{"id":29251,"date":"2015-07-17T09:45:53","date_gmt":"2015-07-17T15:45:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=29251"},"modified":"2023-11-14T09:45:29","modified_gmt":"2023-11-14T15:45:29","slug":"nowhere-at-libby-gardner-concert-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/nowhere-at-libby-gardner-concert-hall\/","title":{"rendered":"NOWHERE at Libby Gardner Concert Hall"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"NOW-ID-Nowhere-725-3\"<\/a>

TJ Spaur photographed by David Newkirk, courtesy of the NOW-ID website<\/p><\/div>\n

Before collaborative<\/em> was compelling marketing it was embedded in the making of concert dance. In the ’30s Martha Graham worked\u00a0with Isamu Noguchi on Frontier\u00a0<\/em>and he went on to\u00a0design the seat for\u00a0Appalachian Spring.\u00a0<\/em>Merce Cunningham, who performed as \u201cthe Revivalist\u201d in that work, went on to have collaborations from Andy Warhol\u2019s pillows in RainForest<\/em> to scores by Sigur Ros and Radiohead for Split Sides<\/em>. More traditionally, classical ballet drops were hand-painted and music was carefully designed to house\u00a0its movements.\u00a0In these unspoken veins NOW-ID stakes its claim.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true that Artistic Director Charlotte Boye-Christensen\u2019s serious and sharp aesthetic is reminiscent of Graham\u2019s more narrative work and her presentation of Jesper Egelund\u2018s songs\u00a0is as magnificent as any ballet orchestra. But NOWHERE also identifies a divergent nature to contemporary collaborations; in the program you won\u2019t only find thanks to cultural partners\u00a0but logos for hair salons and magazine marketing agreements. In this shift the group finds success, mobilizing outward from audiences attending dance mostly because they are themselves dancers. The resulting evening\u00a0is met with enthusiasm and projects a think-tank sensibility if a more slick veneer.<\/p>\n

NOWHERE begins\u00a0with Jesper Egelund and\u00a0Laura Cutler seated symmetrically atop the concert hall frame and highlighting a human-sized hamster wheel. Their music\u00a0opens space for\u00a0a duet between Tara McArthur and Brian Nelson. From the moment McArthur enters, choreographic ideas of freedom through restraint are perfectly clear. Her performance throughout provides a haunting meditation on how we fast we might arrive in a moment only to vanish as quickly.<\/p>\n

NOWHERE continues shuffling duets and solos alongside brief\u00a0video from Adam Bateman\u2019s walk home on the Mormon Trail.\u00a0Bateman also joins the moving action as \u201cThe Walker\u201d formally partnering an en pointe with Katherine Lawrence across the stage and relieving expectations by running on the wheel near the end of the work.\u00a0With six exterior silver seats, the audience can guess just how\u00a0many mathematical possibilities there might be between the performers which allows our predictions\u00a0to dissipate, finding enjoyment\u00a0in watching the action unfold.<\/p>\n

Some duets have topical tension about how we arrive and navigate elsewhere. In others a stylistic tension develops between varied performance modalities. Katherine Lawrence is fiercely capable of technical command but some degree of vulnerability seems choreographed out of her reach \u2014\u00a0an opening chest, a fluid fall, or other liberated idioms. Perhaps this is engrained into the very idea of difference, something inherent to an exploration of place. Yet it\u2019s likely that the company model of periodic convergence is related. With half of the performers\u00a0arriving a handful of weeks prior to NOWHERE, a lack of time finds its way to the surface. There is certainly magic in a serendipitous moment: the muscle memories of McArthur and TJ Spaur\u00a0inside\u00a0crisp partnering, the knowing of Adam\u2019s walking body, the space temporarily losing NOW\u2019s signature blue light in favor of floods of red. But there is enough possibility resonant that further sifting of the material seems not only warranted but desirable.<\/p>\n

Ashley Anderson directs loveDANCEmore programs as part of her 501c3 ashley anderson dances<\/a>. She shares her writing here on 15 BYTES<\/a>\u00a0where she is the dance editor.\u00a0In the spirit of full disclosure she is friends with Tara McArthur and is extremely jealous of Katherine Lawrence\u2019s badass post-partum performance.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before collaborative was compelling marketing it was embedded in the making of concert dance. In the ’30s Martha Graham worked\u00a0with Isamu Noguchi on Frontier\u00a0and he went on to\u00a0design the seat for\u00a0Appalachian Spring.\u00a0Merce Cunningham, who performed as \u201cthe Revivalist\u201d in that work, went on to have collaborations from Andy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":861,"featured_media":29252,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,10],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-29251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-15-bytes","category-dance","tag-15-bytes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/NOW-ID-Nowhere-725-3.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-23 16:33:07","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\/29251","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\/861"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29251"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71124,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29251\/revisions\/71124"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}