple when her actions are summarized, but Marilyn is able to find depth and nuances in the tasks she brings to the audience. Marilyn also understands the audience is intelligent enough and empathetic enough to search for mystery themselves. My personal goal going to Marilyn’s workshop was to combat that urge. I wanted to feel like I was bringing genuine creativity, and stay compelling to my audience. I wasn’t alone in my worries, and Marilyn had a way for us to challenge those thoughts by creating mystery.

During this workshop, Marilyn had the participants be prepared with daily tasks, props to complete those tasks, and unconnected unwritten stories. She first had us tell our stories in a short duration. After we told it once, we had to tell them again in a shorter form. Then the workshop switched agendas, and we explored how much detail it takes to complete our daily tasks. Marilyn would have us tear that task apart and slow down our movement just to see how much nuance is actually in there. Once we were able to explore as much as we needed, the workshop was prompted with combining the tasks with the unconnected stories. We did this twice, once with a familiar narration of storytelling and once with broken sentences that lacked action. As we were watching each other perform these prompts, mystery was already there. These were simple actions that we were doing, there wasn’t an exaggerated movement or forced attitude to our actions. Plus, the words and sentences that came from the artist help guide the mystery without elaborating. We were not performing, but we were entertaining. Now, more than a month later, I think back to the workshop and I know I have more to offer than just shocking the audience. As an artist, I feel like we forget the impact we have on our audience just creating. Watching all of us in the workshop create from this mystery allowed me to recognize that artists have that impact. I learned to not only trust myself, my technique, my practice, but to trust the audience. That trust also extends to me, the artist. As the artist it’s up to me to place the boundary for the audience. Using this trust allows for simplicity to be entertaining.

Trust. Trust is a necessity in many aspects of life and various relationships. As an artist, bringing trust into our own art should be a no brainer. That thought should be natural when an artist is curating work, right? One would think, however I find myself working against this natural thought. As stated earlier, I noticed myself focused on what would keep my audience entertained. I felt compelled to wow the audience with athletic dance tricks, or shocking moments. On the other hand, I felt myself thinking about how the audience would read these moments. Does this make sense or have I pushed my audience to a jarring uncomfortable state that we can’t come back from? These anxieties would come into my movements and I would be so focused on the impact my work has on the observers. The anxieties would cloud my intentions and decisions, and my art would show my distrust. Trust. It’s the key element when addressing these anxieties. Trusting myself, my work, my skills is an ongoing process I’m going to have to deal with as an artist. But what if I tricked my brain to make this process easier? I trust my audience is capable of watching my work without my need to hold their hand through it. My responsibility as an artist is to create, not take away the mystery of my work. I trust the mystery of my work will keep the audience focused and curious. I trust the mystery to help my work so I don’t have to use athletic dance tricks and shocking moments. Trust with mystery is a tool I can use to benefit my art.

Edison Corvera (they/them) is a queer Filipinx performer currently based around the SLC area. They attended Southern Utah University and studied theater arts and dance performance. Since moving to the Salt Lake area, Edison has worked with Myriad Dance, Ogden Movement Collective, and SONDERimmersive. Whether through dance, acting, or modeling, Edison hopes to continue to find ways to implement their art with the community around them.

1520 Arts presents their annual showcase

THEY REMINISCE is inviting us to a funny and entertaining world that moves us through the evolution of Hip Hop history and culture from its beginning. Represented by Old School (OG’s) and the younger generation, we understand from the beginning that the OG’s and youngsters have some kind of beef. Respectfully staged in a funny way to point out the relationships between the two parties that even in our current life, seem to always have something to say to each other. There was a cheekiness that kept it light and a relatability to fall back on as the show weaved us through history.

The show was very authentic taking us through different elements of Hip Hop.“ THE ORIGIN ERA” had us understanding MC’ing, Breaking, Graffiti, Locking, Popping. “THE CLUB ERA” introduced VOGUE, HOUSE, WHACKING, TURNTABLISM and NEW JACK. “THE MODERN ERA” displayed a variety of dance crews through their own choreography and distinct styles. Educational narration (wish it was a little more audible for clarity) by host, Joshua Perkins, took us through the Evolution of Hip Hop; the performers acted out scenes, dancers embody different elements, plus projection with original footage from each time period immersed us into the world of Hip Hop and that was a sensorial treat. It was physical, electrifying, funny, and the performers had people screaming (ayeee!) in every exciting moment. This kind of audience engagement was encouraged at the start of the show and created such an inviting and thrilling vibe throughout the evening.

Photo by Fractal Films

Taking over the stage from intricate, detail-oriented choreography danced in unison to individual, battle- like style, we had the opportunity to witness different levels of movers from younger to well seasoned dancers. Their passion and love for what they do really came through in their performance and it was truly a pleasant and very contagious energy that did not end on the stage with them but carried through the entire Jeanne Wagner theater.

One of the standout moments in the show (too many to mention each in detail) was the popping section choreographed by Marc “BIG CHOCOLATE” Cameron, from its first hit the piece was eye catching, sharp and supremely defined by the dancers, as they glided past one another there was an effortless float across the stage juxtaposed by the hard hits and definition in their upper body. Though there were some small mistakes, the performers saved it with their wild energy and presence in the stunning cannons of complex pathways that weaved through each other’s arms with dazzling precision and speed. It was refreshing to see a show with theatrical situations at play, knowing that this show runs annually it would be great to see how these theatrical scenes could be played out to a greater degree; building up real scenes with structure to take us into the theatrical world that could enhance the storyline of the whole evening to a deeper level. The “CLUB BATTLE” at the end of the evening showcased the originality of each and every dancer that stepped out to move. The variety of movements defined by rhythm, personality of the mover and their exceptional physicality came to life in every style from wicked breakdance, funky locking, popping, sexy whacking and more.

The show was carrying diversity not only in dance styles but in representation of people with different backgrounds, ethnicities, genders ages, and body physiques which is an essential part in the evolution of Hip Hop culture. That alone stood as a unique power (especially in the state of Utah) saying without having to say that yes, in Utah there is a community that is ever growing and all of these people, and more, belong on this stage. The performers were so engaging, to watch such authenticity and individuality flourish on stage was a thrilling environment to bear witness.

I would definitely recommend going to see THEY REMINISCE when it comes back again. There is so much to learn if you’re new into this world of dance and even if you’re very familiar with the work and mission of these artists you still are in for an entertaining, funny, exciting and educational evening that I guarantee will not disappoint. Congrats to all involved in this compelling show, it was a joy to experience.

Photo by Fractal Films

This review was written by Martin Durov and edited by Laja Field (LAJAMARTIN). LajaMartin Physical Dance Theater is a vessel for live performance. Co-founded in 2017 by Martin Durov (Slovakia) and Laja Field (SLC, UT) the two have had the pleasure of traveling to perform, teach and create work in 16 different countries world wide. Highlights include a New York City premiere of Pinot Noir for the Curated Series by Gibney Dance Company; touring work to Prisma Festival in Panama and the Šibenik Dance Festival in Croatia; teaching all over the U.S and for five consecutive years at the b12 festival in Berlin. This fall LajaMartin will be premiering two new works, in Salt Lake City on the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company and in Calgary on Project InTandem. Currently based out of a suitcase, LajaMartin continues to bring their unique style of highly physical dance theater in performances and workshops throughout the globe. For more visit lajamartin.com.

A weekend of dance in September

A couple of weekends ago I took in two very different shows, which together illustrate the variety of what Salt Lake City dance has on offer these days. Versa Styles, a hip hop dance company from Los Angeles, has visited the University of Utah a couple of times now through UtahPresents. The company’s exuberant dancers more than filled the giant stage at Kingsbury Hall — I only wish they’d had a bigger audience. In a much smaller space the next night, I watched a collaboration between Heartland Collective and local painter Andrew Alba. Heartland Collective is made up of Molly Heller, Melissa Younker, Brian Gerke, Florian Alberge, and Nick Foster. Both evenings were memorable and brought up questions in my mind about how dance can fill different spaces and enrich audiences’ lives.

Versa Styles’ performance reminded me of the many lecture demonstrations I witnessed and participated in as a young dancer, and I mean this in a positive sense. It’s rare to get to see each dancer in a professional company moving on their own and getting a few minutes of solo time to present their unique strengths. All of the dancers had incredible presence and most were from California, so meeting them one after another was also an opportunity to learn more about the embodied histories of popping, waacking and other related forms from a West-coast perspective. The autobiographical moments in which the dancers, many of whom had worked with artistic director Jackie Lopez since junior high school, belied the formality of the setting, which at times seemed at odds with the values of the dance forms at play.

Heller’s work, ∆IAMON∆IAMON∆, which took place in the tiny optician’s shop at the corner of 800 East and 800 South, was in some sense more formal in tone, despite the intimate setting. It began with a piercing, spaced-out cover of Cindy Lauper’s “Time after time,” which followed a beguiling, intricate trio danced by Heller, Melissa Younker and Brian Gerke. Despite the lack of physical space available, there was an uncharacteristic sense of depth to the way Heller’s lines of phrase work unfolded, fugue-like, quiet and serene. Where Heller has in the past seemed preoccupied with the frantic, here she seemed to be exploring a group of characters with such a long shared memory that they didn’t need to be in constant contact in order to develop their moody, glacial, underwater relations. As all of this unfolded, the dancers (and later the artist himself) manipulated the set — a melancholy grid of square paintings by Alba, which formed and unformed glyph-like, haunting faces — crossing, forming and unforming, and eventually ending up beached in a tidy pile on the floor.

Samuel Hanson is the executive director of loveDANCEmore.

SB Dance - Curbside Theater in a Ranching Town

The incredible Boulder Arts Council and a generous local donor brought a combined performance by SB Dance from Salt Lake City, and the D’Dat Trio from Farmington, New Mexico to the tiny community of Boulder, Utah for two nights, August 19 and 20, 2022. The population of Boulder is about 300, and the town website calls Boulder a “gem… located in a stunning landscape of sandstone outcroppings, green pastures, pinyon and juniper forests, and sagebrush deserts.” This review was originally intended to comment, not on the dancing, but rather on the way that a small rural southern Utah town responds to a somewhat edgy contemporary live performance. The Friday audience was only about 30, but that represents 10% of the town population! The opening Native American-influenced jazz by D’Dat set the mood for the evening and the subsequent showing of SB Dance’s standard Curbside Theater show, which and been to Boulder previously, was well received. I noticed that, as is common, the audience was often looking for deep metaphysical meaning when the show was actually trying to be funny. The idea of commenting on the small town response to SB Dance really didn’t work out because the audience turned out to be highly self selected — mostly arts council supporters and their friends. The descendants of the pioneer families and the ranching families were notably absent. As Steve Brown remarked, the audience demographics in Boulder were basically the same as for a show in downtown Salt Lake.

A “completely different” show had been promised for the second night. The Saturday show publicity had described it as a "first-time-ever” collaboration between new choreography and a live accompaniment. But thunderstorms intervened, and the Saturday night performance involved a totally restaged and unrehearsed improvisation that showed the best of modern dance and jazz traditions. Rain had been falling all afternoon and the ground was soaked. What was intended to be a dynamic traveling performance using SB Dance’s “six-legged piece of sculpture upon which the dancers perform” out on the town park lawn had to be moved into a cramped space on concrete pavement under the pavilion roof. The dancers negotiated in front of the audience adjusting their choreography to fit the space. Steve gave the musicians some brief information like “this one starts slow then builds” and the show started. The interaction of jazz improvisation and restaged dance was fantastic. The musicians easily sensed the time and energy aspects of the dancing, and every time the dancers began a new movement theme the musicians switched to jam on a new melody line. It was totally improvised and unrehearsed, but the artists made it work to the delight of the audience.

Collaboration between live music with original scores and dance in unconventional settings creates interactive artistic opportunities that go far beyond layering a sound track on top of the choreography on a proscenium stage. An new initiative this year by loveDANCEmore will be offering grants to local choreographers to fund collaboration with composers and musicians.

Think about all the possibilities!

John Veranth is on the board of loveDANCEmore. He’s long been a performer and supporter of dance in Salt Lake City, Boulder and beyond.

Beyond The Line Theatre Co. and Amuse Bouche Productions bring physical comedy to the Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival

Clown House is the third show produced by Beyond the Line Theatre Co. and was created by artistic director Jordan Reynosa.

When asked about the creative process and the inspiration behind making a clowning show, Reynosa said, “I wanted to do something extremely different from the past two shows we created. They were both very serious, very abstract, had large sequences of movement, and had a large focus on script. I wanted to push myself to do something new… I have zero experience in clowning, so I knew I would either fail miserably or at least do a decent job and make a fun show. I wanted to take that challenge for myself.” Well Jordan, I think trying something new absolutely paid off. Beyond the Line did a great job at making a fun show that has everyone smiling on their way home. 

This clowning show blurs the lines between physical comedy, devised theatre, and surrealism. In the spirit of clowning, the actors are completely mute for the entire performance. It got me thinking about the muteness of ballet and contemporary dance. Generally speaking, mainstream ballet, contemporary dance, as well as clowning all portray ideas or narratives without using voiced dialogue. In ballet, there is a language of pantomime that is mostly understood by students, teachers, and avid lovers of ballet. So for people like me, who attend ballet much more casually, ballet pantomime doesn’t look like it’s conveying anything specific. It sometimes doesn’t help the narrative at all. This had put me off of the muteness of dance from an early age, however Clown House made me rethink my previous skepticism of pantomime. I was not only intrigued but impressed. Clown House made their intentions very clear despite using no real universal language other than the honesty of their character’s experiences. 

The rehearsal process of Clown House spent a lot of time exploring this challenge. They found that character building was vital in order to develop an intuitive way to communicate the narrative. Reynosa elaborated on this: “I'd ask all of my actors to do some writing about their clown while they were ‘in nose’, asking them how their clown thinks and acts in descriptive words, how they are emotionally, how they think of and react to other clowns or regular people, etc… Clowns have a very specific, almost indescribable way that they function. A group of clowns will naturally find a leader, a thinker, a comic, we just had to find that while doing it in the moment.” They referred to this as their “clown logic”.  

The narrative is fairly simple: They are clowns who are locked in a room. As they go on this journey of repetitive daily tasks they slowly unfold into a frenzy where they must get out, while also being unsure of what might happen after they do. The clowns in relationship to each other seem like a family. They pull jokes on each other, they irritate each other, they comfort each other, and they play so so much. It’s very warming to watch and they invite you, the audience, to play too. 

When asked to describe his favorite part of this show, Reynosa said, “A few months ago, people were asking me, ‘What are you doing for Fringe? What is it? What is it about?’ And all I could say was “I don't know, but I know it's about three clowns and they're all stuck in a room. Oh and it's called 'Clown House'." It's so beautiful to me that this simple thought I had, just based on what I wanted to do, how I wanted to challenge myself and others, has developed into a really beautiful, chaotic, wild and fun show.” 

Clown House performs again Thursday Aug. 4th, Saturday Aug. 6th, and Sunday Aug. 7th  for the closing weekend of the Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival. 

#CHAMPION is a queer and disabled journey to self love, created by Amuse Bouche Productions from Denver, CO. 

For one night only, #CHAMPION visits the Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival to share with us a “one person, one skeleton show” on self love. This show is one of the most complete narratives I’ve seen in a dance show in a long time. It takes you along the hero’s journey to a place of joy, of triumph, and of closure. When asked to describe their show, Amuse Bouche said “ This show is a queer and disabled take on a certain kind of personal and collective disintegration, the transformations that are demanded of us, what it sometimes takes to get there, and the jokes we stumble into along the way.”

Amuse Bouche Productions is Sheila Klein (they/them) and Masha Mikulinsky (them/them). “We make interdisciplinary visual and performance work in spaces where pop culture and critical inquiry collide, at times more literally than figuratively. We are a queer and disabled performance team making work at the intersections of post-modern dance, experimental theater, physical comedy, and puppetry.”

#CHAMPION rides the line between maximalism and minimalism, which is on brand for Amuse Bouche. They have minimal production with lights, costumes, and general environment, however their energy, their props, and their sound score made up entirely of Queen music is so over the top you can’t help but smile. The movement in this roughly 40 minute show passes through various genres. Sheila Klein’s contemporary dance history is easily identifiable as they move through the space with athleticism and whispers of contemporary dance technique come through their dancing. However they turn that around and explore other movements too, such as the exaggerated performance of fitness dance, reminding me of the famous dance break in Footloose. In stark contrast to this is the task based stationary bicycle. Klein rides this through an entire section and despite there being little else happening onstage, this takes you on an emotional trip through tension and doubt and you come out of it feeling like there is only up from here. They use various props from an IV stand to mobility aids to bikes, to illustrate the relationship their disability has on their dance and vice versa. 

Throughout the entire show, Masha Mikulinsky is leading a miniature skeleton with one arm around the space. They affectionately refer to the skeleton as “Skel”. Masha leads Skel around the stage, sometimes biking around, sometimes stretching, sometimes lip syncing to the music. This slow presence of Skel doesn’t interact with Sheila’s performance very directly, and it’s easy to forget they’re there until they slowly creep into the corner of your eye, making you grin because in spite of yourself, you did forget them. What have they been up to while you were focused on other things? And you try to do better at checking in with them, and then Sheila pulls you away again. It’s an interesting pull and push that left me wondering more about Skel. If this show had a prequel show about Skel, I’d definitely check that out. 

#CHAMPION as described by Amuse Bouche, “is deliberately designed to be a collaboration with the audience, so the emotional and movement qualities really are shaped by the experiences of audience members. This piece really has a life of its own. If you saw the piece two nights in a row, you could easily have a very different experience with it each time.”

They have one performance at the Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival before packing up and hitting the road. You can see them at The Box theatre at the Gateway Mall on Aug. 4th at 6:00pm. 

Arin Lynn is the editor of loveDANCEmore. They also perform in the queer experimental dance community, and explore combining film and zine mediums.