Kingsbury Hall echoes with the Rhythms of Step Afrika!

In Celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Week at the University of Utah, Step Afrika! performed at Kingsbury Hall on Monday, January 15, 2024. The theater was packed to capacity, and I must admit, I have never seen Kingsbury so full. Every seat was occupied by an enthusiastic and engaged audience member. Stepping, traditional West African dances, and the South African Gumboot were woven into the afternoon’s performance, resulting in an educational and culturally rich experience.

Step Afrika! distinguishes themselves as a professional company dedicated to the energetic, percussive, and polyrhythmic dance form known as stepping. Originating from African American fraternities and sororities in the early 1900s, stepping embodies grounded body positions, dynamic foot movement suggestive of tap dance, and the integration of hands, body, and voice to create intricate tempos and rhythms. The artists form a unique community of dance and music on the stage.

Courtesy of Step Afrika!

However, Step Afrika!’s performance surpassed traditional aesthetics by seamlessly blending in various dance styles, ranging from West African to more contemporary forms. What sets Step Afrika! apart is the sense of invitation extended to the audience. It goes beyond mere entertainment by inviting me, as an audience member, into their community of inclusion and passion for dance.

The West African section of the performance was undeniably the highlight for me. Positioned upstage and center, the energetic beat of the drums set the tone for a captivating display. Utilizing the entire space, the dancers formed a semi-circle. The choreography had a seamless transition of each dancer taking turns in the center before passing the opportunity to the next. The movements were characterized by explosive and fast kicks, elements of combat, and moments featuring long extensions, pointed toes, and intricate floor work. This combination of dance aesthetics resulted in a visually dynamic display of energy and motion. Despite this mesmerizing experience, a minor critique I have is the performance’s duration. I see a potential benefit from an intermission or selective editing of some pieces.

Step Afrika! offers a performance that transcends the boundaries of concert dance that many of us are familiar with. While I encourage you to explore Step Afrika! on various social media platforms, I wholeheartedly recommend seizing the opportunity to witness their live performance for an unforgettable encounter.  

Wren Foster carries an unwavering passion for the art of dance, with a particular focus in ballet. Beyond practicing himself, he finds joy in writing his thoughts about ballet. Eager to inspire and foster a commitment to excellence, Wren shares his feedback to uplift and motivate individuals in the dance community toward reaching their highest potential.

Sixty Years of Ririe-Woodbury

Ririe-Woodbury recently celebrated sixty years with Groundworks, a show that honors the company’s long standing relationship with Alwin Nikolais, its founders, Shirley Ririe and Joan Woodbury, and the current artistic director, Daniel Charon. The opener was Tensile Involvement, an iconic Nikolais piece that uses elastics coupled with movement to create dynamic visuals. This piece was first created in 1955, and 68 years later still feels fresh and innovative. BYU dancers, under the direction of Alberto del Saz, performed, and they all rose to the occasion and looked every bit the part of mature, professional dancers. There are moments in this piece that are breathtaking, the eye traveling between individual movement, to group composition, to the choreography the elastics create. The body becomes augmented, even otherworldly, as their movements stretch and ripple endlessly. 

Guest dancers from BYU performing Tensile Involvement.

All of Nikolais works are multimedia, with the choreography just one piece of the puzzle. The costuming, lighting, props, and music are integral to achieve his vision. Liturgies, the second piece of the evening, continues to highlight what Nikolais described himself as a “polygamy of motion, shape, color and sound.” This work has a darkness, an underbelly of sorts, as if Nikolais took his gift of being able to turn the human body into something else and married it with his nightmares. It was during this piece that I started to wonder what caused/allowed him to stay so close to his vision of stripping the body of its emotion and humanness and creating these otherworldy places. Was it a refuge to depart from our messy existence and sometimes cruel world and descend into a sphere of shape, light, shadow and sound? That is what it feels like to watch his work, a place to escape from feeling human and living in an ordinary body of flesh and bone.  

If Nikolais was less concerned with the individual moving body, Daniel Charon reminded us that sometimes, the moving body can be enough. On Being premiered in 2021, and I watched (and wrote about it) then. I loved it the first time I saw it, and I still love it.  Additionally, I stand by my first take. I can see why it would be included in a program that honors the past, but also wants to nod at the current era of the company. It has a soft, yet clear structure, is devoid of any angst or ego, in short, it feels like a piece that one would create after a global pandemic where so much had been stripped away. Not to say that the piece references that time in any way, or relies on that context for it to thrive. This time watching I specifically appreciated how the form of the moving body is allowed to breathe and seemingly organically evolve, bodies sweeping and filling the space, movement tails and tendrils lingering long after. The music by Edyis Evensen tugs and pulls out emotion, and after the electronic scores that Nikolais used, gives the heart somewhere to get warmed up from the cold.

A tribute for Joan Woodbury and Shirley Ririe closed out the show, and it was satisfying to watch dancers from the past (via video projected on the cyc) juxtaposed with the current company performing the same choreography. Seeing the passage of time unaffected by movement composition somehow makes this ephemeral art form feel more concrete and real, connecting past and present before our eyes. 

The first section shown in this tribute was Boot the System, an excerpt from Electronic Dance Transformer, commissioned by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 1985. This section had a lecture demonstration structure to it, complete with narration from education director Ai Fujii Nelson. I have sat through my fair share of lec dems, and this is one that I would welcome the chance to sit through again simply because the dancers are fantastic. They are a joy to watch, all technically proficient, clean lines and dynamic movement qualities. It reminded me of the pure joy that movement can bring, the intoxication of being able to create imaginative worlds with your body.

Excerpts from L’Invasion, choreographed in 1991 by Joan Woodbury, showed different casts over at least a fifteen year span. This highlighted the passage of time and longevity of the company, something in and of itself to be proud of.

Watching video clips of Banner of Freedom, choreographed by Shirley Ririe in 1989, was not enough, I wanted to see the piece in its entirety. It was made after Ririe Woodbury had performed in East Berlin, come home, and then watched, with the rest of the world, the Berlin Wall coming down. The piece is a tribute to the strength and joy of those people, and speaks to universal hope and desire for freedom. The piece on video looked theatrical and dynamic, with large pieces of fabric hanging from the ceiling progressively being ripped down. The current company eventually ran out with white flags, making patterns and movements that highlight the euphoria and hope of a better life within reach. It was a poignant way to end the evening, ushering in the sixtieth year of this company with energy and optimism.

Erica Womack is a choreographer and teacher who has shown work through a variety of local outlets, as well as teaching at SLCC and Weber State University.

Cat + Fish on the roof at the Leonardo

This weekend I had the joy of attending Cat + Fish Dances’ Flow, a part of their ninth year of consistent performances. As soon as I reached my seat in the penthouse performance space at the Leonardo, it began to rain. Heavily. Directly onto the Marley floor that had been carefully laid out in the courtyard. The artists quickly closed off the doors and rotated the audience seating to face an indoor corner of the room. The show that followed was a testament to the unpredictability of live performance and the artists’ commitment to the show going on. Despite this change in facing and flooring, the performers showed professionalism and seemed completely at ease throughout.

The first and last pieces of the show were choreographed by Cat Kamarath Monson in collaboration with the dancers, and were exactly what you could expect of good contemporary dance. Fettle and Wonder/Wander were both dynamic, lively, and showed intelligent spatial design. They were dancing for dance’s sake and showed off the talent of the performers beautifully.

A run on sentence about… by Daniel Do was driving and rhythmically exciting. All black costumes added to the mystery. Even though Daniel doesn’t tell us what the “run on sentence” was about, I got the sense that it had something to do with pleasure and distraction. The dancers moved intricately, limbs close to their bodies, constantly interrupting themselves. A recurring motif from Morgan Phillips performing a little internal dance, eyes closed and swirling her hips with her hand on her belly, left incomplete impressions of desire and satiation. This was only an excerpt, I hope there is more to see of this work at another time.

Megan O'Brien and Caleb Daly, in Friday's drier performance, photo by Michael O'Brien.

It's not mine, it’s not yours, it’s ours by Mar Undag started with a playful call and response between two dancers, then adding in a third and fourth. The piece then somewhat suddenly shifted towards more isolated and individual movements, where the dancers passed by without seeing each other. Or, in some cases, they saw each other and chose to turn away. The movement became more bound, leaving a sense of yearning. Initially I felt yearning directed toward something external, however, the piece evolved and arrived at a solo by Masio Sangster. He touched his face with the same textures we’d seen other dancers using to reach into space. For me, this changed the story significantly, and I realized this yearning was not about gaining something external, but changing something internally. A duet emerged between Masio and Bayley Banks. At times unstable, they held a sense of yearning while supporting each other and finding beautiful, lofty moments in the transitions. Emma Sargent’s simple humming created a soft space around the duet, which was finally embraced by the last two dancers, leaving impressions of care and love. As Mar himself said in the program notes, “10 out of 10, no notes, these artists are incredible.”

In the program notes, three out of four pieces say they were created “in collaboration with dancers.” (The fourth, Fettle, was credited to all four of its “creators and movers” — Cat Kamarath Monson, Caleb Daly, Daniel Do, Megan O'Brien.) This aligned with Cat’s opening statements on respecting the dancers she worked with and recognizing the value of their time. Where in the past many choreographers would take credit for the final product even if the dancers contributed material, I love seeing credit given where it is due. The practice acknowledges how much dancers contribute to the artistry of a work and dissolves traditional hierarchies within the creative process. Flow was a strong program that also revealed Cat’s integrity as a longtime Salt Lake artist.

Kara Komarnitsky grew up in Salt Lake City and recently graduated with a BFA in Dance from Ohio State University with minors in Environmental Science and Business. Her work approaches the complexity of human interconnection with the planet, pulling inspiration from the natural world and environmental research. While her primary medium is dance, Kara regularly uses projections, film, sound, and interactive technology to create immersive performance experiences. Her piece Tales of the Deep (2018) recently won third place in the Midwest Climate Summit’s Climate Stories Competition and her thesis, Interconnect (2022), received an Honorable Mention at the OSU Denman Research Forum 2022. Other places her work has been presented includes the OSU Student Concert, OSU BFA Showcase, and the Ohio Dance Festival Professional Concert.

IAC tells new stories at Fringe

Interdisciplinary Arts Collective’s performance of Bedtime Stories at Great Salt Lake Fringe Fest definitely lived up to their company's title, drawing from a variety of different mediums. We saw quite a lot of gestural contemporary dance and heard abstracted stories in minimalist, deconstructed theatrical sets. Segments included costume design, masks, spoken word, vocals (was that singer opera trained?), sparse lighting design, video montage edited from existing films, a sweet little bit of live music, and a sculptural installation. I’m pretty sure I glimpsed a phrase of ballet. Even the projected chapter titles were themselves tiny little poems. 

Photo by James Westervelt.

In keeping with the micro-doses of many different art forms, the show was highly episodic. Bedtime Stories was divided into twelve chapters, each giving us just a snapshot of a classic Grimm’s style fairy tale, some familiar, others less so. These short segments gave my mind the opportunity to try to distill the whole genre of European folks tales down to their essential elements. Here’s what I came to, with Bedtime Stories’ depiction: 

“Watch out!” 

“Danger!” 

“Listen to your elders (who will tell you of danger).” 

“Trees are magic; Forests are nefarious (more danger).” 

“Creepy creatures gonna creep (possible danger).”

“Don’t lose your way (probable danger).”

“But really, open yourself up to connection, human and otherwise. Listen to the breeze and the birds and see if you can find yourself an earnest companion to share this moment with because your judgment isn't all that bad after all.“

Photo by James Westervelt.

Bedtime Stories' episodes included some really magical moments: a trio of hissing, whispering masked mystery, some wonderfully seamless partnering and lifts, Gray’s ode to the woods — SLAM style, a tenderness between two male-presenting dancers that made me forget I was watching choreography for a moment, obscured creatures tunneling through the stage under the watchful beak of some sort of witch, the opening set with a dancer splayed out as if having only just given up trying to wriggle out of the spider web they had been caught in, and the moment two dancers reveal their mouths to be lit from within. One of my companions for the night particularly liked the group dance sections because they had the unifying effect of making the cast come together and flow together for a brief time. My other companion enjoyed how everything was titrated — a few elements sprinkled in at a time so that after the cast spent three minutes deciding whether to go through a doorway. You had no idea who would stand on their head, and for how long (I didn’t count) and whether you’d see a rock band or piccolo next (neither, but I wouldn’t have put it past them). 

Ultimately however, I wished for more depth and less breadth. I felt like I was back in a 101 survey-style course, wanting to ask fifty thousand questions about today’s topic and being disappointed that we were so swiftly moving on to the next subject. Any one of those moments that caught my attention could have been the starting point for its own magical tale. I’d like to see what happens when these artists create their own fairy tale, rather than summarizing existing ones. What do they think is important to include in a cautionary tale to scare children (and all of us) into doing right? I’d like to see their individual mediums crash into each other and meld and argue and come out the other side transformed, because this company does seem to have the capacity for story.

Nancy Simpson Carter is a dancer, aerialist, choreographer, body worker, and movement researcher from North Carolina based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Currently she is in her seventh season teaching and performing with Aerial Arts of Utah. She also runs her own business, Rumble Motion Massage and Movement. In addition, she performs with Fire Muse Circus and organizes in the Contact Improvisation and Acro Yoga communities. Nancy’s choreography has been performed most notably at TEDx Salt Lake City, the Rose Wagner Theater, the Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival, Westminster Collage, Sugar Space Studio for the Arts, the University of Utah, Meredith College, the American College Dance Festival, NC Dance Alliance, and the American Dance Festival. Nancy has served as guest choreographer for Meredith Dance Theater and Broughton High School, and currently choreographs student repertory, Acro Yoga, and company acts for Aerial Arts of Utah.

A new playground for dance

On July 22, 2023, I had the pleasure of watching the community come together and showcase a wonderful collection of pieces. True to the show's title name, Playground, I could see the choreographers and dancers playing with their ideas for this project. From the rainbow cloud that transformed to the fabric flowing river, to the dramatic operatic piece, I was kept engaged and excited to see what else these artists had to give the audience.

As stated before the show started, Playground was designed with the intention to start and finish the artistic process in a week. On top of that, choreographers were inclined to choose dancers they haven’t worked with before. While watching the performance, I wouldn’t have guessed some of these folks met for the first time during this process. The amount of trust these dancers have in the process is clear. The performers were free to commit to the dances, while feeling secure that their group has each other. This is truly highlighted for me in Tori Meyer’s piece, Ode to Kenneth. While setting the mood for this piece, the dancers had this “too cool for school” attitude while trying to play a recorder with three people. It was silly and wonderful. Doing silly things on stage can be stressful if you’re not comfortable; however, the attitude and commitment of these dancers had made this piece so much fun to watch.

Photo by Florian Alberge.

Fun – that is the biggest take away I can say about watching this collection as a whole. Exciting moments like those in Tyler Schnese’s piece, Venus in Pink, and Rebekah Guerra’s piece, que vas-tu faire?, kept my senses alive. I thought, “Wow, this is exciting! I need to know what happens next.” While softer, magical moments appeared as well - like how much the tearing of the paper screen added visually and audibly in Lehua Estrada’s piece, O-Six. The show made me excited to see what else these artists can give to our community and inspired me for my own creative projects.

To continue supporting more shows like this, please continue to watch these artists. The creative team of Playground made it easy to access the performer’s and choreographer’s information on their instagram, @playground_danceproject. This is where you can take a deeper dive into the community and support the contribution they give in our Small Lake City.

Edison Corvera (they/them) is currently a queer Filipinx performer living around the SLC area. They attended Southern Utah University and studied theater arts and dance performance. Since moving to the Salt Lake area, Edison has worked with Myriad Dance, Ogden Movement Collective, and SONDERimmersive. Whatever artistry they find, Edison hopes to continue to find ways to implement their art with the community around them.