Salt Lake City, Utah, USA – 2015 video

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Audience Location

Memory Grove Park

Date and Time

June 20, 2015 at 12:15 pm

Water Locale

City Creek

Choreographers

Amanda Sowerby received her MFA in Modern Dance from the University of Utah and her BFA in Dance from the California Institute of the Arts. She worked for several years with the Gary Palmer Dance Company in Californias Bay Area and assisted in setting new and repertory pieces on the National Ballet of Peru and the National Ballet of Chile, as well as implementing outreach programs in dance for Bay Area community members. She has performed with the National Ballets of Chile and Peru, Enrico Labayans Lab Projekt USA, Yasmin Mehtas California Contemporary Dancers and Todd Courage. Amanda’s own choreographic work has been presented at NYCs Dance Theatre Workshop, SFs Theatre Artaud, Diesel Cathedral, Dance Mission and SLCs Rose Wagner Theater. In addition to her faculty position at WSU, Amanda is the president-elect of the Utah Dance Education Organization and served as the Higher Education Representative from 2007-2013.
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Meghan Durham-Wall is a dance artist, educator, and advocate. Her creative work embeds interdisciplinary inquiry within dance praxis, while placing the human body and experience at the foreground of her work. Durham-Wall is particularly interested in the unexpected dancing body. Her performance research focuses on the duet form with collaborator Karl Rogers, and features commissions by internationally recognized choreographers. Durham-Wall has held previous dance faculty positions at numerous colleges and festivals, including the Ohio State University, Princeton University, Temple University, Westminster College, the Bates Dance Festival, the Now + Next Dance Mentoring Project, and BalletMets Summer Dance Intensive. She currently works as an independent artist, as well as a speech and language difference specialist with young children and their families.
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Andrea Malouf is the Director of the SLCC Community Writing Center and Assistant Professor of English at Salt Lake Community College where she teaches writing and literature. For the last two decades, shes worked as a magazine journalist, an editor-in-chief of five publications, an information designer, a literary arts volunteer with many local organizations, and a mom. She writes fiction and nonfiction when time permits (usually between midnight and 2 a.m.).

History of Site and Related Water Issues

Our site: City Creek is a small but historically important mountain stream that flows from City Creek Canyon and across part of Salt Lake City, Utah, and into the Jordan River which empties into the Great Salt Lake. City Creek’s head is about 8 miles (13 km) up City Creek Canyon northeast of Downtown Salt Lake City. The entire stream measures only about 14.5 miles (23 km) long. Melting snow from adjacent mountains provides most of City Creek’s currents, but the stream flows year-round because of natural springs at the head of the creek. Until 1882 City Creek served as the city’s primary water supply, and it continues to provide drinking water to The Avenues and northern parts of Salt Lake City. Our project: Water, as a precious resource, is at the forefront of the environmental arts. In literature and beyond, water serves as metaphor for transformation, desire, purity, rebirth, intuition, and foreboding. As a chemical substance, pure water is a constant, maintaining the same properties and proportions, whether extracted from a river or created in a laboratory. Like a nuanced performer, it transforms qualitative states through phases of matter, becoming unyielding, flowing, effervescent, or completely balanced depending upon external parameters. Culturally, humans bathe, splash, drown, thirst, cleanse, irrigate, tread, spill, and navigate all in relation to water. These collective ideas serve as the backdrop for our project that has inspired artists living in a desert climate to highlight the local impact and influence of this precious resource.

Music

6 50 by Michael Wall www.soundformovement.com

The Performance

Dancers will be members of the general community and local dance schools and university dance programs.

Directions to the Site of Performance

City Creek Canyon is a wonderful resource so close to downtown Salt Lake, and a great respite from the summer heat. A 1.2 mile shared-use path through Memory Grove Park begins at State Street and Second Avenue, and extends north to Bonneville Boulevard. North of Bonneville Boulevard, the “path” in City Creek Canyon is a 5.8-mile paved canyon maintenance road that is closed to public automobiles on days that bikes are permitted (and vice versa). Service vehicles are allowed on all days and should always be expected when bicycling in the canyon.

Email for more information

[email protected]

How can I get involved?

Local people can join our event to dance, set up and/or clear site. People can also help to get the word out through social media and word of mouth. Please contact Amanda at: [email protected]