Reviews: Wasatch Theatre Company’s Melancholy Play, RDT Link Series’ Matriarch by Jaclyn Brown

WASATCH THEATRE COMPANY: MELANCHOLY PLAY For the Wasatch Theatre Company production, Director Morag Shepherd took to heart Sarah Ruhl’s instructions for Melancholy Play: A Contemporary Farce: “Melancholy in this play is Bold, Outward, Sassy, Sexy and Unashamed. It is not introverted. It uses, instead, the language of Jacobean direct address.” In a very smart, gratifying … Read more

Reviews confirm the exciting return to live performances: RDT Link Series’ Sandbox, Bachauer recital with Sergey Belyavsky, NOVA Chamber Music Series’ Songs of Life

Every weekend in Salt Lake City has at least one, if not several, outstanding programs for the performing arts enthusiast. The Utah Review continues its roundup of arts organizations returning to live performances after the pandemic hiatus of more than 18 months.  REPERTORY DANCE THEATRE (RDT) LINK SERIES: SANDBOX, AN EVENING OF DANCE BY DAN … Read more

Second November weekend concert highlights to include RDT Link Series’ Sandbox, Bachauer recital with Sergey Belyavsky, NOVA Chamber Music Series’ Songs of Life

Among the events blossoming on the Salt Lake City performing arts calendar for the second weekend of November are a dance concert of new works by local artists, a recital by the 2018 Bachauer international artist competition’s bronze medalist and a chamber music concert of six pieces featuring 18 musicians from Utah and New Mexico. … Read more

Live dance performance returns to the stage in the Rose Wagner Center for Performing Arts with Fragments Of…, new work by Laura Brick and Dan Higgins

There has been a recent spate of articles about the dynamics of live performances as musicians, actors and dancers return to the stage after more than 14 months of pandemic restrictions. While some have focused on anxieties, fears and awkward feelings for both performers and audiences, others have taken on a different tone.  In an … Read more

Dan Higgins’ Speak is fascinating choreography of spatial form in storytelling

If we abide by tradition, many storytellers pursue the arc for the temporal narrative model. Suggesting a different emphasis, 75 years ago, Joseph Frank published the essay The Idea of Spatial Form, and among the novelists he discussed was Marcel Proust, who excelled at streams of consciousness writing. He wrote, “Proust gives us what might … Read more

Dan Higgins’ In. Memory. Of. focuses on stigma of mental illness, as part of Repertory Dance Theatre’s Link Series

The theme of lifting and eradicating the stigma of mental illness is prominent in Stephen Hinshaw’s book Another Kind of Madness: A Journey through the Stigma and Hope of Mental Illness (St. Martin’s Press, 2017). The UC-Berkeley psychologist is unfailingly honest in how he learned at the age of 18 about his father’s struggles with … Read more