In December, loveDANCEmore created Only the Lonely, a commissioning program for virtual events to be presented this spring. The presenting artists are Emma Sargent & Max Barnewitz, Nora Price, Ya-Ya Fairley, Dmitri Peskov, Jung Ah Yoon, Roxanne Gray, and Nora Lang.

Launch evening three here.

May 4, 2021 – 7:30 MST

Nora Price (they/them, she/her) conceived of small mal as the she taped down some spare scraps of Marley at the beginning of Covid isolation in her apartment. It struck Price that it was actually the biggest dedicated moving space she'd had in several years, having been operating outside of an institution. Also a musician, Price made a practice of improvised looping and layering on guitar, Rhodes piano, modular synth, and vocals to do gentle ballet barre or movement improvisation. From there she started (and stopped, and started again) experimenting with scoring her small Marley moments. Some very small, when documented – close-ups of hands, knees and fingers. 

This evening will also include Ashley Anderson’s dear old familiar.

You can still watch evening two here.

April 24, 2021 – 7:30 PM MST

In Duet for Non-Things and Forsaken Objects, partners Max Barnewitz (they/them) and Emma Sargent (she/her or they/them) chronicle the quotidian during the pandemic and explore the boundaries of embodiment in a time of restriction. Barnewitz and Sargent plan to create a 3x3 grid of three-minute screendances that illustrate a shifting landscape of movement – a landscape that changes depending on the order and vantage point from which the audience chooses to interact. A portion of the work will be filmed in the artists’ apartment, fostering an intimate relationship between performer, viewer, and objects in the space. As part of the study on apartment life, they hope to incorporate mixed media movement including stop-motion animation, featuring small objects such as Lego men, ceramic animals, and Totoro figurines as the “dancers.” They hope to simultaneously invite play into the dances, and evoke an exploration of “thing” – the ways objects occasionally act upon us, uncannily venturing out of their prescribed purpose. 

Ya-Ya Fairley (they/them) who earned an MFA from the University of Utah before spending time on the East Coast, returns to Salt Lake with the new film Skin Hunger: A Performative Perspective on touch starvation during this pandemic. Says Ya-Ya, “This project is a meditation on the “haptic,” touch — or the lack thereof — and kinesthesia experienced in my Black Trans Dancing Body. This project will culminate in a solo screendance, which will offer glimpses into my own lived experience of grappling with the lack of "touch" and social congregation.”

Roxanne Gray (she/her) a dance artist recently relocated from the Bay Area, will present Tableau. The work is a short dance film, exploring micro gestural movement in a contained space. The piece examines isolation, and the enormity of change and/or lack of. Tableau was created in collaboration with Jasmine Stack, Benjamin Swisher and Ashley Isenhour.

evening one

It’s over but you can still watch some of it below…

additional info

Suggested donation at each evening will be $10 per person, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Audience members who have yet to receive a copy of ten years, our current performance journal, are encouraged to donate $20 or more to receive a copy.

This project is funded in part by the CARES Act and the Utah State Legislature through the Utah Division of Arts & Museums, Salt Lake County Zoo Arts and Parks, and the Salt Lake City Arts Council.