SB Dance: Deccadance
January 30th, 2019
Salt Lake City Weekly Essentials
By Casey Koldewyn
Online here (Warning: this link subject to change)
In the midst of Sundance and all the attendant excitement, Salt Lake’s SB Dance showcases its own attractions. Deccadance events include a poster art show and a conversation collaboration with Sundance Institute, both free of charge, and which culminate in two cabaret performances.
The week-long series marks a break from the company’s past film fest-related events, which focused on lounges. Another change is the introduction of a theme; this year, tolerance. “I love the idea of looking at tolerance from all these different points of view,” Stephen Brown, artistic and creative director for SB Dance, says.
Every event engages with the theme in a unique way. From Jan. 26 to 30, the traveling poster art installation Tolerance, conceived and organized by Mirko Ilic, featured theme-inspired graphics. Creative Tensions, a 90-minute interactive collaboration between Sundance Institute Theatre Program and global design firm IDEO, follows on Jan. 31. The “conversation on your feet” invites audiences to become a part of the performance, as well as engage with a broader conversation about what it means to be tolerant.
The cabaret shows Drag Plus— hosted by Jason CoZmo and co-produced by Gia BIanca Stephens (pictured)—and Kinky Beasts shift the conversation from tolerance toward acceptance, as they celebrate identities and sexualities that aren’t always featured, let alone given the spotlight. “That is a place for really cool performance and design,” Brown says, “coming from the drag scene and then from the kink scene. The cabaret shows invite people to see alternative universes that they might not have experienced before.”
SB Dance:Deccadance@ Rose Wagner Center, 138 W. 300 South, 801-355-2787,Creative Tensions, Jan. 31, 7 p.m., free, reservation required;Drag Plus&Kinky Beasts, Feb. 1-2, 9 p.m., $10-$12
