Ashley Anderson is a choreographer based in Salt Lake City. She is founder of loveDANCEmore, a blog and biannual journal about dance in Utah, and currently serves as 15 Bytes's Dance Editor.
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 […]
I have not seen (this version of) Nine Sinatra Songs by Ballet West and have no plans to review it. In this show, which was given locally at the Capitol Theatre, Ballet West ignores that more than one in one hundred people in Utah have COVID-19 and they refuse […]
RDT’s season opening “Spirit” presented the company’s mission of “manifest diversity,” a play on the problematic ideology that led white Americans westward. Manifest diversity suggests that what was perhaps more inevitable than white settlement was voices of racially diverse Americans contributing to a broad national culture, including the […]
I began driving to the Commonwealth Studios upset that my tidy and prescribed theater route was disrupted on a hot night. But upon parking (finally) I discovered that the Municipal Ballet Company had found yet another magical space for something to happen.The company’s newest concert,“Night” is, in a word, disarming. In its […]
Ballet West artists in Oliver Oguma’s 2016 Innovations work “Fragments of Simplicity”. Photo by Dave Brewer, courtesy of Ballet West. Formerly known as Innovations, Ballet West’s newly titled Works from Within has moved to the Eccles Center in Park City. Works from Withinshares choreography from company ranks and 2017’s iteration presented world […]
Alex Bradshaw and Brad Beakes began by holding hands. They slowly but confidently adapted their grip. As their fingers looped and laced the two dancers created a visible and kinesthetic bond. As dancing separated them, the pull they created in that first moment worked like gravity, connecting the […]
Friday night, Ririe-Woodbury continued a multiyear partnership with UMOCA by presenting Interstice, a performance installation featuring choreography by Artistic Director Daniel Charon inside of Jennifer Seely’s exhibition “Supporting Elements.” In the first two summers of this three-year partnership, the dancing, while compelling, was forced into the open spaces […]
Ballet West’s annual Innovations series opened this past weekend, showcasing work by company artists alongside Jessica Lang. As always, the evening presents wide-ranging approaches which will expand next year with a new National Choreographic Festival and a move of Innovations to Park City where it will be retitled, […]
In Fall 2013, loveDANCEmore published a performance text by Rosie Trump, a Nevada- based choreographer. Since that time, the text has become fully realized as a performance, Fill in the Blank, to be presented at Sugar Space this month. When asked to describe the performance text in context, […]
In the intimate space of the LeonaWagner Black Box Theater, Ririe Woodbury opened Spring Season with two premieres and one reconstructed work, concluding the company’s annual season with a show that is as virtuosic as it is contemplative. Joanna Kotze’s commission, “Star Mark,” begins with increasingly rapid projections […]
Since creating the loveDANCEmore blog in 2010, I have shied away from writing about student work. When young artists are involved in a process of discovery alongside valued mentors, I don’t want to interrupt. But I have been there, carefully witnessing many student and faculty concerts along the […]
by Chloe Stacey Desmond Richardson and Dwight Rhoden’s New York-based company Complexions Contemporary Ballet took a trip to Provo on March 4th for a one-night-only guest performance. Featured in the de Jong Concert Hall on Brigham Young University’s campus, the Complexions dancers demonstrated the intricate nuances between structured […]
Ballet West’s 52nd season opens with Iconic Classics, a triple bill addressing milestones in 20th-century ballet, from its shifts towards two opposing directions — musical theatre and modern dance — to its classical apotheosis in George Balanchine’s “Symphony in C.“ Opening with Jerome Robbins’ “Fancy Free,” the company […]
Not many dancers get into ballet with the dream of simply joining the corps, but in “Symphony in C” the corps de ballet is as good a reason as any to join Ballet West’s season opener, Iconic Classics. For those not versed in ballet, the corps de ballet […]
“Day One” showcases choreographic transitions for Breeanne Saxton & Eliza Tappan, two recent graduates from the University of Utah. The self-presenting duo is finding their way in an artistic landscape distinctly different from the infrastructure of a public university. Working in a converted warehouse on Brooklyn Avenue, they […]
This weekend the programming at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center alternates between external viewpoints of dance company alumni and an internal glimpse at the creative process of several resident groups. Thursday & Friday are host to Momentum, an annual Ririe Woodbury concert in the Blackbox. Co-directed by […]
Before collaborative was compelling marketing it was embedded in the making of concert dance. In the ’30s Martha Graham worked with Isamu Noguchi on Frontier and he went on to design the seat for Appalachian Spring. Merce Cunningham, who performed as “the Revivalist” in that work, went on to have collaborations from Andy […]
