Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company’s 60th anniversary season has been a unique experience. Last fall, Groundworks, its superb season opener which honored its founders (Shirley Ririe and Joan Woodbury) reminded us of legacies, which define why we cherish and prize something for its excellence and its value in the community. High school dancers were the focus of … Read more
Set to close out a superb 60th anniversary season, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company’s Ascent show is pulling out all the stops for a thriller. There are two world premieres: Chapters of Being by Charlotte Boye-Christensen, who served as the company’s artistic director for 11 years, beginning in 2002, and Storyograph by current artistic director Daniel Charon. … Read more
In music, the structure of loops is fascinating for its meditative and blissful potential. In 1963, just a year prior to the release of one of his most famous compositions (In C), Terry Riley used tape loops to create music for the avant-garde play The Gift, which was being staged in Paris. Riley used recordings … Read more
SALT LAKE ELECTRIC ENSEMBLE: RETURN ALBUM Return, the newest album release of the Salt Lake Electric Ensemble (SLEE), transmits listeners to their own virtual interstellar journey, exploring a legion of cosmic soundscapes with surprising pleasures in timbral shifts and rhythmic modulations which listeners can enjoy and immerse themselves in as they see fit. A masterpiece … Read more
More apparent every year, the Utah Enlightenment is audacious, experimental and unflinching in its artistic entrepreneurship. In 2018, the pool for considering the most definitive moments of the Utah Enlightenment was as expansive and diverse as ever. The Utah Review presents the top ten moments for 2018, precisely because of promise and strength among its … Read more
A busy spring season for many Utah based performing arts company has produced memorable performances. RIRIE-WOODBURY DANCE COMPANY: RETURN In Daniel Charon’s Return, the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company created a new realm of dance theater by imagining the six dancers aboard a starship on a galactic journey, one of the most conventional elements of science fiction … Read more
Many of the best literary works of science fiction, when they touch on entropy in complex systems, technologies and problems of existential significance, excel in how they render the human community of characters in genuine emotional and spiritual attributes. In the starkest environment, there is an overwhelming hunger, as portrayed literally and metaphorically. This was … Read more
Nearly 50 years ago, Philip Glass (now 81) composed some of the most brilliant pieces of early minimalism. They were the seeds of a new complex music practice that only in the 21st century has been clarified for its utmost significance. Alex Ross, the eminent music critic for The New Yorker magazine, has written about … Read more
There were many fine moments this year for the Utah Enlightenment. In compiling the list of what I believe were the 10 best defining moments of Utah’s cultural awakening for 2016, the pool of choices was more than satisfying in breadth and depth. There has been a great deal of recent press, for example, about … Read more
For Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007), undoubtedly among the most important composers of the 20th century, the element of text humanized the imagery of his music in the most emotionally intense and spiritually gratifying ways. Stockhausen was an exceptional and extraordinary creative force. He broke new artistic ground in electronic music, spatial musical performance and the use … Read more