Five years ago, when Matthew Greene’s first play was produced by Plan-B Theatre, Adam & Steve and the Empty Sea centered on how two characters (Steve, a young gay man, and Adam, whose Mormon mission was cut short by illness) in California develop a close friendship then struggle to preserve it as they come of … Read more
NOVA Chamber Music Series will launch its 41st season this month with its Road to Night concert, a selection of works spanning the period of 1778-1899 that arise from intimate literary inspirations along with deeply heartfelt musical responses by composers to personal events in their lives. The concert also is a sincere reflection of NOVA’s … Read more
For the 2018-2019 season, The Gina Bachauer International Piano Foundation is between competition years but its series of four concerts features soloists who have made their imprint as some of the world’s best acclaimed pianists. The soloists include the 2002 Bachauer Gold Medalist, the 2005 Van Cliburn Gold Medalist, the 2015 Honens Competition winner and … Read more
Entering its 53rd season, Repertory Dance Theatre (RDT) always has been at the modern dance forefront in expressing the complexities of the past and the ever-shifting contemporary present. In the 1960s, the idea of Manifest Destiny still dominated the mindset of the American West although it was being obscured increasingly by the civil rights movement … Read more
At 11, Oliver Grey Kokai-Means already can claim that a play he created and wrote with his mother, playwright Jennifer Kokai, is being produced and will be viewed by thousands over the next month and half in Utah. Zombie Thoughts is the sixth play of Plan-B Theatre’s Free Elementary School Tour (FEST), which takes the … Read more
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
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 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
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
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