THE ESSENTIAL A&E PICKS FOR APR 13 - 19 

Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company: To See Beyond Our Time

Alarming scientific reports about the future of the Great Salt Lake—and the potentially toxic consequences for those living near it—made national news recently, inspiring conversations about what needs to be done to avoid the worst-case scenario. While the Utah legislature unfortunately focused more on wedge issues than this urgent environmental crisis, the conversation continues—and, not surprisingly, artists have been inspired to create work highlighting the need for action.

This weekend, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company presents To See Beyond Our Time, which addresses the potentially catastrophic consequences of the shrinking lake. A year in the making, it was crafted as a collaboration between RWDC artistic director Daniel Charon and director Alexandra Harbold, in consultation with local journalists, environmental activists and other stakeholders. "I cannot overstate the importance of the interactions we had with various experts of the Great Salt Lake while developing To See Beyond Our Time," says Charon via press release. "This collaboration was crucial to the evolution of this piece. By considering the perspectives of the Indigenous Community, naturalists, scientists, and journalists the work reflects the perspectives of the people who are deeply tied to the issue. Dance can speak in its own unique way to highlight the immediacy of this moment."

To See Beyond Our Time plays at the Rose Wagner Center Black Box (138 W. 300 South) April 13-15, with performances at 7:30 p.m. and tickets $35. A "Moving Parts" series sensory-friendly performance takes place at 1 p.m. on Saturday, April 15, with tickets $10. Visit arttix.org for tickets and additional information. (Scott Renshaw)

Ballet West: The Wedding

Women's history month in March may now be in the year's rearview mirror, but there's never a wrong time to highlight the accomplishments of great women—especially when those accomplishments may be less popularly known.

As part of its season-closing program, Ballet Wests offers a centennial re-staging the rarely-performed 1923 work Les Noces (The Wedding) by choreographer Bronislava Nijinska, a grand-scale ballet with score by Igor Stravinsky and a cast of 30 dancers.

Depicting a Slavic peasant wedding at the outset of the region's Christian era—when pagan elements were still part of the celebrations—Les Noces has already been performed in part by Ballet West in a special presentation at New York's Guggenheim Museum. "Performing Nijinska's monumental Les Noces is a challenge for any company, with all its intricate architectural patterns and complex musicality," Ballet West artistic director Adam Sklute says via press release. "It demands a level of focus and sophistication from every dancer on the stage. Our Ballet West artists are such a team that they can conquer this work."

The program will also include Jerome Robbins' 1970 piece In the Night—set to Chopin's Nocturnes—and Gerald Arpino's Light Rain, the latter of which marks the return of former Ballet West Principal Artists Beckanne Sisk and Chase O'Connell for select performances on April 14 and April 22. The production runs April 14 – 22, with performances April 14, 15, 20 & 22 at 7:30 p.m., and a 2 p.m. matinee on April 22. Tickets are $25 - $104; visit arttix.org to purchase tickets and for additional event information. (SR)

Plan-B: Fire!

Plan-B Theatre Company doesn't repeat itself often—and when it does, it's usually for a very good reason. In the case of Fire!, which Plan-B offered as a world premiere from playwright Jenifer Nii in 2010, that very good reason is also a very unfortunate reason: Nii was diagnosed in 2021 with hippocampal atrophy, a neurological condition often associated with Alzheimer's, and which means Nii will no longer be writing new plays.

The play focuses on Wallace Thurman, a Salt Lake City-native queer Black writer who was at the center of the Harlem Renaissance and died at the age of 32. According to Plan-B's press materials, there is an appropriateness in honoring Nii with Fire! by "connecting two Utah writers of color separated by a century, the careers of both cut tragically short." Yet it's also a rare opportunity for a creative team to revisit a work, both in the sense that it has been reimagined from its original form as a one-man show, and because actor Carleton Bluford (pictured) returns from the original production to once again play Thurman. "It's still one of the hardest shows I've ever done," Bluford said in a 2022 video conversation with Nii and director Jerry Rapier. "And also one of the easiest in the sense that it's so close to home. ... Me doing this role gave me wings."

Fire! runs April 13 – 23, for 10 performances only. Tickets are $25, but availability is extremely limited at press time. Visit planbtheatre.org for additional information, including wait-listing. (SR)

Performance Art Festival

For three years, the annual Performance Art Festival has had to adapt on the fly—from cancellation in 2020, to recorded works in 2021, to live virtual performances with the omicron surge in winter 2022. Now, the performers are live once again. And for festival founder/curator/performer Kristina Lenzi, that returns it to the essence of the artform.

"I think during the pandemic, we performance artists did what we could to express ourselves through performance and to preserve the medium, but so much was lost by having performance presented virtually or recorded, and it is not really performance art, it is video," Lenzi says via email. "The presence of a live audience really is the premise of performance art in my opinion."

The 2023 festival will showcase more than a dozen artists from Utah, around the country, and even as far as Dublin, Ireland for Sinéad O'Donnell (shown here from a 2019 performance). They will all be bringing unique perspectives to a form that appeals to Lenzi for its immediacy. "That is what I like most about it," she says. "For instance, a viewer sees a performance and many or all of the senses are engaged, since this is a live medium. Viewers take away a one-time experience and hold it in their memory."

Catch the works at the 2023 Performance Art Festival at the Salt Lake City Main Library (210 E. 400 South) on April 14 (noon – 5 p.m.) and 15 (10 a.m. – 4 p.m.), free and open to the public. Visit events.slcpl.org/event/8094869 for full schedule and performance details. (SR)