Utah Presents

Spring ReachUP Impact

UtahPresents ReachUP engagement events this spring were as varied as our artists. Led by Community Engagement Manager Melissa Salguero, these events reached nearly 4,000 people, mostly K-12 students.

Step Afrika kicked off our January with their electric performance on Martin Luther King Day. Following the show, students from Highland High School, who are in the first and only high school stepping group in the state, met the performers and spent time talking and asking questions. The students also performed a short stepping routine for the Step Afrika dancers.

Though stepping is a well-known art form in many parts of the country, it is not as widely practiced locally and seldom presented here. For these students to see professional step dancers and be able to meet with them afterwards was an incredible experience, encouraging them to imagine possibilities for their own futures.

March brought us the fun and joy of Music From The Sole, a tap dance and live music company that celebrates tap’s Afro-Diasporic roots, coming to Utah for the first time to perform both a student matinee and public performance at Kingsbury Hall. During their time here, the artists taught a master class with students from the University of Utah School of Dance and participated in an Afro-Diasporic Dance Exchange that UtahPresents organized at Sorenson Unity Center. The Dance Exchange also featured local organizations Bomba Marilé and Samba Fogo. Attendees ranged in age from nine months to 79, and was a joyous evening of dance, music, and community.

March also featured a public performance and student matinee of Ocean Filibuster, an immersive multimedia theatre performance that explores the critical relationship between humans and the ocean. Partnering with Save our Great Salt Lake, the project aimed to raise awareness of the plight of the lake and what we, as individuals, can do to save it. Members of the group attended the performance in costumes that were made and worn during the most recent state legislative session, as they marched to support water conservation efforts.

Together with Save Our Great Salt Lake, we partnered with the University of Utah’s Sustainability Office and Center for Equity & Student Belonging, along with community groups River Writing Collective and Making Waves for Great Salt Lake, to sponsor a Student Art Contest. Students from across the county created visual art or writing inspired by Great Salt Lake. The contest was open to K-12 students and undergraduates at the U of U. Entries came from students as young as 2^nd grade up through college age and varied from paintings to multimedia pieces to longform poetry. View the winning entries here.

UtahPresents also partnered with Save Our Great Salt Lake on their annual vigil at Antelope Island, where community members gathered to advocate for efforts to save and revitalize the lake.

We rounded out the semester with Red Baraat, a North Indian Bhangra fusion band performing their Festival of Colors show celebrating Holi. For this show, we partnered with Utah Punjabi Arts Academy, who opened for Red Baraat and also taught classes at Olene Walker Elementary in partnership with Promise South Salt Lake.

Spring semester also included two master classes with School of Music piano performance majors with virtuoso pianist Simon Trpčeski, a community conversation with the artists from Black Violin, in partnership with Live at the Eccles, and our annual collaboration with University of Utah Youth Theatre for their production of SpongeBob the Musical.

National Endowment for the Arts Funds UtahPresents’ Stage Door Series, Featuring New Works by Plan-B Theatre and Heartland Collective

Plan-B Theatre also receives funding for EllaMental by Dee-Dee Darby Duffin, which will serve students in grades 4-6 statewide as the company’s 12^th annual Free Elementary School Tour

UtahPresents is thrilled to announce it has been approved by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) for a Grants for Arts Projects award of $25,000 to support the Stage Door series. The UtahPresents series, reimagined to feature local artists producing new work, will present premiere performances of Plan-B Theatre’s Kilo-Wat and Heartland Collective’s Minute and Far.

The Stage Door series was created to present touring artists and ensembles in a more intimate setting. Patrons enter through the backstage door of Kingsbury Hall and sit on the stage where the performance takes place. This coming UtahPresents season, the Stage Door Series will become an engine to support the rich creative community in Salt Lake City with a new focus on local artists.

The series will open UtahPresents 2024-25 season with Minute and Far, created and performed by Heartland Collective, a multi-disciplinary performance collective founded by Molly Heller. Minute and Far plays with perspective, proportion through distortion, and the mechanics of time. This mixed media work is inspired by the stories, both real and imagined, of iconic Kingsbury Hall. Themes of geometric repetition, zigzag forms, and whimsical surprise are explored through movement, live music, and Art Deco inspired scenic elements.

In February, Plan-B Theatre will premiere Kilo-Wat, a new play written by Aaron Asano Swenson, performed by Bryan Kido, and directed by Jerry Rapier. After leading the University of Utah men’s basketball team to the 1944 NCAA Championship, point guard Wat “Kilo Wat” Misaka was drafted into the U.S. Army and assigned to interview survivors of the atomic bombing in Hiroshima. After the war, he was drafted by the New York Knicks, breaking the color barrier in professional basketball. Kilo-Wat explores what it means to make history within history.

Plan-B also received NEA funding for its statewide Free Elementary School Tour of EllaMental by Dee-Dee Darby-Duffin. Created specifically for grades 4-6, EllaMental centers on Ella, a Black, twelve-year-old sixth-grader struggling to make sense of her Big Feelings from the pandemic—grief, loss, fear, and anger—in a post-COVID world.

In total, the NEA will award 1,135 Grants for Arts Projects awards totaling more than $37 million as part of its second round of fiscal year 2024 grants.

“Projects like UtahPresent’s Stage Door Series exemplify the creativity and care with which communities are telling their stories, creating connection, and responding to challenges and opportunities in their communities—all through the arts,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD. “So many aspects of our communities such as cultural vitality, health and wellbeing, infrastructure, and the economy are advanced and improved through investments in art and design, and the National Endowment for the Arts is committed to ensuring people across the country benefit.”

Fall 2023 ReachUP Events Create Far-Reaching Impact

School of Dance students learning from Circa artists

This fall, UtahPresents’ ReachUp events, featuring performance artist Timothy White Eagle and artists from Cimarron and Circa, reached more than 2500 people from all ages and backgrounds.

Cimarron and Circa both performed student matinees for K-12 students. These two performances reached more than 1300 students across 29 school districts from Logan to Nebo.

Cimarron also taught two community workshops, for both adults and kids. See more of the Cimarron engagement here.

Artists from Circa held workshops with University students from the School of Dance as well as Honors students taking Professor Phillip Bimstein’s Artfully Extended Mind courses. Student comments included “It challenged me to think about space and my body in a new way!” and “I thought I’d struggle but they made it so easy to understand the movement.”

Honors College students learning from Circa artists in a class a the Utah Museum of Fine Arts

In partnership with the American Indian Resource Center, indigenous artist Timothy White Eagle participated in a panel discussion on the impact of boarding schools on Native American communities. Historian Steven Lee, Dr. Cynthia Benally from the Education, Culture & Society Department, and Dr. Dena Ned from the College of Social Work, also participated in the discussion, moderated by Department of History Professor Dr. Maile Arvin.

Timothy also spent time with students affiliated with the American Indian Resource Center and the LGBTQ Center, talking about his career trajectory as a queer indigenous artist. Students gained insight and encouragement about navigating higher education and their future career paths.

Timothy White Eagle speaking with students from the American Indian Resource Center and the LGBTQ Resource Center

Thank you to these amazing artists for connecting with our community and bringing their creativity and artistry to Salt Lake and the U campus!

A “BIG” opening for 2023-24

The 2023-24 season kicked off in a BIG way, with four performances of Joanna Kotze’s BIG BEATS, a free outdoor performance on Aug 25 and 26 at the Salt Lake City Public Library and the U of U’s Marriot Library.

The cast included professional dancers, as well as students and faculty from the U’s School of Dance. Kotze was in Salt Lake City for two weeks leading up to the performances, working with dancers and UtahPresents and School of Dance staff to set the work and ensure a perfect execution of such a large event.

“This was quite an event to put together – 24 dancers, one live musician, outside, and free. There are so many variables,” said Kotze. “The dancers worked very hard, taking on the rigorous, detailed movement with openness, concentration, and humor. They were an absolute pleasure to work with. They performed in the heat and sun, on concrete, twice each day, and they had positive energy the whole time.”

As the name implies, the dancers perform to music driven by a very loud beat. Though it’s often performed to recorded music, composer Ryan Seaton performed the music live for all four performances, adding a special component to the event. “The music is a huge part of the piece and musician/performer, Ryan Seaton was able to really showcase all the facets of the music,” Kotze added. “It would not have been as successful without the production support given by UtahPresents, especially the incredible production team and sound set up they provided.”

Though many people planned to attend, the nature of performance in a public place with loud music is intended to draw passersby, and many additional audience members were drawn in by the spectacle. One nearby resident heard the beat, came to see what was up, and then went home to grab his camera.

BIG BEATS, and next May’s ‘lectric Eye, Kotze’s evening length work performed at Marriott Center for Dance, are part of a long-standing collaboration between UtahPresents and the School of Dance, working together to provide not only opportunities for local audiences to see new and cutting-edge contemporary dance, but also opportunities for students to learn from and perform alongside professional artists. “This would not have been possible without the collaboration between UtahPresents and the School of Dance – and namely Chloe Jones and Melonie Buchanan Murray,” said Kotze. “It also would not have been possible without the administrative and rehearsal support given by assistant professor, Molly Heller, and graduate student, Roxanne Gray who took on much of the communication with the large cast as well as organizing the audition and rehearsal space.”

Molly Heller, assistant professor in the U School of Dance and a longtime collaborator with Kotze, felt the impact on faculty and students performing together. “We don’t really ever, except when we are teaching, have the opportunity to dance alongside one another in a decentralized power dynamic,” Heller said in an interview with The Finer Points Blog. “No one is grading anyone. We are all in the same boat, swimming through complex material, figuring it out. For my colleagues and I to experience it together is bonding. I can feel the excitement in our faculty meetings to be sharing this, inviting everyone to come see what we are doing.”

By all metrics, the event was a resounding success! “I can’t say enough about this beautiful, talented, very generous community,” Kotze added. “It’s the first time I’ve set BIG BEATS on a combination of professional freelance dancers, University students, and University faculty. What an opportunity for students to dance WITH and learn WITH their teachers and professional dancers in their community. What an opportunity for the faculty to perform together and learn alongside their students. What an opportunity for me to witness these relationships grow and see the admiration everyone has for each other. I hope to share this with other communities in this way!”

Tickets for ‘lectric Eye on May 9-11 are available now at https://www.utahpresents.org/events/lectriceye/

Learn about UtahPresents’ Dance Package at UtahPresents.org/dance