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Backstage at The Utah Arts Festival 2018: Marc Santos’ The Spirit of Dance photographic exhibition among visual arts highlights presented at The City Library

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Of all the performing arts genres, dance is the most intimidating when it comes to photographs that truly represent the individual’s artistic expression of skilled movement. Dance is an ethereal art, even in its growing story-telling power which has dominated 21st century works. Accomplished dancers create marvelous geometric spaces of lines, angles, dimensions and planes … Read more

Backstage at The Utah Arts Festival 2018: BANDALOOP raises vertical dance bar in artistic excellence

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Since its last appearance in 2013 at the Utah Arts Festival, BANDALOOP has expanded its international portfolio of vertical dance works to breathtaking new levels of artistic altitude. Collaborating with GoPro, BANDALOOP has just released a new short film about its 2017 performance at the CAFe Budapest Contemporary Arts Festival (see below), which captures perfectly … Read more

Backstage at The Utah Arts Festival 2018: Record-setting Artist Marketplace evokes stories, memories, emotions, unique appeal to audiences, potential buyers

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The 175 artists who comprise the Artist Marketplace for the 42nd annual Utah Arts Festival came from the largest pool of applicants in the event’s history: 649. And an expert jury, led by coordinators Matt Jacobson and his assistant Sarah Baker Taylor, recommended artists not only on the basis of technical considerations such as details … Read more

Backstage at The Utah Arts Festival 2018: Making friends, finding fresh twists in every festival venue

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Before gates open on June 21 for the 42nd Utah Arts Festival, Karen Major, who worked as a paralegal for many years, already will have created a calendar of activities, performances, films and literary events that she and her husband, Steve Sayer, who retired after working as an executive with the Electrolux group, will hang … Read more

Salt Lake City Public Library’s Super Summer Challenge program, Strike A Chord, has recommendations, incentives for everyone, regardless of age

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Libraries rock. That straightforward declaration is the guiding theme for summer reading and literacy programs in library branches across the country, as millions of families consider creative ways to combat the risk of the summer slide so that their children do not lose the learning momentum they achieved in the school year that just ended. … Read more

UMFA’s Chiura Obata: An American Modern exhibition – an artistic meta-narrative of immigrant’s faith in American experiment

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From his earliest days in California after he arrived in 1903 from Okayama, Japan, Chiura Obata (1885-1975) committed himself to become part of American society. At 18, the young artist even joined an elementary school to work on his English. He studied briefly at the San Francisco Art Institute, realizing that he perhaps could learn … Read more

Forty pianists, 17 countries in next month’s 17th Gina Bachauer International Artists Piano Competition

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Next month’s 17th Gina Bachauer International Artists Piano Competition in Salt Lake City unquestionably will be the most cosmopolitan representation of gifted pianists in the Foundation’s 42-year history. Forty pianists, ranging in age from 19 to 32, will represent 17 countries, as they compete in the quarterfinals that will lead ultimately to finalists who will … Read more

Ballet West National Choreographic Festival celebrates women

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Debuting last year, Ballet West’s National Choreographic Festival introduces audiences to new works from around the country by inviting guest companies from around the nation to join Ballet West dancers. Spread over two weekends, the performances are divided into two individual programs allowing audiences to view a full six works if desired. Included in this … Read more

Hindsight, by Sackerson and 3 Irons, blossoms as endearing theatrical adventure in open spaces of Salt Lake City’s downtown

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In Hindsight, Sackerson’s premiere of Morag Shepherd’s newest play that is performed in the heart of downtown Salt Lake City at indoor and outdoor locations, Ford (Connor Nelis Johnson) and Chase (Tyler Fox) compete to win the heart of Lorraine (McKenzie Steele Foster). Two men could not be more different. Ford is playful, unabashedly romantic … Read more

Utah Film Center to close out May schedule with documentaries on an enfant terrible in the art world, global philanthropic community, police violence

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The Utah Film Center will close its May schedule of free, public screenings with a trio of documentaries that explore variously the ideas of compassion in philanthropic communities, one of the world’s most controversial artists and an outstanding cinéma vérité piece about police violence and activism in Milwaukee. Summer in the Forest, May 22, 7 … Read more