… Waigwa-Stone maintains constant sensitivity to the movement. Even when offered little direction he’s able to create music that’s deeply responsive to not just the structure of counts but also the qualitative shifts in performance. “I like the job of figuring out how to translate from one language to the other — watching a phrase...
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Dancers Gotta Dance: Ballet West brings Swan Lake back for 10 days
Somewhere a ballet aficcionado is waxing indignant at the idea that a prestigious ballet company should reduce itself to consorting with pop culture icons to gain the notice of an increasingly attention-deficited public. But Ballet West is proudly touting the use of its Swan Lake costumes in Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” music video —...
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Graham Brown’s YOU at the Rose Wagner
YOU, an immersive, interactive dance production choreographed by Graham Brown is running a total of six times at the Rose Wagner Black Box over this last weekend of January. This performance invites the audience member you, (and me) to enter into the space and play a role in what is taking place. My night started...
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Golden Dance: University of Utah Press Celebrates 50 Years of Ballet West
With all the golden anniversaries going on in Utah’s art community, one could only imagine with dread the cultural wasteland Salt Lake City must have been in 1960. There was no Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, Utah Symphony or Ballet West, all of which recently celebrated their 50th anniversaries; nor a Phillips Gallery or Repertory Dance Company,...
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The Mitch Show at RDT
by Emma Wilson Amongst the many dance events this weekend, The Mitch Show was an anomaly involving prescribed dance performance pieces enacted by unsuspecting audience members as well as screenings of some of Mitchell Rose’s short films. This is not the first time that Repertory Dance Theater has lured Rose to Salt Lake City, but...
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A Conversation on Burrows and Fargion at the U of U
Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion, guest artists of the University of Utah’s Department of Modern Dance, presented two duets this Friday at the Marriott Center for Dance. Both Cheap Lecture and The Cow Piece functioned as performance poems for two voices. Cheap Lecture was strictly metered in relationship to rhythmic structures crafted by John Cage...
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Molly Heller at The Ladies Literary Club
MFA candidate Molly Heller has left behind the institutional support of the campus setting in order to stage her thesis project in the unique setting of The Ladies’ Literary Club. “I’ve always believed artists can’t just isolate [themselves], although it’s easy to do.” Ashley Anderson visits with Heller in anticipation of her upcoming performance in...
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Creative Couplings: RDT’s Portal
by Samuel Hanson Duets abound in Repertory Dance Theatre’s fall season, Portal, in which four choreographers’ voices configure and reconfigure a company in transition (RDT has four new dancers: Jaclyn Brown, Lauren Curley, Dan Higgins and Lacie Scott). The evening is quite a curatorial feat, uniting four diverse pieces that have just enough in common;...
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Ririe Woodbury’s Fall Season
by Samuel Hanson Featuring the work of three male choreographers, Ririe-Woodbury’s season opener had no particular through-line, except perhaps in its attempt to stake a claim for the group on being “contemporary.” The strongest work in the evening, artistic director Daniel Charon’s, was arguably the least au courant, harkening toward solidly 20th-century modern dance traditions....
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Reminiscences and Whimsy at Sugar Space
Local choreographer and Pilates instructor Courtney Norris has compiled a selection of reminiscences and whimsy for her current Artist-in-Residence program at Sugar Space. The show opened with “Tis a Gift,” a duet created and performed by Norris and Erica Womack. Norris and Womack were lit softly, as if at dusk, their shadows dancing on the...
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Changing Dance Seasons
Salt Lake’s summer dance landscape is slowly shifting; rather than most locals going off contract and skipping town, many community dance artists go “off contract” from full-time teaching positions and use the summer as a space for premiering new work or exploring new contexts for choreography. It’s hardly a new phenomenon with Salt Lake taking...
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The Penguin Lady Presents at Rose Wagner
by Erin Womack The Penguin Lady Presents, a night of choreography by Natosha Washington, premiered to a full crowd at the Rose Wagner Black Box Theater. The show begins with a personal and heartfelt message that thanks the audience for coming to partake in an evening of dance, and asks us to connect with and...
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