NOW-ID featured in last Sunday's Salt Lake Tribune.
Migration 1.3 /
This Is the Place: Winding down Parley’s, right around the 215 split, the canyon opens up and suddenly you have an expanse of lavender sky in front of you, with billows of blood orange thunderclouds edged with tangy apricot wisps. And then at the mouth of the canyon—just before the Foothill turnoff—the whole valley opens up just as the sun is setting in the clouds over the lake, and it’s turning the whole western sky an embery red, the color of a low growl. The Salt Lake is glowing bright crimson, like it’s lit from within. You’re struck by the fact that it’s always there, even when you’re not thinking about it, all that gorgeous weirdness. The smell from the sycamores and the dry grasses, warm from the day, mingle into a heady sunset musk. And the whole valley, with the Oquirrhs culminating in that smokestack, and the tufts blooming up from the factory to the north, make it seem simultaneously like it’s a terraformed Martian landscape, and in the same breath—more like a gasp—the most bizarrely beautiful place you’ve ever seen.
This blog post is part of a series in support of the NOWHERE performance. Migration 1.3 words by Amie Tulius; Photo Still from film by Nathan Webster.
/
click above to play 'NOWHERE' title video.
Mountains & Temples 3.2 /
“Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees. Their sermons on the mountains go to our hearts.” --John Muir
Mountains are home to gods and they are gods. They are the mothers of gods. Mountains pierce the sky with their peaks, the outtie belly buttons of the earth. Their peaks represent enlightenment, their peaks poke holes in the universe and are the points around which the sun, moon, and stars revolve. Their summits are named after perfect meditative states. They are living entities, the incarnation of the earth spirit itself. Mountains are the home of the father of all humans as well as demi-gods, the dwelling of the wind goddess. Tombs for the dead and bestowers of fertility. Sites for sacrifice, enlightenment, and spiritual cleansing. Sacred borders to ancestral land, or center of history and cultural identity. Mountains too sacred to step upon, circumnavigated 32 times. 108 times. Summitted at dawn. Sites of revelation and repository for souls. Sacred water, sacred glaciers, sacred meadows. Sometimes a body, sometimes a symbol, sometimes a vehicle.
Text by Amie Tulius, inspired by the NOWHERE project.
Grooves 2.2 /
It is surprising to fall in love with a place that was not yours from the beginning. You moved here for a summer, a winter, for a man, a woman, for a job. You never expected you’d stay.
You do the things that one does in this place. Go on the hikes, learn the cafes, the restaurants, visit the parks, the concerts, the museums. At first it is giddy, this place opening up for you. These flowers that are native to here, the warm smell of these trees by this creek, this snow comes early then autumn returns and the light slants golden but still new. Sometimes it is novel and exciting, sometimes it feels wrong. Winter should be different. It is different than the winter your body knows and you are exhilarated by it, then frustrated with it, but hold it lightly and at arm’s length because you are only here for now.
And then the flowers that are native to here. The smell of these trees by this creek. The snow. The slant. And your body remembers. You begin to learn how water moves in this place—the direction of the rivers and how they connect to other places. You know automatically where to turn to see if the moon is rising yet. How late the sky will continue to glow and where to watch for the constellations. There is Cygnus: rising over the same part of your home as last July.
The flowers that always bloom here this time of year—you know their names and when they are at their peak. These trees and the creek like every year. The first snow! That certain gold of the light that cues you to get out the sweaters. You learn the stories of the place, the history. You vote with its best interests in your heart. You defend it to people who come here who don’t know it and want to mock its quirks. Those are your quirks. Your favorite restaurant closes and it is like a little death.
Your body anticipates the flowers weeks before they bloom, and then they bloom. You realize they are the reason you sneeze this time of year but you don’t care. The trees. Creek. Snow. You arc to them. The light in the fall. Winter and all its anticipated pleasures and you can fight it or enjoy it—it will happen as it happens. This is how it is here. You learn about the geology of the place. The politics and prehistory. You wonder how deep this can go. And then you wonder how much you are willing to give to this place. And perhaps that’s the only question that matters.
The flowers bloom and they bloom and they bloom. Just like last year. And the year before that, and the one before that until the seasons are layered with sensory memories that become a kind of clock your body is tuned to. And you can exalt in it or wrestle with it, it doesn’t matter, we each love how we love.
Artist, Adam Bateman walking the final six miles with friends from Immigration Canyon to downtown Salt Lake on July 11, 2015.
Text by Amie Tulius in support of the NOWHERE project, with photo still from video by PerryLane Decker above.
The performance is this coming weekend on July 17 and 18 at Libby Gardner Hall. Get your tickets here.
AND, yes, it is true: Our friend and collaborator Adam Bateman is home, as seen here on the final stretch.
Migration 1.2 /
“Like a mirror, a place can hold anything, on any scale.” Gary Snyder writes in Practice of the Wild. “I want to talk about place as an experience and propose a model of what it meant to “live in place” for most of human time, presenting it initially in terms of the steps that a child takes growing into a natural community. (We have terms enculturation and acculturation, but nothing to describe the process of becoming placed or re-placed.) In doing so we might get one more angle on what a “civilization of wildness” might require. . . Our place is part of what we are. . .A place is a mosaic within larger mosaics. . . Recollecting that we once lived in places is part of our contemporary self-rediscovery.”
Snyder talks about how we grow up speaking a home language, a local vernacular. In our homes, we hear histories of the people and tales involving rocks, trees, and mountains. We grow bold and explore outward taking small trips on foot. We explore our neighborhoods, playgrounds, and trails. We traverse to larger regions. We venture outward always going wider and farther to unexplored, distant places, but we always return to the hearth, to the campfire to share our stories.
"For most Americans, to reflect on “home place” would be an unfamiliar exercise,” Snyder continues. “Few today can announce themselves as someone from somewhere. Almost nobody spends a lifetime in the same valley, working alongside the people they knew as children.“
Words gathered by Amie Tulius, by Stefanie Dykes + Gary Snyder, as part of NOW-ID's blog series leading up NOWHERE, taking place on July 17 and 18 at Libby Gardner Hall. Photo by Adam Bateman.
Mountains & Temples 3.1 /
In aesthetics, the sublime (from the Latin sublimis) is the quality of greatness, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual, or artistic. The term especially refers to a greatness beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement, or imitation. -- Wikipedia
Maybe we find mountains holy because of their size. The scale of a mountain floods a human-sized consciousness with awe… mountain-sized is just the right size of large and the right size of awe. It’s awe you can wrap your mind around. Plains, for example, are certainly sublime but problematic-- not for a lack of beauty, but for the vastness. Awe so huge can tip into existential terror. From a design perspective, plains are all prospect and no shelter.
Or maybe there is just something about mountains. Something about that soaring feeling, that sensation of the sublime which is a call-and-response between human hearts and the heart of the world. Maybe we don’t have to break it apart. We go there and we can’t help but leap toward it. Or mountains provide a kind of spiritual heat, as in chemistry where sublime refers to a solid that becomes a vapor when heated. There is something vaporizing about the presence of mountains.
This post is part of a series leading up to NOW-ID's show NOWHERE on July17/18, 2015. The series' headings are: Migration, Grooves, and Mountains and Temples.
Mountains and Temples 3.1 text by Amie Tulius, with photograph by Adam Bateman.
Grooves 2.1 /
Before they were metaphors, they were actual wagon wheels. And before that it was just feet and hooves moving overground, tamping the grasses. A few fur trappers, explorers, and mountain men. At first it was a fairly random westward trickle. There were no centers to move toward, no cities.
Others followed, their feet pressing a faint hard line into the earth-- an improbably long line across the continent. That line. To travel such distances changes the size of an individual. Looking down at the continent from above, the scale renders a human invisible; turns people into nearly imaginary specks moving across the landscape. Like the slowest of neurons carving a path through the brain of the country.
But the wheels: the path created by the feet and hooves forged a way for wagons and soon a surge of those deployed, and the path widened, became a proper trail. A few hundred wagons, and then thousands, and the trail deepened, cut grooves into the earth, until what at first could have gone any number of routes turned into what felt like inevitability.
At first it was just an idea. Then it was a groove. Tracks went down, and came trains, then freeways.
This post is part of a series leading up to NOW-ID's show NOWHERE on July17/18, 2015. The series' headings are: Migration, Grooves, and Mountains and Temples.
Grooves 2.1 text by Amie Tulius, with photograph by Adam Bateman.
YOU ARE NOW HERE – PREVIEW PERFORMANCE AT KIMBALL ART CENTER JULY 10th /
NOW-ID is excited to be collaborating with the Kimball Art Center in Park City for the first time on a small performance in connection with Kimball's "YOU ARE NOW HERE" exhibition.
This performance of 6-7 minutes each will be taking place at the Kimball July 10th at 7pm and 8.30pm and will be an intimate preview of a larger production that NOW-ID is producing at Libby Gardner Hall in Salt Lake City the following weekend titled "NOWHERE". NOWHERE is an exploration of what it is to be of a place, and to not be of a place. It is about learning, loving and leaving a place, about the perceptual absence place and coming back. It is about this place, specifically, and the contrasting active and passive sensory experiEnce of what it means to settle. Audience, local/international artists, and original contemporary dance and live music will push and pull at where our West is now.
Audiences at Kimball Center will be able to experience "YOU ARE NOW HERE" both from outside and inside the building and the piece will be staged in the context of the exhibition, adding layers of interpretation to the work. We hope you will join us for a physically charged yet poetically subtle performance.
FRIDAY JULY 10TH , 2015
AT 7:00 PM AND 8:30 PM
Free | no RSVP required
Performances will take place in the Kimball’s window display on Heber Avenue and can be viewed from inside the gallery or via the sidewalk and street.
For more information visit:
WWW.KIMBALLARTCENTER.ORG/EVENTS/
MISSION: NOW-ID IS A CONTEMPORARY DANCE AND DESIGN COMPANY BASED IN SALT LAKE CITY, THE COMPANY IS GUIDED BY A PASSIONATE BELIEF IN THE POWER OF ART TO ENGAGE AND MOVE PEOPLE AND FOSTER SOCIAL CHANGE. IT CREATES FORWARD THINKING, INNOVATIVE AND ENCOMPASSING WORK FOR BOTH ARTISTS AND AUDIENCE, WORK THAT GROWS FROM SPECIFIC SITES AND IN COLLABORATION WITH LOCAL, NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL PARTNERS FROM A RANGE OF CREATIVE FIELDS. NOW-ID SUPPORTS THE COMBINED VISION OF CHOREOGRAPHER CHARLOTTE BOYE-CHRISTENSEN AND ARCHITECT NATHAN WEBSTER.
Migration 1.1 /
What causes you to say stop. This is it. This is the where I stay.
And then how do you tune your body to a new geography? What does it take for your body to know the rhythms of a place, for you to become of that place? How many seasons? 5 years? 7 years? A generation? Do you have to be born there, to spend your childhood there, to build rituals into the seasons? Or is it further back? Do you need ancestors to be of a place before it is really yours? How many generations? Several? Enough to weave your family stories and history into the place? Or is it further? Do you need to stay long enough that the sunlight or lack of sunlight darkens or lightens your skin? Or, like moth, your wings change to match the bark of the trees. Like a bird your bill is shaped just perfectly to fit the flowers that grow only here. Somewhere in the span of three and three thousand years you find that you can no longer separate the landscape from who you’ve become.
This is the first in a series of posts inspired by and in support of the NOWHERE project. Text by Amie Tulius. Photograph by Nathan Webster
The power of Architecture and ideas. /
http://www.wired.com/2014/11/bjarke-ingels-will-make-believe-power-architecture/
SCINTILLATION /
This is an experimental film made up of over 35,000 photographs. It combines an innovative mix of stop motion and live projection mapping techniques. Directed by chassaing.xavier@gmail.com Music by https://soundcloud.com/fedaden.
Source: The Creators Project
NOWHERE coming soon... /
A site-visit to Libby Gardner Concert Hall in Salt Lake City. We are using the extraordinary organ there in our multidisciplinary contemporary dance performance - it will be played by local organ player Laura Cutler and the compositions are going to be evocative. Join us there July 17, 18, 2015.
A Talk on Interdisciplinary work at the University of Utah. /
Nathan and Charlotte gave a talk for the students at the Multi-disciplinary Design Department at the University of Utah last week.
Sold Out NOW x Pecha Kucha #14, Thank You!!! /
Photo: Tristan Shepherd
Thank you to all who came last night to our sold out Pecha Kucha evening at Publik. To our wonderful presenters, sponsors and to Nathan Webster and Tristan Shepherd for hosting the event so eloquently! It was an amazing night. If you have photos to share please contact us and tag them with #NOWIDXPKSLC
Future NOW /
It’s an exciting time for us at NOW-ID. We’re still full of the wild-eyed idealism we started this company with; and we’re implementing our vision towards becoming the sustainable, impactful organization that can provide that idealism with power.
It’s been less than two years since we founded the company and, while we are incredibly proud of what we have done, we are even more excited about what we have brewing. Please have a look at the below list of our achievements and goals so you can get a sense what we’re up to and where we’re going.
And note: We can only bring our cutting edge mix of performances, projects, and workshops to fruition together with your help. We’d like to invite you to consider making a year-end contribution here —whatever you can give truly helps.
IN 2014, WE:
• Obtained our official tax-exempt organization status;
• Launched an internship program with our first intern, Lauren Weaver, now working as an interior designer in Park City;
• Re-Designed our website, with new calendar and blog features, and mention of the many individuals and organizations who supported and worked with us this year;
• Worked with more than 275 students at residencies at: Simon Fraser University in Vancouver; WildWind Performance Lab at Texas Tech; The University of Utah’s ballet department; Southern Utah University; Tisch School of the Arts in New York City; Brenau University in Georgia; Muhlenberg University in Pennsylvania, and the Baton Rouge Ballet;
• (Charlotte) collaborated and performed with the Figura Ensemble in Denmark at the Marienlyst Castle in Helsingor, Denmark.
• Premiered new mixed media works: A Muse Bouche; FEAST at the Great Saltair blending local lore with theater, dance, design, live music, blog and artists from Salt Lake City, New York, Chicago, Iceland and Denmark; and Glimpse, staged at Utah Museum of Contemporary Art;
• Had our first tour as a company, performing a revised version of FEAST at the Kansas Dance Festival… mixing the original choreography as performed by Jenn, Jo and Yumelia, with new choreography on 39 Wichita State dancers and 11 percussionists… and ultimately presenting to 900 people at two sold out shows;
• And… we welcomed Casey Crawford and Jeffrey Berke to the NOW-ID board.
IN 2015, WE WILL:
• Define and establish our 5 year plan for Finance and Development, with objectives that firmly found our capacity to execute, sustain and leverage NOW-IDs dreams, ideas and impact;
• Increase the frequency and exploratory nature of our work … incorporating events, lectures and workshops in collaboration with local art and design individuals and institutions such as CUAC; the David Kranes / Salt Lake Acting Company Playwrights Lab; and the University of Utah;
• Curate and present the next Salt Lake City Pecha Kucha at Publik Coffee Roasters – on Friday the 13th of February – to include a lineup of presenters gathered loosely along the theme ‘Body/Space/Design’and intermixed with a choreographed performance to fit the format, DJ Jesse Walker … and a cash bar too;
• Conceptualize and present the NOWHERE Series… building upon much of the above (and a trip to Marfa, Texas), in an exploration of identity and place with local author David Kranes and Danish author Peter Laugesen, to be performed locally at a yet to be announced location and later at the Black Diamond Library in Copenhagen.
• Continue our residencies Nationally and Internationally – this coming year we will so far be in Richmond, Boise, Miami, Mexico and Finland.
• Host the first NOW-ID Gala in the fall of 2015.
WE NEED YOU!
NOW-ID explores and engages unexpected venues and creates powerful, ambitious mixed media works and gatherings. We build creative space for artists, for audience and community, and ultimately for ideas and evolution. And we're having an amazing time. We're finding out what it feels like to play with and alter the cultural landscape-- and we want you to be a part of this creation. Please plan on joining us at our performances and events in 2015, and please click here to make a year-end donation to NOW-ID. Together we'll make something extraordinary.
Gary Vlasic's MALL /
MALL is an experimental pop up retail/art space created by NOW-ID collaborator Gary Vlasic and running for two weekends only! We loved our first view last night - beautiful space, art, music and fashion - go check it out!
AND... join us on Saturday December 6th for FOOD COURT, a sit down dinner benefit for NOW-ID, to include an exclusive album preview by Two Nations, DJ Jesse Walker, special announcements and more! Limited seating - tickets are available at: www.now-id.com/mall
Address: 159 W. Pierpont Ave. (new location) See the full calendar of events at WWW.SHOP-AT-MALL.COM
Successful sold-out shows in Kansas /
Thank you to our dancers; Yumelia Garcia, Jenn Freeman and Jo Blake and to Nick Johnson, his extraordinary Faculty and dancers at the Dance Program at Wichita State University as well as Gerald Scholl, the director of the Percussion Ensemble and his exceptional musicians for all of their inspired and visionary work.
FEAST at the Kansas Dance Festival in Rehearsal! /
Charlotte, Yumelia, Jenn and Jo are all deep into the rehearsal process, working with the percussion troupe and 35 other dancers.
