SALT Contemporary Dance Company
Near West Theatre
Cleveland, Ohio
Sunday, March 3, 2024

By Steve Sucato

Like A-list celebrities, the dance world has its own levels of draw and notoriety. A-listers like Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Paris Opera Ballet have a certain cachet with audiences, while others struggle for audience visibility outside their own regions. On tour, those non-A-listers looking to win over new audiences do best when putting their best feet forward in both programming and performance execution. Such was the case with the Cleveland debut of Salt Lake City, Utah’s SALT Contemporary Dance Company, this past Sunday at Cleveland’s Near West Theatre.

Presented by DANCECleveland, SALT may not be dance world A, B, or even C-listers just yet. However, the stylistically diverse program they delivered to a sold-out Near West Theatre audience was top-notch and worthy of more attention being paid to this rising company.  

After a lively warm-up performance by student dancers from The Dance Centre in Rocky River, SALT’s mixed repertory program began with company artistic director Joni McDonald’s “The Quality Of” (2022). Danced to music by classical music masters Johann Strauss II, George Fredric Handel, and Johann Sebastian Bach, the work’s balletic feel reflected McDonald’s background as a former dancer with Utah Metropolitan Ballet.

Eight dancers in sox, six costumed in long dresses, including spunky Twinsburg native Maxi Riley, waltzed and swayed in deep-knee bent, extended-limb movement across the stage to Strauss II’s iconic “The Blue Danube Waltz.” Joyous and playful, McDonald’s contemporary ballet choreography had the dancers forming various groupings, lifting a dancer here and carrying another there in a delightful exchange of bodies that paused at times in snapshot-like tableaus.  

Next, the company performed the world premiere of British choreographer Ihsan Rustem’s “On the Nature of Being,” with a lighting design by Cleveland’s Dennis Dugan.

The contemporary dance work for the company’s eight dancers was created using their personal histories on a theme of “words that have been left unsaid” to generate its movement phrases. Danced to a cinematic soundtrack by Canadian dancer and composer Davidson Jaconello, David Lang, Natascha Atlas, and Ben Frost, the work felt trance-like. The performers spun and spooled in individual and partnered movement phrases that led them on and off the stage.

The piece soon shifted to an energetic unison group dance replete with gestural movements, strained facial expressions, and hand claps. Overall, Rustem’s “On the Nature of Being” was a solid and moving work, beautifully performed by SALT’s dancers, especially Riley and Haley Johnson.

With its idiosyncratic start and stop movement language, choreographer Micaela Taylor’s “Feather” (2021) was the most unique work on the program. Taylor’s exaggerated, gestural, robotic, and exacting movement language mixed elements of hip hop, ballet, and contemporary styles into a dance genre she calls Expand Practice. The result was a fast-moving and mesmerizing display of dancing.

Performed to a matching eclectic mix of music and sound from Alva Noto and others compiled by Taylor, five female dancers costumed in black skirts and white turtlenecks ripped through Taylor’s staccato-like choreography as if being pulled across the stage by unseen forces. The dancers’ start-stop movement cadence was infused with body-shaking and sputtered bursts of energy that made for a memorable viewing experience.

SALT’s program concluded with choreographer Peter Chu’s emotionally moving “All Too Human” (2023). Set to music by Jóhann Jóhannsson, the work began in shadow with its seven dancers lying on their backs with legs pushed skyward like corn stalks. One by one, the dancers gave into gravity as their bodies fell over with a thump onto the stage floor. They popped themselves up again to repeat the action a few more times. Positioned next to each dancer on the stage floor were a pair of pants and a T-shirt that all but dancer Dominick Brown put on over their leotards.

The dancers then surrounded Brown as if drawn by his vulnerabilities, offering him support. The somewhat solemn work was not your typical up-tempo showstopping program closer. Symbolism and metaphor emerged throughout, including in a busy dance section, where a standing dancer could be seen pulling an invisible rope to seemingly drag a fellow dancer who was lying down across the stage floor toward them. In a subsequent scene, dancers fell onto each other like fallen and gathered tree branches being stacked in a pile. Later sections saw the work’s dancers cascade into one another and stamp their feet. “All Too Human” ended with Brown bent over at the waist, with another dancer behind him guiding his arms as they flapped like wings.