Essentials: A&E Picks Oct. 10-16 

THURSDAY OCT. 10

Samba Fogo: Elementos
After a summer of teaching workshops geared toward youth, the Afro-Brazilian performing-arts company Samba Fogo decided that it would be a perfect time to develop an interactive—the audience, too, will be singing, dancing and playing musical instruments—all-ages show about the fundamental building blocks of the world around us: Elementos. “We like to utilize the idea of the four elements—earth, wind, fire, water—to teach dance and drumming,” says Artistic Director Lorin Hansen, who choreographed the original work. “Young people also really seem to relate with the stories, characters, rhythms and dances associated with Afro-Brazilian mythology and cultural traditions; … ‘drumming like the god of fire’ or ‘dancing like the river goddess’ seem to make sense to young people, and allow them to enter a world of imagination and wonder.” According to Hansen, one major theme throughout Afro-Brazilian culture is the concept of awakening to your own personal power—known as axé, “the sacred force, or power to make things happen,” she says—and accepting the responsibilities associated with that power. “Young people are constantly in a process of awakening to their own powers, strengths, potential and destinies,” Hansen says. The show consists of various dances inspired by the Afro-Brazilian orixa spirits, including Oya (goddess of the wind), Xango (god of fire, lightning and drumming), Oxossi (god of the forest) and Oxum (goddess of the rivers). By utilizing traditional Afro-Brazilian movement and music—with the help of a couple of aerial artists, to boot—Samba Fogo aims to entertain while teaching about the power and responsibilities of caring for the elements around us. (Jacob Stringer)
Rose Wagner Center, 138 W. 300 South, 801-355-2787, Oct. 10-11, 7 p.m., $20 adults, $10 ages 18 and under, family discounts available. ArtTix.org

Matthew Allred: Heliography: The Arc of Time
In the digital age, pinhole photography is a lost art. With the digital media’s emphasis on precision, the chance elements underlying just about every aspect of pinhole photography make it seem quaint and primitive. But Matthew Allred—an MFA graduate from the University of Utah, where he teaches photography—finds in it an endless source of experimentation. The showcase of his recent work, Heliography—literally “sun-tracings ”or “sun-writings”)—pushes the pinhole camera to its limits. Rather than exposing film for just a few moments, Allred exposed it for days or even months, in cameras he designed and built. The result is that, rather than miniscule slices of time captured with utmost precision, as with a digital camera, his equipment recorded longer swathes of time, tracking the travels of lights across the sky and their traces on objects. He even uses his own chemical formulations to develop and print the images. These photographs are stunning and profound statements about the nature of time and the transitory nature of objects—which here appear both alien and strangely familiar. Instead of time being invisible, it has a tangible presence, and the human presence is merely implied.  The exhibition shows concurrently with V. Kim Martinez’s multimedia collection 7 Steps Forward 7 Steps Back, and Jennifer Adams and Alison Oliver’s board-book series. Allred will give an artist talk during Gallery Stroll on Oct. 18 at 7 p.m. (Brian Staker)
The Arc of Time @ Art Barn, Finch Lane Gallery, 54 Finch Lane, 801-596-5000, through Nov. 15, free. SLCgov.com/arts

Slusser Gallery: Toutes Les Choses Francaises
When most Americans hear the word “France,” what do they think of? The Eiffel Tower? “The Mona Lisa”? The River Seine? Such images are not only a vast oversimplification, but limited to the confines of Paris alone. No single description can distill what “France” is; like our own country, it is a multidimensional experience. The directors of Slusser Gallery have brought this multidimensional experience to Salt Lake City, in the Toutes Les Choses Francaises—or “All Things French”—group show. Viewers of the artwork will find the essence and awareness of many things quintessentially French. In Nancy Seamons Crookston’s “Jour de Célébration”, a motorized scooter has been left alone, apparently for the rider to enjoy a “day of celebration.” It leans against a rustic wall that has seen monarchies, sieges, revolutions and empires. The many-layered paint revealing masonry below is not an eyesore in France, but a proud symbol of its history. Carolyn Hesse-Low’s “Oranges for Sale” is a hearty view of a seller of goods tending his carts, with canopies overhead in the bright afternoon light. Hesse-Low’s composition is itself very French, and takes advantage of brighter and darker tonalities to make the oranges burst with zest and the shadows feel cool on a hot afternoon. Stephen Stauffer’s “Carcassonne Street” depicts a provincial thoroughfare as seen in any town with stucco buildings and streets clamoring with life, yet Stauffer makes it uniquely his own with lovingly rendered details. (Ehren Clark)
Slusser Gallery, 447 E. 100 South, 801-532-1956, through Oct. 11, free. SlusserGallery.com

FRIDAY OCT. 11

Warren Miller’s Ticket to Ride
For a staggering 64 years, the arrival of a new film from Warren Miller Entertainment has served as something like the first herald of winter, something to generate a buzz of anticipation in snow-sport enthusiasts. This week marks the world premiere of the latest Warren Miller extravaganza, Ticket to Ride, and another chance to get fired up for the slopes season ahead. Like previous films from the Miller label, there’s nothing in the way of a plot connecting the vignettes featuring 100 minutes of action on skis, snowboards and even the occasional hang-gliding parachute for “speed riding.” Snow-sport notables—including past and present U.S. Olympians and National Team members like Tommy Moe, Ted Ligety, Seth Wescott and Kaylin Richardson—join with friends and international athletes to showcase terrain at both resorts and in untamed backcountry. And more than occasionally, they share extremely forced, staged banter whenever someone isn’t zooming down a snowy incline. But as amazing as some of the action is, with the athletes careening down the biggest of big hills, the Warren Miller films are almost more compelling as unique travelogues. While parks and resort areas get their moments in the spotlight, Ticket to Ride also takes viewers to hidden corners of Norway, Alaska, Greenland and Kazakhstan, and even to a legendary mountain like Switzerland’s Eiger. You may come for the chance to get fired up about your own impending days on the slopes, but you could leave with a checklist of amazing places you still want to go someday. (Scott Renshaw)
Abravanel Hall, 123 W. South Temple, 801-355-2787, Oct. 11-12, 8 p.m., $20. WarrenMiller.com

Good Company Theatre: Breaking the Shakespeare Code
Plenty of theatrical works have attempted to interpret Shakespeare’s plays in unique ways for specific contexts. John Minigan’s Breaking the Shakespeare Code—staged by Ogden-based Good Company Theatre—steers in a different direction by focusing a character study around the attempts to interpret such celebrated texts. Minigan’s narrative follows two characters. When they first meet, Curt is a recent Ph.D. teaching acting at a small women’s college; Anna is a freshman initially thrown by Curt’s attack on her choices for playing Julius Caesar’s Portia. But instead of alienating the two from one another, their differing ways of seeing Shakespeare’s work becomes a connection between them as they reconnect multiple times over the course of 16 years, a span that includes a scandal that threatens Curt’s academic career and Anna’s own personal crises. Agreeing on the “truth” behind Shakespeare’s poetry and prose may be the easiest task they face. (Scott Renshaw)
Good Company Theatre, 260 25th St., Ogden, 801-564-0783, Oct. 11-19, Thursdays & Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 4 p.m., $12 in advance, $15 at the door. GoodCoTheatre.com

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