Elizabeth A. Miklavcic - Choreographic Works
Mists

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Mists (1992)

Choreographer: Elizabeth A. Miklavcic
Music: Henry Kaiser and David Lindley
Costuming: Ballet Costume Mistress
Lighting: Ballet Department Lighting Designer
Dancers: Ballet West Conservatory Students
Location: Marriott Center for Dance-University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah
Length: 5:55 minutes
Description
Elizabeth Miklavcic studied ballet and tap dancing since the age of four from her teacher Jo Reid, in Aptos, California. Jo more than anyone else taught Elizabeth to love dance in all forms, so when the opportunity arose to choreograph on high school students from the Ballet West Conservatory summer school workshop she was eager to create an age and stylistically appropriate dance for them.

If she could have staged Mists with sets and backdrops, imagine, if you will, watching fairies through a branch-covered veil, just waking up in the dawn of a misty forest. The fairies then begin to move through their daily interactions. The end of the dance is the end of their day where they retake their initial shapes, frozen through the night to start all over again the next day.

One of the choreographic challenges Elizabeth wanted to pose for the students was incorporating modern dance upper body movement combined with the strength and technical range of the legs that ballet training builds. Most of the movement in Mists is very balletic, but within that structure are blended styles that took time and practice for the dancers. Elizabeth knew that the blending of modern dance and ballet styles was the direction that a lot of upcoming choreographers were going and wanted to impart some of this into the dancer's training.

This 1992 performance at the Rose-Wagner Performing Arts Center on the University of Utah Campus was the culmination of the summer school. Elizabeth enjoyed working with the students and always wondered how their dance careers and lives took shape.