Utah Dance articles published in 15 Bytes, Utah’s Art Magazine.
Ballet West produces Innovations each spring as a platform for the company’s dancers to explore their own choreographic pursuits alongside more established guest choreographers. While a great opportunity, it is still rare nationally to find full evening programs devoted to dancers’ own choreography. Ballet Arizona, Ballet Arkansas, […]
Ballet West’s annual mixed bill presents the work of neoclassical icon George Balanchine (Square Dance), Ballet West’s resident choreographer Nicolo Fonte (Almost Tango), and contemporary ballet pioneer William Forsythe (In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated). While the evening’s program is titled Almost Tango after Fonte’s newest Utah […]
Entering the (relatively new) Sugar Space Arts Warehouse on Friday night was exciting for more than the fact that Norwegian choreographer Kari Hoaas was performing her evening-length work recognizing the continuous global struggle for women’s rights. The venue itself is spacious and filled with possibility and a […]
Ririe Woodbury’s Spring Season was a challenging program exploring abstraction as a method for viewing as well as moving. Artistic Director Daniel Charon’s program note suggested a hope for his premiere to be taken as an experience without a need for definition while visiting artist Netta Yerushalmy suggested […]
We’ve been taking advantage of the “pause” in our state’s cultural programming to take stock — both of our supply of toiletries and our past coverage of the arts scene (i.e. we’ve been working on our archives). We wanted to bring this video from 2015 — about a […]
video by Jeremy Bigelow review by Kate Monson A night of dance in a beautiful intimate setting, in this case the Memorial House, really gets my hopes up. So as I walked through the doors for the recent loveDANCEmore event on March 22 I had one thought on […]
Before the final performance of Municipal Ballet Co.’s “Oh Yeah! A Rock ‘n’ Roll Ballet,” Sarah Longoria, the company’s director, ended her curtain speech by sincerely thanking the uncommonly boisterous and large audience for taking a chance on ballet. The challenge of getting the general public […]
Music and dance have a long history of coexistence; students of dance history learn quickly of the relationship between Martha Graham and Louis Horst, identifying the way in which music is often the lens through which audiences find entry points for movement. And, while ballet companies often have […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Dance and education are linked out of compatibility and necessity. It makes sense for choreographers to have a regular space as well as a group of dancers to work with. And in an ever-shifting landscape of presenters and funding, it is also one of the few financially stable […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
