This year’s selections in The Utah Review of the top ten moments of the Utah Enlightenment in 2023, the ninth annual edition, were the easiest to curate in the nine years of publishing this annual list. Likewise, selecting the top moment among the ten was just as easy. In Utah, there are creative producers in … Read more
Formerly known as Rose Exposed, the annual fast paced one-hour show of the six resident companies in the Rose Wagner Center for Performing Arts has been rebranded as Mix Tape, frankly a better title for the event. The show will go on Aug. 26 at 8 p.m. at the Jeanné Wagner Theatre in The Rose. … Read more
REPERTORY DANCE THEATRE: FLIGHT Producing a gratifying trio of works to highlight Earth Month, Repertory Dance Theatre (RDT) made its Flight program its strongest offering within the last four years. Zvi Gotheiner’s Dancing The Bears Ears, a 2017 commission for the company, and two first-time RDT performances of existing works — José Limón’s The Winged … Read more
Environmental politics often are mired in attitudes that spring from guilt, fear, skepticism, denial and blame. As much as facts, statistics and plain observational data are compelling, there is almost always an aggressive rebuttal to refute, dilute or compromise their significance. As more attention has been focused on saving one of Utah’s greatest natural features, … Read more
In the second chapter of his 1994 book Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, Carl Sagan wrote about the “human-centered conceit” and the work of Copernicus and Galileo proposing to “displace us from cosmic center stage.” It was the image of the earth as a mere orbiting dot that the … Read more
In the hands of the collaborators for the recent Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company concert, the stories of the Red Fred Project were transformed into a vibrant, colorful, innocent, joyful, poignant and glistening landscape. For the project’s young authors and their curator Dallas Graham, the live creature and ethereal things concert was like an animated film made … Read more
Artistic collaborations lead to many strategic benefits. They can make a lesser known creative group more visible, expand the potential audience base, secure additional financial resources and fine-tune longer term objectives for organizations that must prove their relevance in a community. Most importantly, they can lead to a unique performing and creative moment on the … Read more
When the play Jump opens, the audience is enjoying the pithy, rapid banter between Erick, the young confident skydiver (Matthew Sincell), and Phil (Darryl Stamp), a 60-year-old first-timer, as they prepare for the fateful jump from 12,000 feet above the ground. The audience laughs as Erick tries to ease the nerves of Phil, who rattles … Read more