Salt Lake Acting Company’s world premiere Form of a Girl Unknown brings exceptional performances

The world that Amali Wilson is about to experience as an adolescent who has just begun her menstrual cycle is, on one hand, a turbulent one marked by police brutality, sexual assault, discrimination and disenfranchisement. On the other hand, it is a resilient, vibrant one where Black women are at the forefront socially, politically and … Read more

Utah filmmaker’s Second Sight short documentary serves emotionally compelling narrative as archetype of international eye healthcare mission

At the center of Cole Sax’s short documentary Second Sight, the story of Virgilio and Joanly Lahioan and their four children in the Philippines eloquently conveys the human impact of broad questions that researchers have sought to answer by empirical evidence. Does poverty perpetuate poor health? Does poor eye health deepen poverty? How and why? … Read more

Upcoming Utah Film Center screenings highlight issues of white nationalism, traumatic impacts of child abuse

Continuing a month of free, public screenings dealing with big issues, two documentary films along with talkback sessions – one on white nationalism and the other about the traumatic impacts of child abuse – will be presented by the Utah Film Center. They are the award-winning White Right: Meeting the Enemy (2017), directed by Deeyah … Read more

World-class performances in Salt Lake City: Pianist Hong Xu at Bachauer, Ligeti and Brahms concert for NOVA Chamber Music Series

HONG XU: GINA BACHAUER INTERNATIONAL PIANO FOUNDATION It was a perfect homecoming for Chinese pianist Hong Xu, who opened the 2019-2020 season series of concerts for the Gina Bachauer International Piano Foundation. Xu, who won the bronze medal at the 2001 Bachauer competitions at the age of 17 in Salt Lake City, returned last week … Read more

Strong examples of arts and education integration: Plan-B Theatre’s Flora Meets a Bee, Mundi Project’s 3-D Printed 6-String Violin Experience

PLAN-B THEATRE FREE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TOUR (FEST): FLORA MEETS A BEE The sense of feeling borrowed can become alienation. In Morag Shepherd’s Flora Meets A Bee, the latest play in Plan-B Theatre’s successful Free Elementary School Tour (FEST) program, Flora, 8, is committed to making her new friendship stick. In one scene, Flora recalls seeing … Read more

Repertory Dance Theatre’s Inside Outside season opener is spectacular on all counts

Each spectacular half of the Repertory Dance Theatre’s (RDT) 54th season opener could have been a concert in itself. However, with the concert’s Inside Outside theme, part of what portends to be a fascinating season of Here and Now juxtapositions, the halves emphatically demonstrated that, in the desire to articulate a story, the language of … Read more

Utah Film Center set to screen However Long, new documentary about metastatic breast cancer patients in group therapy

Thirty years ago, in an issue of The Lancet medical research journal, the results of a 10-year study by researchers at Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley were published on the effects of group therapy for patients with metastatic breast cancer in terms of their survival rates. They found that those patients … Read more

Utah Film Center set to screen Anthropocene: The Human Epoch, with panel organized by Utah Center for Architecture

When the documentary Anthropocene: The Human Epoch premiered last year at the Toronto International Film Festival and then was screened last January at the Sundance Film Festival, it attracted much attention for its incredible cinematography capturing the immense scope of what humans have wrought on the planet. Since then the documentary has been picked up … Read more

Elizabeth, the dance is rich, superb 56th season opener for Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company

Ann Carlson’s Elizabeth, the dance, is the supreme example of an organic, living work of art. And, the six current dancers of Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company nurtured and nourished it in a rich, superb performance in Traces, the opening concert of the company’s 56th season. As The Utah Review mentioned in an earlier preview, the 2017 … Read more

Eric Samuelsen (1956-2019): A titan of the Utah Enlightenment

NOTE: Plan-B Theatre will present a free reading of Eric Samuelsen’s Borderlands, featuring the original cast of the 2011 premiere, on Oct. 5 at 2 p.m. in the Rose Wagner Center for Performing Arts. While the performance is free, tickets are required and can be obtained at this Plan-B page. For details about funeral services … Read more