Red Desert’s experimental music program excellent, highly absorbing stretch of artistic entrepreneurialism

Just how adventuresome and experimental can Salt Lake City’s performing arts scene become? More so than some might expect. In the last few years, there have been numerous examples suggesting just how Utah’s pioneer legacy is translated and transformed into boundary-busting expressions. Per capita, Salt Lake City stacks up competitively to much larger metropolitan centers … Read more

Following Asia cultural tour, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company’s 55th season opens with Splice concert

In between its 54th and 55th seasons, the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company traveled in May to Mongolia and South Korea, as part of DanceMotion USA℠’s cultural diplomacy program. In Mongolia, the dancers and company staff taught master classes in contemporary dance and improvisational technique at a state university as well as the police academy. In South … Read more

Utah Film Center announces Artist Foundry to support independent filmmakers, acquires assets of Avrec Art House

As much as the Utah Film Center has served as a major Intermountain West cultural institution of exhibition for independent cinema, especially in documentary storytelling, it also has cultivated its function as a strategic touchstone essential for augmenting the creative filmmaking sector of the state’s film industry. Today, the center announced a major new piece … Read more

Breaking News! 7th annual Rose Exposed to highlight The Rose’s six resident companies in premieres of thematically connected short works

We rely on skilled journalists and editors to make sense of a volatile news cycle. Forty years ago, Umberto Eco wrote about the artist who protests through form in The Open Work. In part, he suggested that the artist, while rejecting the current order and system, also accepts the world in its crisis terms. The … Read more

The sounds of the desert: Ryan Ruehlen’s GeoRhythmic Drift Music installation set to open at Utah Museum of Contemporary Art

The desert is a vacant cochlea, a geographical chamber of bone, in which waves propagate from the base freely distant sound brought close to my hearing. The vehicle was now perched in an alcove of short, pinyon pine, amidst a vast solitude and harsh stillness. Soaking in the yellow grassy plain, I paced around laying … Read more

A dark buddy comedy, hilarious solo show on LDS musicals, dance company piece, high school performers’ take on social media memes highlight Great Salt Fringe Festival

NOTE: This is Part II of reviews of shows from the 2018 Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival. For Part I, see here. Austin Archer’s Marty Has Cancer – Prufrock Productions Every performance of this play sold out or had standing room only, which likely makes it one of the most successful productions ever presented at … Read more

Fourth Great Salt Lake Fringe opens in new Gateway venue to satisfying effect

NOTE: This is the first of two parts about this year’s Great Salt Lake Fringe, which includes reviews of three shows. Part II will highlight reviews of four other shows. For its fourth year, the Great Salt Lake Fringe festival (Aug. 2- Aug. 12) is testing its new venue space at the Gateway shopping center … Read more

Robin Banks’ Static Patterns exhibition delightfully perceptive exploration of childhood home’s poetic space

In The Poetics of Space, the 1957 book by French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, the interactive effects of our minds with our most intimate, familiar surroundings were the focus of his phenomenological approach. Bachelard saw the childhood home, for example, as a theatrical space that inspired expressions of our dreamlike imaginations. With Bachelard, it was French … Read more

Emancipating artistic expressions from taboos, boundaries at heart of 15th Utah Film Center’s Damn These Heels LGBTQ Film Festival

Queer cinema has matured significantly within the last decade and, this year’s Utah Film Center’s Damn These Heels International Film Festival is a panoply of emancipating artistic expressions that break many taboos and boundaries. The 23 feature-length films, including 14 fictional narratives and nine documentaries from a dozen countries, introduce audiences to stories where different … Read more

Detailed look at the slate for 15th Utah Film Center’s Damn These Heels LGBTQ Film Festival

The Utah Film Center’s Damn These Heels LGBTQ Film Festival offers 23 films and three programs of short films for its 15th anniversary. Utah filmgoers have a rare opportunity to see some of the best examples of LGBTQ cinema today, as 21 films are receiving their Utah premieres and two others are being their first … Read more