Arts
▼ Performance & Theatre
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
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
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
Dead Dog Song, Choreographer’s Dream, Puppeteer’s Nightmare @ Ladies’ Literary...
I first saw the nascent dead dog song at loveDANCEmore’s Arrivals/Departures exhibit at the Rio Gallery, where viewers were free to come, watch and leave as they pleased. Anderson has nourished this piece to where it transcends the unicity I saw in the Rio Gallery iteration: She rooted this dance into the Ladies’ Literary Club structure and, once again, has exhibited that dance plays out differently beyond traditional stages. … read more
Make Us Laugh, Clowns! SLC’s First Comedy Carnivale
Hold on to your dicks, because Utah’s first-ever submissions-based comedy festival, SLC Comedy Carnivale, is happening from Sept. 17–21. … read more
The Rose Exposed Variety Show @ Rose Wagner 08.30
The Rose Exposed is a kickoff party of sorts, designed to celebrate the upcoming seasons of six very local and very talented groups of performing artists. With performances ranging from modern dance to miniature piano concertos, The Rose Exposed offered a little something for everyone. … read more
Ririe-Woodbury: Kinetic Spaces @ UMOCA 08.16
Increasingly “performance,” of one kind or another, is as important at these events as painting, sculpture or video art. The Utah Museum of Contemporary Art’s inaugural Utah Biennial: Mondo Utah, is one such effort, and last Friday it played host to Kinetic Spaces, a dance installation performed by Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company. … read more