UtahPresents’ 10th anniversary season provided a continuous stream of blockbuster moments, combined with just as consistently sold-out houses for its shows. The 11th season promises to be just as impactful, with family shows as well as series highlighting internationally acclaimed dance companies, and contemporary and jazz musicians, along with the equally outstanding Stage Door Series, featuring local performing arts experiences.
Already, the season has opened with two excellent local offerings, including a newly expanded production of Western Minerals and Their Origins by Footpath Theatre Company in conjunction with the Flying Bobcat Theatrical Laboratory and several performances of Indian classical music and contemporary dance for the Nitya Nritya Foundation‘s 10th anniversary.
UtahPresents opens its second decade with impressive numbers for impact and engagement. To date, they have presented nearly 2,000 artists from some 40 countries and served nearly one million people, including 75,000 K-12 students from Utah schools. In addition to student matinees and public performances, UtahPresents has offered masterclasses, community workshops, performance opportunities for young artists and more.
And, with the forthcoming centennial of Kingsbury Hall in 2030, UtahPresents has received capital improvements funding of $3 million in state funding for interior renovations of the venue, which has some 1,900 seats. The project is set to replace audience seating, while preserving the character and history of the venue. Construction is planned to occur next summer and renovation is not expected to disrupt the schedule for next season’s events. The University of Utah Planning, Design & Construction office will soon post a formal architectural and engineering bid request through BidNet Direct.
The Utah Review provides a comprehensive overview of what will be an exhilarating season for UtahPresents programming. Unless otherwise noted, all performances are at Kingsbury Hall. For tickets and more information, see the UtahPresents website.
TOURING DANCE TRIO
Last season’s touring dance trio series was steeped in contemporary dance history with performances including Ballet Hispánico’s immensely pleasing triptych, Alvin Ailey II Dance Company’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day program for a soldout house and MOMIX’s incredibly sensory-rich multimedia adaptation of Alice in Wonderland.
This year brings three international titans.
Limón Dance Company, Sept. 24, 7:30 p.m.
Marking its 80th anniversary, New York City’s Limón Dance Company is well known in Utah’s expansive ecosystem of dance culture. José Limón was the first choreographer invited by the new Repertory Dance Company after its founding in 1966. Limón’s Concerto Grosso (1945), a masterwork of musicality was RDT’s first major choreographic acquisition and the RDT catalog includes such Limón masterpieces such as The Winged, soaring exploration of ornithological wonders and some flying creatures of classical mythology, without focusing on a particular unifying theme, and Mazurkas, a suite set to Chopin’s piano music. For its performance, the Limón Dance Company will perform Mazurkas along with Join, choreographed by Aszure Barton in collaboration with Grammy-nominated composer Ambrose Akinmusire. Join recreates Limón’s vivid, poetic description of a lost Doris Humphrey, another seminal American modern dance choreographer who was very close to Limón and is one of the most widely known historical artists to Utah dancers.
Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan, Nov. 17, 7:30 p.m.
Founded in 1973 by Lin Hwai-min, Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan became the first contemporary dance company in the Chinese-speaking diaspora. Its name refers to the oldest known Chinese dance and the dancers are multilingual and fluent in many choreographic and expressive languages, including Qi Gong (an ancient breathing practice), meditation and internal martial arts, as well as modern dance, ballet and street dance. In 2020, Cheng Tsung-lung succeeded Lin as artistic director.
The evening features a twin-bill. Blue Hour (l’heure bleue) prompted by the imagery of the hazy blue New York City skyline as it appears in the predawn darkness. Beckoning emerges from the Taiwanese street-dancing ritual of the Eight Infernal Generals (Ba Jia Jiang), which adds a playful, poetic character to its abstract foundations. Their tour is supported in part by the grants from Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture.
Compagnie Hervé Koubi, March 2, 7:30 p.m.
Formed at the turn of the millennium by choreographer Hervé Koubi and producer Guillaume Gabriel, Compagnie Hervé Koubi is coming to Salt Lake City for the first time and audiences will be thrilled by its work Sol Invictus, an homage to the ancient Roman sun god, which fuses contemporary movement, capoeira, and urban dance. Koubi’s most important artistic epiphany came when he rediscovered his Algerian roots in collaboration with choreographer Fayçal Hamlat, he has continued to advance the ideals of 21st-century ballet as an inclusive, boundary-crossing practice grounded in heritage and innovation.
In an interview with LA Dance Chronicle, Gabriel explained more about his colleague’s epiphanic discovery when Koubi was 25 and how the company began to incorporate North African dance languages into their modern dance choreography. “There was a turn in the company in 2010 when we met those dancers in Algeria, but the company already had 10 years of existence in France and there were male and female dancers. In the very beginning, for the first creation there were 13 dancers on stage, eleven girls, and two boys, Hervé and me. During those first ten years, we always worked with a lot of people on stage, men and women,” Gabriel recalled. “As we developed the project in France and a bit abroad, I think everything was prepared to let the project develop itself with Algerian dancers, with that unique thing in the kind of hybrid place between ballet and hip hop and Capoeira and acrobatics. Over the first ten years, the company laid the groundwork, and then, with a seismic personal event and going to Algeria, discovering the wealth of street and other urban dancers, it just made sense to pivot the company focus to what has drawn international attention and praise.”
While Koubi was born in France (his parents were native Algerians) and he always believed that his first name (Hervé) was given in honor of his great-grandparents who were from Brittany. “He was raised in a way that was very French, not at all North African, and with light skin and freckles, he did not look at all North African,” Gabriel explained. “However, Koubi did not sound like a French last name. Hervé was 25 when he asked his father about the last name. His father showed him a photo of an old man in traditional Arabic dress and said ‘This is your grandfather. He was not French. He did not speak French. Arabic was spoken from your mother’s side and your father’s side.’ It was a shock.” When asked why Koubi’s parents hid his grandfather’s identity, Gabriel recalled how the parents came to France after Algeria’s war for independence, only to encounter persistent prejudice and bigotry.” Gabriel explained why his mother decided to protect her son. “She realized that if she wanted to integrate, not be stigmatized and discriminated against, she had to be more French than the French. They raised Hervé as if he were French, and his true history was put under the cover, in the closet.”
MUSIC
Many musicians who are featured in UtahPresents programming also participate in mini artistic residencies, especially for the benefit of young music students, including those at the University of Utah. One of the most memorable last season was Sō Percussion, who also offered previews of new works and music featuring student percussionists from the university’s music school.
Niladri Kumaar, Sept. 25, 7:30 p.m., Libby Gardner Hall
In partnership with the university’s music school, Niladri Kumaar, a traditional sitar player who also invented his own Zitar, will offer The Space Between The Notes, which honors his extensive musical partnership with Zakir Hussain through music inspired by their final recorded live performance together, captured in Mumbai and released as a landmark album. Hussain was part of UtahPresents’ 2024–25 season, but his passing just two months before the performance prevented the highly anticipated appearance, and this concert brings the story full circle.
A titan in the Indian music circuit, Kumaar will be joined by Satyajit Talwalkar, a tabla player who is the son and disciple of Great Guru Padmashree Taalyogi, Pt. Suresh Talwalkar and renowned Indian classical vocalist Smt. Padma Talwalkar. He started learning at the age of four and gave his first public performance when he was nine. Also featured will be Sambit Chatterjee, who has been playing drums for the past 15 years, having taken tabla classes from his father and Pandit Subhen Chatterjee, a Grammy-nominated tabla maestro. Another ensemble member is Agnelo Fernandes, who has studied many instruments, eventually moved toward keyboard electronics with various pop acts in Mumbai. He has collaborated with Raju Singh, Mehnaz, Shiamak Davar, Aadesh Srivastav, Terence Lewis, Leslie Lewis, Pritam ,Salim-Suleiman, Rabbi Shergill, Shibani Kashyap, Niladri Kumar, Bombay Vikings (Neeraj Sridhar) and Salim-Suleiman.
Akropolis Reed Quintet, Nov. 5, 7:30 p.m., Libby Gardner Hall
As part of the Virtuoso Series with the university’s music school,
Grammy-winning Akropolis Reed Quintet, founded at the University of Michigan and still performing with its original five members, will perform.
Akropolis became the first ever GRAMMY® winning reed quintet with their 2024 album, Are We Dreaming the Same Dream?, in collaboration with Pascal Le Boeuf and drummer Christian Euman. The music acknowledges the musical roots of Le Boeuf, which include the building blocks of American greats including Geri Allen, Dave Brubeck, Charles Mingus.
Established in 2009, Akropolis invited University of Michigan student composers to write for a reed quintet, a venture that met success in chamber music competitions. Although members of the group were dispersed for graduate studies and careers elsewhere, Akropolis maintained its original lineup,
In 2015, Akropolis incorporated as a nonprofit in 2015, with an annual schedule of more than 100 performances and education programs. Its activities range from a Detroit-based summer festival and composition residencies at high schools to a 10-day mentorship event in Petoskey, Michigan. The ensemble has released six commercial albums and commissioned more than 200 new works.
The Lower Lights Christmas Concerts, Dec. 10-12, 7 p.m.
Part of a popular Kingsbury Hall holiday season tradition, The Lower Lights is a locally based gospel-folk music collective that was established in 2009 and is known for their arrangements of hymns, spirituals, and classic American songs emulating the folk, bluegrass, and Americana music traditions.
Così fan tutte, Feb. 26-27, 7:30 p.m.
The U Opera in the university’s music school is staging Mozart’s Così fan tutte, a comedy known for its exceptional ensemble and aria writing. How does this opera come off for contemporary audiences? If you love reality television, catfishing or social media influencers who love to stage bets and pranks on their partners, then this 18th century musical masterpiece will hit the spot, especially if the psychological depth fleshes out every character. Two young officers wager whose respective fiancées’ can be trusted more, but when they decide to disguise themselves, the circumstances take an unexpected turn and toll.
JAZZ SERIES
The first two years of the Jazz Series in the hands of UtahPresents not only preserved a long-running Salt Lake City performing arts institution, thanks to Gordon and Connie Hanks, but has boosted its value as a crown jewel. It also has become a touchstone for the university music school’s thriving jazz program. Last year, it was a blockbuster from start to finish: Arturo Sandoval felt right at home on the Kinsgbury Hall stage. Lakecia Benjamin and her band Phoenix lived up to her party-pumping flamethrower vibes. The Cuban- born musical giants of drummer Alfredo Rodriguez and pianist Pedrito Martinez astounded the soldout house with virtuosity and selected tracks from their album collab m, ¡Take Cover!, featuring their unique arrangements of famous songs. Likewise, a virtuousic evening followed with Emmet Cohen and an impressive young ensemble who were as gifted as composers as they are performers in their tribute to the centennials of Miles Davis and John Coltrane. The season was capped with the bonus of the extraordinary phenomenon of Samara Joy, who at 26 already has won six Grammy Awards.
As the perfect segue, the third Jazz Series highlights some of the best known women in today’s scene.
Branford Marsalis and Dianne Reeves Celebrate John Coltrane, Oct. 7, 7:30 p.m.
As last year, it is no surprise that the opener features jazz personalities who need no introduction: saxophonist Branford Marsalis with his eponymous quartet and singer Dianne Reeves, best known for her improvisational skill and the first vocal artist to win a Grammy award for three consecutive recordings. Both Marsalis and Reeves have been designated as Jazz Masters by The National Endowment for the Arts, the highest honor the United States bestows on jazz artists.
For this performance, they continue with the celebration of John Coltrane’s centennial, by honoring his 1963 collaboration with baritone Johnny Hartman. It is the epitome of musical alchemy, an album celebrated for its touching, warm, delicate sonic textures which enhance the richness of the vocals while revealing a somewhat surprising dimension of Coltrane’s incredible range of expression.
Stella Cole, Dec. 18, 7:30 p.m.
The holiday season makes for a perfect canvas to feature a jazz concert, and keeping with the festive spirit, Stella Cole, whom critics have compared her to vocal artists such as Laufey and Michael Bublé and as the merited heir to Doris Day and Judy Garland, will perform.
Fulfilling one of her dreams, Cole signed with the Decca label, which also was where Judy Garland recorded. In an interview with Everything Jazz, she explained what she most enjoys about performing the standards: “People come up to me after shows – mothers, daughters, grandparents – and they all have a different association with a song that I would have sung.
Somewhere Over the Rainbow, for example, I sing that at the end of almost all of my concerts. Spoiler alert. Songs like this have a lot of sentimental value for people, a lot of emotional weight to them, more so than a song they may never have heard before.” Among her favorites to perform include Something Good, from The Sound of Music; Till There Was You and Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps. As for Christmas music, Cole’s favorites include Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney singing the whole White Christmas soundtrack, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland. Christmas music just makes me smile. I wish the Christmas soundtrack could be all year long.”
Endea Owens & The Cookout, March 4, 7:30 p.m.
Early spring will sizzle with Endea Owens, a bassist originally from Detroit who joined the Late Show with Stephen Colbert house band after graduating from Julliard. With Emmy, Grammy, and Peabody awards in hand, Owens composed an original piece about the life of Ida B. Wells (Ida’s Crusade) for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. Her debut album Feel Good Music recently dropped. She will be performing with her sextet, The Cookout, which includes Diego Ramirez (drums), Anthony Hervey (trumpet), Irwin Hall (saxophone), Mathis Picard (piano) and Nia Drummond (vocals).
In an interview published elsewhere, Owens said that her music is “a buffet of the Black music experience,” adding that her album was intended to sound like everything she heard on the radio while growing up in Detroit: “Of course, it’s a jazz album.., [and]includes influences of jazz gospel, funk, R&B, and hip-hop.”
Hot House West Swing Orchestra featuring Bria Skonberg, April 16, 7:30 p.m.
Hot House West was formed on the principle that jazz can be world-class and glocalized for the benefit of audiences near to home. Founded by two University of Utah School of Music alumni, Hot House West has established a solid presence in the Intermountain West which has introduced many listeners to a genre they did not know all that well. Joining the ensemble will be trumpeter and vocalist Bria Skonberg, who has been a featured artist at hundreds of festivals and stages all over the world, including New Orleans Jazz Heritage and, recently, Carnegie Hall.
In an interview published elsewhere, Skonberg counts among her influences as a vocalist such performers as Anita O’Day, June Christy, and Lauryn Hill, adding that she “admires the control, power and surety of Sarah Vaughan, and Ella Fitzgerald’s clarity of super swinging ideas. Ultimately empathy is the most important ingredient as it speaks to your heart. For this reason perhaps my favorite vocalist is Eva Cassidy; she had everything, using her immense talent to tell stories through softness, saltiness, deep melancholy and blues with a singer.”
Indigo was her first album where vocals were prominent. In the published interview, she explained, “I’m used to toggling two instruments and figuring out how to blend the ideas and identities of the two. This album gave me a chance to focus and go deeper into nuances, cultivating breath like splitting silver hairs. For songs such as If You Go Away I would think about speaking to someone directly, even right into their ears. With a song like Fragile it would be about sustaining the cloud-like texture to fit with the arrangement. It was such a pleasurable experience to weave within Gil Goldstein’s soundscapes and blend with the instrumentation.”
STAGE DOOR SERIES
UtahPresents opened this season’s Stage Door Series last month with Western Minerals and Their Origins by Footpath Theatre Company in collaboration with Flying Bobcat Theatrical Laboratory. It was among the best chamber theater plays that have emerged over the last 20 years with a setting in Utah’s desert and southern landscapes.
In 2025, two Stage Door Series offerings by UtahPresents made The Utah Review’s Top Ten Moments of the Utah Enlightenment for the year. The first was Plan-B Theatre’s KILO-WAT, by Aaron Asano Swenson and directed by Jerry Rapier, which had its world premiere in a co-production with the Stage Door Series. The second one involved 801 Salon, which produced its largest show to date, directed by Ty Davis, in collaboration with the indie folk rock band Little Moon, from Springville, Utah, and 16 performers from the University of Utah School of Dance.
This season promises equally exhilarating artistic achievements in a series which has become a signature brand for UtahPresents.
Relics and Their Humans, Oct. 28-30, 7:30 p.m.
Theater artist Ain Gordon and percussionist Josh Quillen will present a new work that blurs the lines between concert theater and memoir. Quillen should be a familiar face for UtahPresents’ audiences as he was among the members of Sō Percussion which performed last season.
Inspired by his family story, Relics and Their Humans, Quillen returns to his hometown of Dover, Ohio and explores the years following his father’s ALS diagnosis. Through a recorded interview, a personal journal, and an unexpected playlist, the performance gathers into an intimate portrait of family, resilience and love. The work includes a tribute to Quillen’s mother, whose humor, strength, and unwavering devotion illuminate every moment. Combining live music, storytelling, and inventive theatrical design, Gordon and Quillen transform intimate family history into a fresh platform.
Kellie St. Pierre, Jan. 20-22, 7:30 p.m.
Kellie St. Pierre, a Utah-based choreographer and interdisciplinary artist, was also on the 2025 list of The Utah Review’s Top Ten Moments of the Utah Enlightenment for the year. Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company performed the exhilaratingly athletic and keenly original The Rate We Change by St. Pierre, which the choreographer created as part of her master’s degree thesis at the University of Utah. That work featured the company’s six dancers performing on a human-powered rotating platform, accompanied by a well-sculpted minimalistic score by local musician Daniel Clifton. The work was also honored with the Grand Prize Award at the Palm Desert Choreography Festival.
St. Pierre has been commissioned to develop a new work for the Stage Door Series, intended to welcomd audiences to participate in a layered experience in which projection, moving surfaces, and dance merge the body with environment, highlighting the relationship between place, identity and connection. Featuring five local dance collaborators, as well as musicians and production collaborators, the performance will be focused on revealing the high production value and captivating, provocative artistic expression potential in the multidisciplinary and multimedia setting.
FAMILY SUNDAYS
Mexico Beyond Mariachi: Sugar Skull! A Dia de Los Muertos Musical Adventure, Oct. 4, 4 p.m. (school matinee, Oct, 5, 11 a.m.
A vibrant bilingual and bicultural musical for young audiences, Sugar Skull! brings the rich traditions of Mexico to life through music and dance. The show tells the story of Vita Flores, 12, who thinks her family has gone a little loco planning a celebration for deceased loved ones—until a lively candy skeleton whisks her away on a magical journey to discover the true meaning of Día de Muertos. Developed by Rhythm of the Arts alongside Gregory Van Acker, Sinuhé Padilla, Elena Aráoz, and Mexico Beyond Mariachi, this joyous and heartfelt production features talented musicians and dancers in a colorful, high-energy performance.
Cirque Mechanics, Nov. 8, 4 p.m.
Cirque Mechanics, a Drama Desk Award nominee, will present Tilt!, which is inspired by America’s amusement parks of the 1980s. With acrobatics, aerial artistry, dance, and storytelling, the show features a massive, human-powered Ferris wheel, which effectively transforms the stage into a bona fide amusement park.
Founded in 2004 byChris Lashua, a Boston native and German Wheel artist. Cirque Mechanics has established itself as a groundbreaking presence in the American circus scene.
Kodo, Feb. 7, 6:30 p.m.
Kodo, Japan’s preeminent taiko ensemble has cultivated a monumental repertoire over the last four decades. Since its debut, the group is credited with more than 7,500 performances in more than 50 countries and regions, This performance entitled Luminance is part of Kodo’s 45th anniversary concert series.
OTHER EVENTS
Healthcare Stories: Guts! Feb. 11, 7 p.m.
Produced by the Resiliency Center, the Center for Health Ethics, Arts, and Humanities, Healthcare Stories is an annual live storytelling event. This year’s theme will be Guts!, with a call for stories that are replete with humor, bravery, complication, and investigation into the depths of what it means to be human.
Banff Film Festival, Feb. 17-19, 7 p.m.
In partnership with Campus Recreation Services Outdoor Adventures at the University of Utah, The Banff Mountain Film Festival will comprise three days of outdoor and nature films curated from around the world. The festival takes place every fall (October and November) in Banff, Alberta, Canada, before going on tour. This year’s edition is the 51st anniversary.
The Twelve, March 19, 7 p.m., March 20, 11 a.m.
Performed by Youth Theatre at the University of Utah, this show offers a riff on conventional fairy tale narrative devices. Inspired by The Twelve Dancing Princesses, the musical follows twelve sisters in a kingdom where everyone is watched, ranked, and expected to perform perfection on demand. By day they smile for the cameras, but at night they disappear, and no one can explain why their shoes are destroyed by morning.
When their nightly absences raise official suspicion, the kingdom wants answers, along with the sisters. The story explores what happens when young people stop accepting the systems they have been handed and begin asking who those systems actually serve. The sisters are not fighting a monster, but instead are navigating a world that expects performance and perfection, and trying to figure out how to remain whole within it.
Cannupa Hanska Luger, March 25, 7:30 p.m.
Presented in partnership with the College of Fine Arts and the Department of Art & Art History as part of the Inaugural Summit for the Visual Arts, Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota) is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist and cultural innovator whose expansive creative and philosophical practice introduces new methodologies, ideas, and speculative technologies that reflect Indigenous innovation and shift collective thinking. Born on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, he is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold.
Through large-scale installation, sculpture, performance, time-based media, and community engagement, Luger activates cultural continuity, ecological repair, and collective care. His bold visual storytelling builds frameworks for reimagining systems, grounding artistic practice in Indigenous worldviews, critical inquiry, and material experimentation.
Luger’s work has been presented nationally and internationally, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Sharjah Biennial. His work is held in major public collections such as the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Detroit Institute of Arts. He is a 2025 National Geographic Wayfinder Award recipient and a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, among numerous honors.