I’ve been silent here for a while now, but I thought I might offer some reflections (which at points will read more like an itinerary, since to reflect on all of it might be a more epic endeavor than I have the energy for) on one the better spring breaks I’ve ever had – fitting, since it’s likely also the last one I’ll have in the foreseeable future.

It began on Sunday, March 16, when I traveled to Salt Lake City, Utah with Semaphore for the Northwest Region American College Dance Festival (ACDF). Of course, the first things I was excited to see were the mountains, which surround the city on all sides. Actually, our plan landed just before dusk, when the sun was peeking from behind the mountains in the west. As we descended, every metal and water surface shimmered in single bright flashes; the landscape was orange and atwinkle, one of the most lovely I’ve seen . . . We didn’t have anything official to do that night, so it was pretty chill. We did go out to a local microbrewery called “Squatters.” Not only was the ambience rather cool (in the relaxed sense – for example, we sat along a long window looking out on a patio area entirely illuminated with beautiful blue lights), but the food and beer were excellent as well. I, for one, sampled the Polygamy Porter (“Why just have one?” the slogan goes). We toasted to a promising stay in Salt Lake.

Monday was another fairly low-key day, since the only official duties we had were to register for the festival and attend a concert in the evening. So in the morning, we wandered around town for a bit. First we stopped at an outdoor mall to get a map of Salt Lake. We had to wait a few minutes for the shops to open, and at 10:00 sharp, the fancy mountain at the mall’s central plaza spurted and trumpeted the day’s beginning. It was a ridiculous display, with melodramatic orchestral/choral music and a hundred or so jets creating an aerial hydro-spectacle. Later, the plaza speakers blasted some country diva belting “America the Beautiful.” At that point we left for the (in?)famous Temple Square, home of the Mormon Tabernacle and its astounding choir. To be honest, although I went with an open mind, hoping to dispel some of my own misconceptions of Mormonism, I did not find the experience particularly illuminating. In fact, I left the square feeling a bit frustrated. I don’ feel like writing a self-righteous diatribe at the moment, preferring to have an actual dialogue on the subject with whoever may have an interest.

In any case, after Temple Square, we met our fearless leaders Judith and Jane (and Jane’s awesome daughter Audrey) at the hotel, and then made our way up the hill to the University of Utah campus, where we registered for the festival. This is where we received the information packet for the festival. At this point, it may be worth it to more clearly explain what the festival is. ACDF happens about eight times each year in different regions of the country. Carleton ended up in the Northwest Region this year because it’s on the trimester system, and so our finals period coincided with the festival in our own region. As its name implies, ACDF is an opportunity for college dance groups and companies to take various classes with noteworthy choreographers and teachers in the national dance community. It also provides an opportunity to have a piece adjudicated by a trio of panelists (this year: Loretta Livingston from Los Angeles, Gabri Christa from Curacao, and Zvi Gotheiner from Israel). Especially important for me was the opportunity to see a lot of dance, much of which was innovative and technically accomplished (though there were certainly some doozies as well, which is to be expected).

The festival officially opened Monday night with a concert featuring four local professional ballet and modern companies: Ballet West, Odyssey Dance Theatre, Repertory Dance Theatre, and the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company. Overall the show was phenomenal. Highlights included a piece creatively using towels to launch dancers and such, an aptly titled postmodern work called “Nine Person Precision Ball Passing” (both performed by the Repertory Dance Theatre), and a 20-minute epic by Ririe-Woodbury called “Lost.” I think this was my favorite piece of the evening, even if the choreography was a bit disjointed at the performers weren’t always dancing together as crisply as they could have. In any case, I found much of the movement breathtaking. While often athletic, the piece also incorporated some softer vocabulary, like one dancer curling into the space beneath another one in plank position. I found the partner work and the unison duets (particularly with the two lead male performers) especially engaging. The work was structured by moments when the dancers would recollect into the same line (from down- to upstage) that opened the piece. At these moments the music was replaced by a voice reading the German poem "Lied vom Kindsein" by Peter Handke. The poem is about the loss of childhood innocence and thus establishes the central motif, but the fact that it was in German (and thus impenetrable for much of the audience) seemed an odd choice, unless it was some sort of metacommentary meant to distance and lose the audience, a not wholly satisfying interpretation for me. Powerful nevertheless, with good music by the Doors and Nick Cave. The Odyssey pieces were impressive on a technical note, but lacked emotional spark. Ballet West presented a pas de deux from Cinderella, which was pretty (you can tell I’m not a ballet connoisseur).

Tuesday, we got up at the ass crack of dawn (5:30), had a fairly impressive continental breakfast, and then went to the U of U campus to register for the day’s classes (1.5 hours each). My first class was Baroque, and focused on theory, technique, and notation of French court dance of the late 17^th and early 18^th centuries. It was surprisingly interesting, as the instructor talked a bit about how ballet developed from some of the techniques we learned. Baroque dance, like the parallel movements in music and art, is highly ornate, and as such requires more head than bodywork. My second class was the polar opposite. I took a modern class taught by Loretta Livingston, one of the adjudicators (each one taught a class during this period, and each schools got one ticket for a student to take each one). It was extremely fast-paced and, to be frank, sort of frightening. It was the first time I had ever been in a classroom with so many foreign bodies, many of which had clearly trained for many years. Although terrified at the time, retrospectively it was a really good, humbling experience. I learned complex phrases faster than I ever have, and Livingstone even complimented my C-curve!

After modern we had lunch and then attended a panel discussion with the adjudicators, who spoke about their past and present creative involvement in the dance community. (When asked about how they keep themselves centered, Livingston noted that she once disbanded here company to climb Mayan ruins, lived alone in a lodge in Alaska watching eagles for a year, and visits her psychotherapist weekly.) The last class of the day was a jazz class, which was also intimidating, but fun. The guy who taught the class was really laid back. For isolations during the first half of the class, we danced to the first few tracks from M.I.A.’s Kala, which was awesome. For the last part of class, conversely, we learned a lyrical jazz phrase to Steely Dan’s “Asia.” My companions were less enthused by this “elevator” tune, but I couldn’t help but enjoy it considering how much the instructor got into it. It was precious indeed. As per usual in jazz classes, there were lots of divas. I guess I wasn’t expecting that half of them would be men!

Tuesday night was the first of two adjudicated concerts, each of which were four hours long. I’m not convinced that I can really do justice to the breadth of works presented without long, boring descriptions, so I’ll try to spare you. Highlights included a piece by Idaho State University called “Temporarily Out of Order,” which was much like Morgan Thorson’s “Worst Case,” performed at Carleton by Semaphore last spring and fall (the crazy pomo piece). A solo piece called “this is my rite” was also phenomenal. A woman with a bouncy ponytail on the top of her head came out, arranged some plastic plates in a large circle, placed a brownie on each one, and did some neurotic movement within the circle, binge-eating the brownies. My description doesn’t do it justice, but it was uproariously funny, and its brilliance laid it its ability to touch humorously on OCD and eating disorders among other topics. “My Shoes” was another solo by a guy named Luis Sancho, who DJed and choreographed the piece. Essentially he stumbled upon a pair of shoes, which make him do some pretty suave hip-hop moves. It worked because he had great stage presence. Utah Valley State College’s “Fanfare to the Common Man” was a lush, gorgeously choreographed and danced piece which on the of the adjudicators interpreted as a troubled narrative of immigration and the witnessing of human failure within the adverse conditions of that context. Perhaps the most powerful recurring image in the piece was when, it double or triple duets, one dancer would “fall” into an arabesque and the other would catch her foot. The dancer in arabesque would sort of swing with her own weight for a couple of moments until her holder/protector had to let go. It sounds melodramatic, but it had a poignant subtlety to it that worked well. The third act of the show included a lot of multi-media work with film and slideshows, which worked to varying degrees. It also featured an amazing, very theatrical piece involved scooters, a Segue Way®, and much hilarity.

On Wednesday, most of us slept in (we didn’t get back to the hotel until about 11:00), opting to miss the first class since we would perform in the concert that night. I took another modern class when I got to the campus. A guy from Belhaven College taught it, and it was fantastic. It was fast-paced, but for some reason his movement felt natural in my body and I could learn it quickly and feel as though I could fully perform it in class. By the end of the hour and a half, I was covered in sweat and out of breath (more than usual, considering the higher altitude). None of us went to the afternoon classes because our tech/spacing rehearsal cut into both of them. After the rehearsal, we went back to the hotel to rest and retrieve costumes and such, grabbed dinner at a Wild Oats store on the way back to the U, and then waited around and warmed up until we performed around 9:00 (for those of you at Carleton in the fall, this was Wynn Fricke’s “Floating World” which opened the fall concert). Although all of us felt incredibly nervous about the performance, the piece went extremely well, better I think than we’ve ever performed it – even in rehearsals. It was a bit of a bummer, though, when they messed up the final lighting cue, cutting our ending – the part of the piece many of us appreciated the most – short. Although in retrospect it didn’t really change or spoil the piece, we were pretty disheartened, to put it mildly.

After we performed, we joined the audience for the rest of the concert. As a side note, one thing I valued highly about these concerts was the fluidity between stage and auditorium, between performance and spectatorship. It was neat to watch dancers on stage, and then have them come in and sit next to you a few minutes later. I think a lot of people felt this connection, and it created an environment that was more supportive than competitive. Taking class with everyone also helped foster this recognition. Instead of being a performer appearing only within the transient world of a giving dance, it was easier to see these as people. This may seem an obvious point, but I didn’t realize how easy it is for me to see the stage as a separate world until I felt this connection viscerally in this context.

The remaining act and a half of this second concert was, by and large, pretty strong. There was a really charming piece called “Several Things About Spring,” performed by students from the University of Alaska, Anchorage. It involved large tulips as well as lots of charm and general adorableness. There was also a charming piece involving playground balls (the colored ones), as well as a really powerful duet. The piece that closed the concert, “Ghost Ship” by the University of Utah, was also excellent, though I took some issue with it conceptually. The movement vocabulary was highly engaging, innovative, and masterfully performed (by semi-professional grad students, who likely have worked for some time in the professional arena). One of my friends described it chillingly beautiful, and I would concur. This was particularly true of the central image of the piece. One woman on stage alone performs the central recurring phrase, ending in a lunge position with her upstage leg raised perpendicular to the floor creating a Z-shape with her arm and torso. Just then, a solo female voice in the music reaches a chilling high note, and then rice begins to fall from the sky in a single column just behind the dancer. Now, I know that rice is over-done in art and apparently in dance in particular, and I also recognize that there was really no reason for rice to fall from the sky at this moment, unless it was a tractor beam from an alien ship. While in accordance with the title, this idea nevertheless seems silly judging by the tone of the rest of the work, which focused more on the falling movement of the rice, the shapes the rice made on the floor, and movement within the “pool” of rice. Although this particular spectacle belonged to another dance (or at least deserved more central attention in this one, which would have been difficult given that it happened in the last couple minutes of a 12-minute work), it really was gorgeous. The virtually perfect spirals made in the rice by dancers’ feet, the grains dynamically flying this way and that – even into the audience, was still magnificent to behold. It was with that image that we headed back to the hotel.

The next morning (Thursday), a few of us got up for the early massage class. Not only did this class feel great (free 45-minutes of muscle relaxing deep massage? Hell yes!), but it was also neat to learn some massage techniques for the whole body. Much needed at that point. After this class, we attended the first informal concert of the day (informal in the sense that it wasn’t adjudicated; it still had lights and costumes). Unfortunately, I didn’t find many of the works very impressive. There was one humorous character-driven piece called “S-P-EYE,” but it was ruined at the last minute.

After a free lunch of startlingly greasy pizza, we went to our adjudication feedback session. Gabri Christa and Loretta Livingston both really liked Wynn’s piece and commented that we had executed it very well – “cool, clean, and crisp.” Livingston connected the title and the tone of the piece to the “floating worlds” of Hokusai and other similar Japanese woodblock artists, and liked how the piece was structured in “islands of poeticism.” Zvi Gotheiner was less enthusiastic, saying that the music had a numbing effect, that he couldn’t find a through-line in the choreography (no, he wasn’t more specific), and that he was put off by how similar the opening image of the piece is to a really famous work by African American choreographer Alven Ailey called “Lamentations.” Jane was a bit annoyed by this last comment, feeling that he made this association right away and dismissed the whole things uncritically. I sympathize with her position. Not only did he fail to offer any constructive criticism, which was part of the point of having him there, but he was so vague in his descriptions that it almost seemed as though he hadn’t really watched closely. In any case, all three judges were blown away by Dot’s solo work. Good marks overall.

After our feedback, the five of us performing Lily’s piece (“Day After Day” to the Johnny Cash song “Bird on a Wire”) in the second informal concert had to go have our brief technical rehearsal. The performance went really well, and we all performed with what felt like an almost absurd intensity, which, if you’ve seen the piece, is pretty much what it demands. The audience really liked it, which was cool.

After that, we scuttled back to the hotel. I showered, removed my stage makeup, and then we met in Jane and Judith’s room because Judith wanted to apologize for messing up the light cue in our piece. She was pretty upset about it and even started crying, saying that she knew how hard we had worked to embody that movement and how disappointed she was with herself. Of course, we had already forgiven her, and quickly the mood lightened. (Judith, by the way, is amazing. She had done so much work on the lights for this piece. She had spoken at length with Wynn and she had met with the original light designer. After setting the lights in our tech rehearsal, she called the engineers back later that afternoon because she wasn’t satisfied. She did all of this without our knowledge.) Afterward, we all went to Squatters for dinner. I sampled another local beer: Captain Bastard’s Oatmeal Stout. Thumbs up.

The closing event for ACDF was also that night: the Gala concert, curated by the adjudicators, and the post-concert reception/party. There were certainly some surprising selections for the Gala concert, and the judges omitted several pieces over which they’d gone ga-ga (such as the aforementioned “this is my rite,” about which Zvi commented “I wish I’d choreographed that). Overall it was a great concert, though, and I got to see several works that I had missed because they preceded us in the second concert. One of these was “Pink and Blue,” an R&B piece that took me a while to get into, but which ultimately had really powerful movement which, I felt, distinguished beautifully between internal (self-directed) and external (community-directed) violence. Another particularly good piece – and I think my favorite at the whole festival – was a brilliant satire called “Self Defense,” which featured the New Age “philosopher” Eckhart Tolle reading part his own work (from a book on tape), blabbing about some bull-shit like “It is necessary to suffer until you realize that suffering is unnecessary.” It began with one woman, dressed in a pink dress and pearls, carrying a white purse and wearing a cone on her head, much like you put on dogs to keep them from scratching their heads. She walks upstage and mechanically dumps out the purse full of silverware, and then vanishes in dark. Then the Tolle begins, and she reappears on stage, doing this really neurotic movement that I can’t really describe in words. But it was so precisely articulated and powerful when juxtaposed with Tolle’s words and the costumes. After a while, four or five other women in identical attire enter the stage space, doing very similar movement – a frenzy of crazy housewives listening to New Age drivel. I won’t try to describe any further, but it was so genius both in its conception and its execution. It was kind of sick how enthusiastic I was about it when the curtain went down.

To be brief (ha!), then next day we flew back home; nothing eventful to report there. In summary, Salt Lake City was a beautiful place, and ACDF was a wonderful experience, reinvigorating my love for dance, and expanding my understanding of what dance can do. In terms of my own artistic growth, I consider it pretty much invaluable. Furthermore, it deepened my appreciation for my travel companions. I’ve never before been on a group trip in which I haven’t, at some point, been annoyed by at least one individual. Everyone in Semaphore is so passionately engaged with dance (critically, aesthetically, technically), and I think that helped enrich our respect for one another. Good show!

But that’s just the half of it. I’ll try to post another, though hopefully not so lengthy, account of my adventures in Stumptown (Portland) with Robin in the next day or so. Until then, adieu!

T-cake

Currently listening to: Grizzly Bear, Yellow House; The National, Boxer; and I’m just starting to work through some of the stuff I acquired from Robin.

Currently reading: Burt Ramsay, The Male Dancer (a really fascinating read; highly recommended thus far). I also finally got around to reading The Female Circumcision Controversy (Ellen Gruenbaum), which we never read in Ethnography of Africa and Anagrams (Lorrie Moore), which we never read in PoMo. Both were a bit disappointing. The Gruenbam does a good job with the ethnographic portion of her work, which examines the place(s) of circumcision in contemporary Sudan society. She loses her bearings and specificity in the later sections of the book, however, when she tries to outline the possibilities for change. At first, I liked the Moore book conceptually: each section of the book is like an anagram of one woman’s life, with the overall structures and issues remaining constant despite rearranging the details of her job or the nature of her relationships with certain people. This concept breaks down in the second half of the book, though, and so feels empty. Furthermore, much like Delillo’s White Noise, Anagrams is far too aware of its own postmodern condition, often explicitly invoking questions of ontology and existentialism. In this way, it feels totally derivative and unoriginal. Not recommended.

I also read Chuck Palahniuk’s “guide” to Portland, Fugitives and Refugees, which is full of 100% useful information (if you’ve read any of his fiction, you might imagine what he puts in here). Indeed, he admits that his portrait is not really of “Portland” per se. Nevertheless, still highly recommended if you’ll be in the Stumptown area.