In their introduction last night Brittany Reese & Stephen Brown told us that the Sugar Show concept is based loosely on Neta Pulvermacher’s original A.W.A.R.D. show in New York. That program was an effort to give one artist funding based on audience feedback with a little bit of competition dance style marketing tossed in. After it’s initial run in New York the event expanded to include different cities and SLC wasn’t on the list. Although the Joyce wouldn’t sanction the use of the name “A.W.A.R.D.” show here, Brittany kept at it over the past four years, landing at the name Sugar Show, in partnership with SB Dance at the Rose Wagner.
As a point of fact, our own road to this year’s Sugar Show has included many “award show” pit-stops: Ashley was an audience member at one of the first ever A.W.A.R.D. show preliminaries at the Joyce SOHO, afterward she performed in a Philadelphia A.W.A.R.D. show, has published an essay by Ishmael Houston-Jones on the concept of “award shows” and this year served as a Sugar Show panelist. Sam has been a performer in a recent New York A.W.A.R.D. show season, was a preliminary choreographer in the 2011 Sugar Show and now was a voting audience member.
With these contexts in mind we both say Bravo!! to the developments Brittany and SB have made upon the original concept, even without the support of the Joyce. While many people have taken the “award” idea to task stating a variety of concerns about the way dance is funded, Brittany stuck to her guns that audiences in collaboration with a professional panel can be an effective way to engage audiences and support choreography.
In collaboration with SB new changes continue to emerge. Artists last night didn’t get all or nothing, each choreographer was offered the respect and fairness of $150 to support the project they had made with the winner netting less than the traditional “award” show, but still a fair fee, in the amount of $450. The emerging choreographers highlighted were able to perform their work at the Rose to a sold out crowd and are now known outside of their own, smaller audience base. Before the performance, artists were paired with mentors and received production support for the final event – this revealed itself in the content of the work, a lot was truly experimental and reflected months of rehearsal.
The new atmosphere, with all artists being rewarded, was more casual than years past. While the votes are tallied the feedback session can drag (is there ever an easy way to moderate those conversations?), but if dance needs something it’s a few more hostages and we applaud the effort at large. And throughout the evening they asked for feedback so we are giving it. Although this means our review itself will drag, we each wrote a few sentences about each piece as a critical offering to the choreographers. Feel free to add your own comments to what we list below.
Nell Suttles – “The Cherry Plum Test” This sextet was danced by five adult women and narrated by a twelve year old girl who recollects and directs. The four vignettes were marked like diary entries in spoken text. At times the dance would stop and start at her behest so that she could interject, walk around and stop time. At one point she mused, “it is something about time instead of space…” And time seemed at the heart of this work. The temporal suspensions it raised for consideration were both overt and sublime. There was the age gap between performers represented by these women in their twenties dancing through the thoughts of this friendly if ultimately mysterious child (who ironically didn’t seem as young in the lights of the Rose…perhaps something to consider in future iterations). The dancing itself seemed concerned with time too. We won’t soon forget a line of all five dancers facing offstage, heels suspended just off of the ground, in a state of potential energy paused. We sense that the piece could have been more fully developed though we aren’t sure how that would have been accomplished with out disturbing its delicate adolescent qualities. We hope Suttle continues down this line of investigation perhaps by considering how each vignette is woven by the young narrator.
Transfusion Hype Dance Company (Ashlee Vilos) – “Wake Up!” The projected text in the work was heavy handed but the dancers in this commercial project are committed, well rehearsed and clearly ready to experiment in realms outside of what you might expect to see from a successful, commercial enterprise. It was engaging to see so many performers on stage, large casts are rare even for mainstay companies RDT and RW, and their relationships were clearly crafted. We would encourage a consideration of similar choreographers who have bridged popular dance forms with successful concert dance careers — Rennie Harris and Crystal Frazier in Philadelphia or Doug Elkins in New York are just two examples of artists working between popular idioms in new contexts. There are also contexts to consider that go the other way around — how concert dance choreographers Bill T. Jones, Twyla Tharp and Jerome Robbins found their careers moving from modern dance forms back to Broadway or musical theater.
fourfive (Leah Nelson & Cortney McGuire) – “sure…ok, bye” Promising, if unfinished, this virtual duet was cool, collected and stunning to watch. Leah’s dancing has something more than what generally passes for clarity, a self-organizing principal that maybe she leans on a bit too hard in this instance – her clarity perhaps overshadowed her virtual partner and our understanding of her video and audio presence. Still, we loved the spread of video of a woman at home (Leah herself we first thought, but in fact her collaborator) moving futilely around a kitchen as a baby (and/or a cat?) almost crawls the walls. And the long distance improv score was the best long distance improv we’ve seen since 2010. It was funny, and the audience got that, but it also gave us some deeper information about our technological self without being heavy handed.
Joni Tuttle – “To Mouth Something” This work included some very competent dancing by a bunch of people we haven’t seen before which is always a pleasure to see in your hometown. The intended investigation of the relationship between facial expressions and choreography was most successful when the facial expressions became secondary to some beyond lovely full bodied dancing. In this way we were both reminded of classic abstract works (in fact, the choreographer studied Forsythe’s improvisation work which seems related). The tension between making a work reflecting abstract concepts of beauty and/or absurdity and making a work that reflected a diverse array of strategies never really resolved. It seems that a lot of material was left in to “round out the dance” or “make it feel complete” rather than because it related to the overall concept or vision the piece found itself addressing.
and the special mention, “winning”, choreographer Efren Corado – “TRANSCRIPTS” In our view this was a memoir that explored loss through language. In a mixture of Spanish and English, the choreographer expressed his fear of the inevitable loss of his past, as personified by his grandmother. At the same time he told painful and funny stories of transition into the US, including, most strikingly, learning to say the English word “ten” and experiencing a carpeted bedroom for the first time. He danced throughout and even sang, mournfully with part of his score. Other solos that attempt this level of catharsis and personal exploration, with this much text have failed. Efrén somehow succeeded at making both dance and text necessary. The steady stream of dance and bilingual text was totally honest but also totally overwhelming. It put us through an experience of unpacking the dance’s meaning while forgetting much of it even as we watched. The experience of consuming dance as an analogy of Corado’s own continuing sense of lost was not lost on the audience, who mostly seemed to agree with us that it was quite moving. In terms of sheer, technical feedback there were moments this world was shaken up by simple flaws (poor mixing of volume on a soundtrack for example) and with the winning cash we hope another version will be presented ASAP.
Sam Hanson holds a BUS from the University of Utah and currently makes dance films. Ashley Anderson holds an MFA from Hollins/ADF and runs loveDANCEmore events in SLC.
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