Culture Conversations: Dance
Community, From Within and From Without
RDT's Missa Brevis and Performance Art Festival at SL Main Library
by Ashley Anderson

This weekend Salt Lake audiences will be treated to a wide range of performance experiences starting with Repertory Dance Theatre's (RDT) season opening Legacy and continuing with the Performance Art Festival at the Main Library. Both events seek to unite local interests and artists with a more national and historical context for their respective fields.

RDT’s mission has long centered on the preservation of historic concert dance. The 2013 season opening concert is no exception. Legacy will present works by modern dance figures Doris Humphrey, Ted Shawn and notably, Jose Limón's “Missa Brevis,” which is new to the company’s archive.

For several weeks, Nina Watt, a former member of the Limón Company, taught for RDT while re-staging “Missa Brevis” (which features not only RDT members but guest performers from the undergraduate programs at BYU and UVU — the piece will be staged later this year at BYU). She uses the word “humanism” to describe the movement style of Limón's work. "Missa Brevis" means “Short Mass” and sprang from Limón’s visit to Poland after World War II. Limón marveled at the peoples’ hope as they rebuilt their churches and theaters in the midst of the devastation of war. The dance celebrates and investigates this hope, and while historical, its themes certainly relate to the contemporary moment where violence, particularly war, is inextricably linked to the human experience.

Throughout the piece, Limón contrasts the roles of the community and the outsider, a reflection of Limón’s own internal struggle when as a teenager he renounced his Catholic faith after the death of his mother and as he faced ongoing questions of identity. The performance could have an especially strong resonance for the local community, where many have personal experience with individuals who find themselves similarly on the outside of their circle of family, friends and community when they leave their faith tradition.

In RDT’s re-staging, Aaron Wood is tasked with the role of the “outsider,” where he must present the embodiment of Limón’s technique, central to gravity and human gestures as well as the illustration of a complex character. Wood’s performance frequently takes place in stark contrast to the larger group through Limón’s choreographic consideration of time and space. While religious symbols such as the crucifix and the imposition of ashes abound, the piece also includes common hand gestures such as reaching and opening. To foster these gestures, Watt asked the dancers to reference their personal experiences overcoming hardship.

While working in Salt Lake City, Watt complimented the vibrant dance culture in the city and said she believes a strong dance community comes from sharing with one another instead of competing. This spirit of sharing continues this weekend with the Performance Art Festival, curated by Kristina Lenzi for the Main Library. As a contrast to the work of RDT, which values historical icons, the festival brings together contemporary local and national artists currently working in varying modes of performance. As many local artists have employed the gorgeous architecture offered by the library space, the festival will be an interesting way to view diverse approaches to performance in a condensed time frame.

Lenzi chose the site for its role as a community gathering place which is able to attract a large and diverse audience. After studying performance at Tufts University over a decade ago, Lenzi has long hoped to plan a festival on this scale and hopes that anyone visiting the library this weekend will leave not only pleasantly surprised, but also with some exposure and appreciation of this live art form where the actions of the physical body are seen as the art.

On Friday, Gretchen Reynolds, known for her work in painting and puppetry, will present a new performance with her daughter Zoey in the Library's SHARE room. Gretchen is one of several artists included with shorter performances but other artists plan to perform for longer durations, including Jorge Rojas whose work “I Could Go On and On…” can be found in the library elevators throughout the day on Saturday. The idea of having a performance unexpectedly appear as patrons venture to a different floor is sure to attract new audiences, as will Jeffery Byrd’s work for the staircases and Bryce Kauffman’s for the Attic in the Children’s Library. By contrast to these intimate spaces most of the other participating artists prefer to utilize the larger Urban Room, including Marilyn Arsem, who is back from Boston after visiting SLC last year to perform at Nox Contemporary. Her work “Lost Words” is sure to feature a contemplative nature that will incite lots of questions from the audience, although perhaps not as many answers.

Lenzi’s view as a curator is that performance is an immediate form which doesn’t allow for rehearsal. While it’s unclear if that’s the model all participating artists have followed, this belief makes her hesitant to offer too much information on what artists plan to present. Lenzi opts instead to validate the mysterious notion that anything could happen while hinting that most works look to involve community engagement and some request for patron participation. Although very different from the consistently rehearsed choreography of RDT, this style of event addresses some of the same concerns regarding community, isolation and spectatorship. As Limón searched for clear ways to share his views on society, the Performance Art Festival looks to more direct means where artists can create new relationships with unexpecting partners in unusual places using whatever tools seem to work in the moment.

RDT’s Legacy, including a performance of Jose Limón's "Missa Brevis" is at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center October 3-5, 7:30 pm. Tickets are available at www.arttix.org.

The Performance Art Festival, curated by Kristina Lenzi, happens at the Salt Lake City Main Library, October 4-5. Free admission. For a full schedule visit http://www.slcpl.lib.ut.us/events/view/2490/

Sophia Diehl provided contributing research for this article.

Culture Conversations: Literary Arts
15 Bytes Book Awards
The finalists for the awards in Fiction, Poetry and Art

In May, we announced the formation of the 15 Bytes Book Awards, an annual program to celebrate the best Utah books in Fiction, Poetry and Art. After spending the summer reading all the nominees, our jurors have come up with three finalists in each category.

This year's nominees for the 15 Bytes Book Awards were juried by members of the 15 Bytes staff. Later this month, we will be announcing the winners, who will receive a modest cash award.

To be eligible for the 15 Bytes Book Award, a nominated book had to be written by a Utah author and/or have a Utah theme or setting; be published in 2012; be professionally published and bound, and assigned an ISBN. Books were eligible in three categories: Fiction (50,000 words minimum), Poetry (48 pages minimum), Art books (20 page minimum).

FICTION
Sweet Land of Bigamy by Miah Arnold, published by Tyrus Books.

A black comedy from Miah Arnold, who grew up in a house attached to the Three Legged Dog Saloon in Myton, Utah and is the daughter of the late Tribune arts writer and dance critic Helen Forsberg, this debut novel chronicles the life of Helen Motes, a middle-class transplant to Houston, Texas who finds herself married to two men: first husband Larry, off to war in Iraq, and the exotic Chakor Desai, poet in residence in the rural Utah town Motes grew up in. How Motes became a bigamist, and the choice she must face when Larry returns from Iraq, drive the drama of this charming novel.

Light Without Heat, stories by Matthew Kirkpatrick, published by The University of Alabama Press.

In his first collection of stories, the University of Utah graduate experiments with form to dazzling effect. Diagrams, family histories, lists of words and interlaced narratives explore the nature of memory, workplace malaise, and the fringes of consciousness where dreams become psychosis. No two stories are alike, and they must be delved into, peeled apart and soaked in to be understood.

Tributary by Barbara K. Richardson, published by Torrey House Press.

Richardson's epic novel tells the story of Clair Martin, an orphaned Mormon girl in nineteenth-century Utah who journeys to the American South and back again on an epic journey to find her identity in a world of bigotry, closed communities and fixed feminine roles.

POETRY

But a Storm Is Blowing From Paradise by Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, published by Red Hen Press.

A collection of poems both lyrical and experimental by the winner of the 2010 Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award. These poems, rooted in the American West and tinged with the threatening storm of the collection's title, explore love, desire, identity and loss with an uncommon linguistic zeal.
>>Sugar House Reviews review

Animal Eye by Paisley Rekdal, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Rekdal's newest is a vivid and complex collection of poems full of compassion and wonder. From evocative pastorals to fully developed narratives, the collection explores the small violences of our condition with a refreshing warmth that discovers the beauty behind cruelty.

House Under the Moon by Michael Sowder, published by Truman State University Press.

Sowder's second collection of poems offers up a spiritual journey rooted in the physical world. Delivered in transcendent, lyric verse, these poems search for enlightenment along journeys of everyday activities: hiking, child-care, housekeeping.

ART

Reuben Kirkham: Pioneer Artist, by Donna L. Poulton, published by Cedar Fort, Inc.

Poulton's book is a groundbreaking volume on this Utah artist of the pioneer period who found success with his large-scale panoramas depicting historical and religious subjects designed as traveling attractions. Excellently researched and with a generous helping of reproductions of the artist's work, the book points the way for future volumes on the state's lesser-known artists.
>> our review

LeConte Stewart Masterworks, by Mary Muir, Donna L. Poulton, Vern G. Swanson and Robert Davis, published by Gibbs Smith.

Whereas Poulton's volume on Reuben Kirkham served to reveal an unknown artist, this Gibbs Smith publication aims to be the defining work on one of Utah's most popular artists, and succeeds admirably. Elegantly designed by Ron Stucki, and with varying takes on the artist by the volume's authors, the work proves to be a mesmerizing page turner.
>>our review

Ansel Adams & Dorothea Lange's Three Mormon Towns, edited by Mark Hedengren with an essay by Senator Harry Reid and images by Adams and Lange. Published by the Utah Arts Council.

Adams and Lange's photographic essays of three towns in southern Utah, published in Life magazine in 1954, gave the country its most lasting image of Mormon communities at mid-century. This elegant publication by the Utah Arts Council brings together the original photographs with an essay by Senator Harry Reid and a foreword by Mary Ellen Mark. Editor Mark Hedengren, a professional photographer, revisited the same towns in the 21st century and includes a selection of these photographs at the end of the book, showing how much and how little has changed in these three Utah towns.

The 15 Bytes Book Award will continue in 2014 and honor books published in 2013. Next year's finalists will be announced in the spring.