Arts
Earth, Skin and Fire: The Playful Sensuality of Samba Fogo’s...
The show opened with a staging of an indigenous Brazilian creation narrative describing the descent of the gods of the air to the watery Earth. This event was staged in the form of a death-defying and gasp-inducing silk acrobatics routine, performed beautifully and (to my relief) expertly by Samantha and Lance Nielsen. To say this overture set a very high standard for the rest of the show to maintain is an understatement. … read more
Dancing Like It’s 1931 with the Repertory Dance Theater
The story of modern dance in the United States is inherently underground. Like any subculture that lasts through several generations, modern dance history—when well told––can be a vehicle for encountering forgotten but necessary parts of the grand American narrative. … read more
Journey To Chaos: An Interview with Klutch
An artist who was immersed in the hardcore punk scene for much of the ’80s and later served time as vice-president of a prominent insurance broker, Klutch (nicknamed after a character from Disney movie, Superdad), plans to wow Salt Lake City with a spontaneous effusion of brightly colored objects, wild line work, scavenged materials and spray paint. … read more
Gallery Stroll: Haunting October’s Gallery Stroll
Produced by Christel Edwards and Stephen Simmons, An October Evening is a multi-medium event celebrating all things that go bump in the night. … read more
Halloween is Ruined: Performance Life with Klaus von Austerlitz
Halloween is ruined. Its most treasured sensibilities are under attack. Goths have turned the occult into ridiculous camp and queers have turned ridiculous camp into a cult. So, if Oct. 31 is the only day of the 365 that you’d think of dressing yourself up outrageously, you might be a lamebrain. For local performance artist Klaus von Austerlitz, every costume is a performance, and every performance a carefully constructed vessel of artistry and social critique. … read more
True Horror: Thirteen Years of the Working Dog
Working Dog is an unofficial fixture of the University of Utah’s highly ranked graduate creative writing program. Named after the phrase “working like a dog,” the premise is simple: a once-monthly evening of art, wine and students reading material from their portfolios. … read more
Of Meat and Marrow: a Sexy, Spooky Thriller
Looking for something to do on Halloween that will offer you more than playing dress-up and dancing to “The Monster Mash”? SB Dance has something for you. Of Meat and Marrow will be performed at the Rose Wagner Theatre on October 25–27. A “rock-opera-dance-circus” for a mature audience, the show is equal parts sexy and silly, with horrifying monstrosity. … read more
A Look Into Utah’s History, Artistic Inspiration From Below the...
Hidden not far from the I-15 overpass on W North Temple is the unimposing Mestizo Art Gallery, which opened its doors on Friday, Sept. 20 for “New Chapters | Nuevos Capítulos: A New Understanding of Utah’s History—Entendiendo una nueva historia de Utah” presented by Artes de México en Utah. … read more
Time-Based Art Festival 09.12-09.20
The Time-Based Art Festival (presented by the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art) is a gathering of musicians, performers, visual artists, and everything in between. I went to cover dance, and was happily surprised by the strength and diversity of the music, theatre and visual art I saw along the way. … read more
Staging The Self with Martha Wilson
How does one begin, in this progressive moment, to speak of the work of Martha Wilson? How to explain the beauty of the work’s relentless exploration of selfhood and its defiant feminist declaration of the body as the site of art to an audience whose ideas of art have been formed by technological saturation—a material reliance on electronic screens and an everything all at once attitude towards, well, everything? … read more