{"id":62068,"date":"2022-02-21T07:32:54","date_gmt":"2022-02-21T13:32:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=62068"},"modified":"2022-02-25T07:40:54","modified_gmt":"2022-02-25T13:40:54","slug":"62068","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/62068\/","title":{"rendered":"Dance Persevering in Spite of the Present Moment"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Jonathan Kim and guest dancer Ruby Cabbell in Kim\u2019s After Record End<\/p><\/div>\n

This week I took in two very different performances \u2014 one viewed online and filmed at the Rose Wagner, the other in-person at a tiny converted storefront. Both showcased emerging local choreographers.<\/h4>\n

RDT\u2019s Emerge: Sounds Familiar<\/em> took American music from the ’30s and ’40s as its inspiration. A mixture of works set on the company, on dancers from Utah Valley University and on kids taught in studio programs by company dancers, this evening is available to view through March 6<\/a>.<\/h4>\n

801 Salon\u2019s sixth edition, at the Vis storefront at 800 South and 800 East, featured solos by Meredith Wilde, Haley Stassia, Nina Wilson, Joey Anderson and Rachel Andes. My personal favorite was Andes\u2019 My left or yours<\/em>, which made clever use of the tiny allotted space and two built-in mirrors that faced the audience. The opening image, in which she writhed under the projected image of an egg breaking against her body, was followed up by footage in which the projector, shifted to face a corner, explored a nose and mouth at close quarters. Andes\u2019 dancing, to music by Aretha Franklin, seemed to relate to the song\u2019s narrative of a woman trying to please a man, without being tethered to it completely. The result brought up interesting questions about the intimacy of being in such a small space and the complicity of the audience in piecing together a narrative.<\/h4>\n

Where the salon offered youthful exploration, RDT\u2019s output in Sounds Familiar <\/em>gave us artists who\u2019d been committed to their stylistic grooves for a bit longer. I was interested to see how Kareem Lewis\u2019s solo, Nascent<\/em>, put me in mind of other roles he\u2019s performed, such as \u201cPegasus\u201d from Jos\u00e9 Lim\u00f3n\u2019s The Winged<\/em>. Jonathan Kim\u2019s work After Record End<\/em> took the nostalgic trope of the evening\u2019s theme and turned it on its head, using the maudlin music of the Ray Noble Orchestra to craft a surprising work of horror that borrowed images from Ren\u00e9 Magritte.<\/h4>\n

I found myself considering how both experiences were differently shaped by the pandemic. In RDT\u2019s case, a move had been made to draw in resources from other parts of the community to keep the theater and all of its moving parts employed, even as the company made the difficult decision not to perform during the height of the Omicron surge. (The performance was originally scheduled for January.) The salon made me think about how desperately artists, particularly young ones, need opportunities to put work in front of people frequently in order to grow.<\/h4>\n

I think we\u2019re far away from any answers about what, if any, discernible aesthetic trends will emerge from the pandemic. I see some possible answers in films I\u2019ve seen online, like Jasmine Hearn\u2019s video work that I mentioned in a past newsletter, which felt like a sort of organized diary of a year or more of rehearsing and directing rehearsal \u2014 masked and remotely \u2014 with no real end point in sight. Somehow the meandering quality of their film hinted at an acceptance of our ambiguous situation that I haven\u2019t really been able to internalize.<\/h4>\n

The salon and RDT\u2019s Sounds Familiar<\/em> didn\u2019t feel that way to me, and I don\u2019t mean that as a critique. As interesting as it is to consider how dance might change because of this moment, it\u2019s equally heartening to see dance persevering in spite of it.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

This article is published in collaboration with loveDANCEmore.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week I took in two very different performances \u2014 one viewed online and filmed at the Rose Wagner, the other in-person at a tiny converted storefront. Both showcased emerging local choreographers. RDT\u2019s Emerge: Sounds Familiar took American music from the ’30s and ’40s as its inspiration. A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1649,"featured_media":62069,"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":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dance"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/20220128-DSC_0139.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-04 15:34:24","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\/62068","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\/1649"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62068"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62072,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62068\/revisions\/62072"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}