The first part of spring has brought numerous dance productions of note. The Utah Review features two recent examples.
REPERTORY DANCE THEATRE’S LINK SERIES: THAYER JONUTZ, OUT OF THE ASHES
It always is an audacious enterprise for modern dance artists to perform truly as their authentic selves in works choreographed by others, but that sense of vulnerability is magnified especially when the performer is both soloist and choreographer chronicling their stories and most cherished beliefs and epiphanies.
It was fitting as part of Repertory Dance Theatre’s (RDT) Link Series, in conjunction with its 60th anniversary season, that company alumnus Thayer Jonutz performed his multimedia Out of the Ashes combining Hammer and Nail and Scorched, which brought the audience exceptionally close to the heart and soul of his artistic expression.
The performance was impressively holistic, which allowed us to perceive, appreciate and comprehend the emotional intelligence and its evolution, which defines each dancer’s distinct inner sanctum. Currently a professor of dance at Oakland University in Michigan, Jonutz was an RDT artist from 2002 to 2007. With elements of spoken word and props as well as screendance incorporated into this magnum opus, Out of the Ashes is a meditation on personal manifestations of loss that Jonutz has experienced in recent years. The score by Jon Anderson, a colleague of Jonutz who is a composer and musical director, fits the creative brief, with its textured layers blending electronic beats, vocal samples, acoustic instrumental effects and contact microphone ambient sounds.
Hammer and Nail emerged from the reverberating effects of the pandemic, signifying the struggles of rebuilding his family’s roofing construction business. Scorched speaks to Jonutz’s faith as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He initially set the piece last year as part of a residency at the The Center For Latter-Day Saint Arts in New York, to symbolize the desert environment. But then it took on an urgent visceral character after the mass shooting and arson attack that destroyed an LDS chapel in Grand Blanc, Michigan.
Many biographical details feed into Jonutz’s choreographic landscapes. With his wife, they have five children, which includes three who were adopted as well as identical twin boys who are nonverbally autistic. Scorched was expanded because while the Grand Blanc chapel was not the site for his weekly worship, Jonutz knew the church well as its stake center for events that he and his family attended. In an interview published elsewhere, he said, “I got home on a Monday [from his artistic residency in New York], and the attack happened the following Sunday. He added, “Almost immediately after it happened, I got this strong impression that I needed to add a final section to Scorched, that I’m loosely titling My Church in Ashes. It’s my way of just kind of processing the attack, memorializing it, and honoring the victims.”
With Hammer and Nail earning a prestigious award from Oakland University in 2023, this was the third time that the work was part of recent Utah performances, as he presented it at Brigham Young University and Utah Valley University in early 2024.
Out of the Ashes is a paragon for solo modern dance artists who aspire to augment their movement language with various musical, theatrical and visual arts elements that are not solely for experimental novelty effects but that integrate wholly into the expressive powers girding the movement vocabulary in an immersive candid choreographic composition. It was gripping to see a solo dance artist literally pour every bit of physical strength and authentic mental and spiritual focus into this combined work.
SAMBA FOGO: Chama Do Coração (The Burning Call Of The Heart)
Marking its 14th spring concert, Samba Fogo, Utah’s award-winning Afro-Brazilian music and dance ensemble, once again proved its artistic mettle. The company delivered a beautifully paced, dynamic 90-minute show, with outstanding musicianship including vocals and rhythmic compositions, taken from historical and contemporary repertoire as well as original pieces. Likewise, the choreography featured the spiritual energy of fire in theatrical settings that acknowledge and honor the ritualistic dimensions of Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous traditions (Maculelê and Orixá, for example).
Once again, Samba Fogo’s founders, with choreography by Lorin Hansen, the company’s artistic director, and compositions and arrangements by Mason Aeschbacher, the music director, emphasized the company’s utmost sensitivities to its stewardship of a complex world of cultural expression that navigates and criss-crosses relentlessly the borders between Brazil’s ancestral Indigenous roots and a contemporary culture that incorporates and fuses many geographical expressions which challenge the ideals of authentic preservation.
This year’s concert theme, Chama Do Coração (The Burning Call Of The Heart), acknowledged the critical, urgent mission of rescuing ancestral culture from oblivion, compromise, and contamination. What Samba Fogo manages so deftly is that as mesmerizingly entertaining as their shows always demonstrate, their deeper meanings reflect upon and echo sociopolitical and sociocultural concerns and debates in Brazil, the land which the company celebrates so passionately.
It is worth noting how Samba Fogo opened this year’s show, as explained in a program note:
For this year’s opening piece, we explored the concept of the “little red dress.” We discussed the symbolism, meaning and associations with the red dress in our culture today, and what sort of assumptions people make about women who wear little red dresses. We compared this with knowing that red itself is a sacred color that holds power and is often used in ceremony. We had conversations about our personal longing for ritual, belonging, and connection with the Earth. We spoke about our ancestors and their Earth-based traditions, because we know: We Never Dance Alone.
The narrative of the divinity of women holds potent political currency in Brazil, which wrestles constantly with the challenges of repelling modern land development that subverts and neutralizes the ideals of spiritual authority prevailing over nature and its lands. Samba Fogo’s programs build upon that narrative with music, dance and theater that synthesizes ancestral Indigenous spirituality, Afro-Brazilian traditions, and culturally appropriate social activism. The choreography parallels the ideals of contemporary Indigenous movements in Brazil which believes there are no distinctions between the physical beings of women and the ancestral lands, where both maternal duty and the acceptance of female authority and strength are essential to fortifying this connection as Mother Earth.
The song sets anchored these thematic ideals. There were two which epitomized the bridge between preserving ancestral roots and the temptations of contemporary culture. One was Ze Do Caroço, composed by Leci Brandão, which paid tribute to José Mendes da Silva, who was leader of the pavilhão in a community in northeast Brazil. He became the community’s de facto broadcaster, by installing a loudspeaker on his rooftop where he announced all sorts of news important to the community. Brandão’s samba (which was finally recorded in 1985) refers to an incident where the wife of a military officer complained that the loudspeaker interfered with her trying to enjoy soap operas. Caroço’s acts defied attempts by the military to suppress them. Brazil was under military dictatorship at the time but the lyrics speak to the community’s alienation and the call to fight for their rights. The samba became famous, most notably for these lyrics:
And at the time that Brazilian television
Destroys everyone with its soap opera
That’s when Zé speaks out to the world
He makes a profound speech
He wants to see the good of the favela
A new leader is being born
On the hill of the Pau da Bandeira
Samba Fogo also performed Preciso Me Encontrar, a 1976 song recorded by samba legend Cartola, which was actually composed by the fellow sambista, Candeia. The song is one of the most iconic to come from Brazil in the last 50 years. Many might recall that it was included in the critically acclaimed 2002 film City of God (Cidade de Deus). True to Samba Fogo’s theme, it is about leaving everything material behind to discover one’s true soul and heart in nature. The refrain is most frequently quoted, as translated from Portuguese:Let me go / I need to walk / I’ll go around searching / Laughing so as not to cry. In another lyric, if others ask where the person is, the response should be that they will return only after they have found their true selves.
For more information about their classes, performances and cultural support activities, which encourage members of the community to join, see the Samba Fogo website.