{"id":22027,"date":"2013-07-08T06:00:40","date_gmt":"2013-07-08T12:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=22027"},"modified":"2025-10-24T07:14:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T14:14:12","slug":"nows-wedding-at-the-masonic-lodge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/nows-wedding-at-the-masonic-lodge\/","title":{"rendered":"NOW’s Wedding, at the Masonic Lodge"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"wedding\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Choreographer Charlotte Boye-Christensen\u2019s greatest fear about her new work\u00a0The Wedding<\/em>\u00a0is that she doesn\u2019t know enough about the subject matter. In Denmark, where she\u2019s from, \u201conly about eight percent of the population marry . . . so it\u2019s not something I\u2019m terribly familiar with,\u201d she says. She can count the number of matrimonial ceremonies she\u2019s been to on one hand \u2014 including her own recent union with architect Nathan Webster. The two are founders of a new interdisciplinary project called NOW, which will have its inaugural performance at the end of this month at the Masonic Temple in Salt Lake City. Webster and Boye-Christensen, who recently gave up her position as artistic director of Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, call the group \u201can ambitious, fiercely contemporary\u201d collaborative, and ambitious their plans are, if somewhat nebulous.<\/p>\n

Revisiting her identity post Ririe-Woodbury, Boye-Christensen says that she was \u201csick as hell of the proscenium space,\u201d and with this new work was excited to explore the common human ritual in the magical, if loaded, venue that is the Masonic Temple auditorium. As she fleshed out her plans, she repeatedly affirmed a commitment to abstraction, eschewing the narrative, but retaining \u201can emotional landscape\u201d that comes from acknowledging \u201cthe human presence.\u201d That said, she concedes an autobiographical element that is perhaps unprecedented in her work. Before the first show, she and Webster will be renewing their vows in the Egyptian room for friends and family traveling to Utah for the performance.<\/p>\n

While\u00a0The Wedding<\/em>\u00a0will primarily be a dance performance, NOW is already planning other projects that will highlight other art forms. January will see a collaboration with the theater artists of\u00a0Flying Bobcat<\/a>\u00a0based on Goethe\u2019s\u00a0Faust<\/em>\u00a0and featuring puppets. Webster hopes to use the company store on their website as a way of promoting local designers and artists \u201cin the spirit of CityHome Collective\u201d and cities \u201csuch as Austin, Texas, or Portland, Oregon\u201d that connect the \u201chyper-local\u201d with the international. \u201cYou have to keep up your connections\u2026 or risk losing your international profile,\u201d Boye-Christensen interjects. \u201cThat\u2019s been [her] frustration with Ririe for the last five years,\u201d Webster explains, and it\u2019s a problem Boye-Christensen hopes to face while making a home here in Salt Lake.<\/p>\n

\u201cEventually,\u201d elaborates Boye-Christensen, \u201cwe want to move away from the self-limiting non-profit model,\u201d though they are planning on getting retroactive non-profit status for the over $35,000 in donations they raised this spring on Kickstarter. The money is well needed, both because of the international range of the talent NOW is bringing in, as well as for more mundane matters \u2014 in order to stage the performance in the middle of the summer, the organization had to spend $5000 to air-condition the Masonic Temple\u2019s auditorium.<\/p>\n

Boye-Christensen is clearly proud of the cast that she\u2019s hired for the upcoming production. \u201cAll of these dancers are artists that have had a profound impact on me,\u201d she mused during our interview.\u00a0 \u201cYumelia [Garcia, Joffery Ballet] is an astounding technician\u2026 this Venezuelan spitfire\u2026 I met in Minneapolis.\u201d Boye-Christensen smiles and laughs at the thought of Garcia, who is barely five feet, partnering with\u00a0Sleep No More<\/em>\u00a0alum Ted Johnson, a mature and unpretentious performer who clocks in at six foot four inches. Then there\u2019s Ballet West\u2019s Katherine Lawrence who recently wowed audiences in Avichai Scher\u2019s\u00a0White Noise<\/em>\u00a0and finally, Jo Blake. Formerly of Ririe-Woodbury, Blake is the dancer with whom she\u2019s worked with the longest, for more than a decade. He\u2019s steeped in her style from years of legendarily grueling classes at the Rose Wagner. He\u2019s also one of the few professional dancers in Salt Lake City who is almost universally lauded and respected by his colleagues.<\/p>\n

When\u00a0The Wedding<\/em>\u00a0comes together later this month at the Masonic Temple, it will be fascinating to see how these disparate artists get paired and repaired in the final analysis. The work itself is still being created and details on it are scant. Boye-Christensen says she hasn\u2019t really thought about the work in terms of the obvious issues implied in making a piece about marriage in Utah \u2014 such as queer unions or the legacy of polygamy \u2014 making it unclear how universal or how local the piece will be. What Boye-Christensen\u00a0has<\/em>\u00a0accomplished so far is an achievement in and of itself. Within months of leaving her comfortable position at Ririe-Woodbury, she\u2019s raised an impressive sum of money \u2014 and already spent a good portion of it. She has gathered a cast of dancers she admires and created a real challenge for herself.\u00a0The first fruits of this work will be on display later this month. We can only hope that more local choreographers will follow her lead in taking themselves seriously enough to take such big risks and ask the public for so much support.<\/p>\n

NOW International Dance presents The Wedding, a work by Charlotte Boye-Christensen at the Masonic Temple in Salt Lake City, July 26th and 27th. Visit\u00a0their website\u00a0for more information.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Choreographer Charlotte Boye-Christensen\u2019s greatest fear about her new work\u00a0The Wedding\u00a0is that she doesn\u2019t know enough about the subject matter. In Denmark, where she\u2019s from, \u201conly about eight percent of the population marry . . . so it\u2019s not something I\u2019m terribly familiar with,\u201d she says. She can count […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22069,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1477,1070,835,1421],"class_list":["post-22027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dance","tag-by-samuel-hanson","tag-charlotte-boye-christensen","tag-nathan-webster","tag-now-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/wedding.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-25 02:08:03","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22027"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97365,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22027\/revisions\/97365"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}