Another Language was founded in 1985 by Co-Artistic Directors Beth and Jimmy Miklavcic. The company focuses on creating dance-based interdisciplinary performance works. The mission of Another Language is to provide collaborative opportunities to artists and arts organizations, to combine different art forms in innovative ways, and to broaden access to community arts education.

In 1985 Another Language created a work titled, Ted Speaks His Mind. This was a work created for a specific environment in Dinwoody Park, located in downtown Salt Lake City. Portrayed by Jimmy, Ted's unusual way of amusing himself was to play a slide whistle to polka music. The work consisted of a series of dances that told the story of Ted's simple way of life. In addition to the main story several different characters were given a mission during the presentation, to go through a defined obstacle course which included riding a child's tricycle and climbing a tree. Other characters such as two blind men, two nuns, a fisherman and a man floating on a raft in a fountain walked in, amongst, and through as Ted's story unfolded. Ted Speaks His Mind concluded with all the dancers and various characters lining up against a wall by the park fountain, while two scuba divers rose out of the water and walked away.

With this performance Another Language made its debut and set the tone for its creative expression.

Art and life are intertwined. We share the joy and richness we feel for life through the expression of our work. What we hope to achieve in our performances is a moment for the viewer to say 'Yes, I've experienced that feeling.'
Beth Miklavcic

.....super-intense movement, sharply and uncompromisingly executed.
Dorothy Stowe - Deseret News

1987 saw the birth of Beth and Jimmy's daughter Hanelle Miklavcic, Beth's return to school to pursue her master's degree, and a presentation by Another Language, Sounds That Art Makes, a two day festival that featured lectures, demonstrations, and performances by local, national, and international expermental musicians. Our featured artist was internationally renouned experimental musician Charles Amirkhanian who, at this time, was the Music Director of KPFA Radio in San Francisco.

Beth's master's thesis concert in 1988 included the creation of Photographic Memory which is still in the company's active repertoire today.

In 1989 Christopher Ivins and Gunild Pak joined Another Language and with Jimmy created, Where Path's Seldom Cross. Nine performers moved in the crosswalks of downtown Salt Lake for an hour beginning at 5:30 a.m. each morning for a week. The idea of the performance was based on interesctions, intersections between night and day, dream-time and day-time, work and creativity. Community reaction was one of suprise and interest. The work was covered by a video feature in Channel 5 local news.

The 1989-1990 season saw the opportunity for Another Language to move its location into a downtown community of residential and studio spaces known as Artspace. This non-profit organization, directed by Stephen Goldsmith, consists of living and working studios designed to help artists with the creative process during the development of their work. The establishment of this downtown studio fulfilled a longstanding dream of both Beth and Jimmy to create an intimate theatre where artists in the community could have an opportunity to create work, give classes and present performances.

During this time Gunild, Christopher, Beth and Jimmy performed in a downtown alley, and gave two formal concerts, Another Language Holds a Conversation and On the Gutting Ledge. Other company activities this season included performances for Repertory Dance Theatre, Big Brother's Big Sister's Organization, Granite School District, Utah Arts Festival, Phillips Gallery and toured to Snow College in Ephraim, Utah.

This season, The Artists' Exchange was established, a performance presentation where 4-6 invited artists gave a 10 minute presentation and then answered questions from the audience. These exchanges were opportunities to learn the motivation and inspiration from many artists in the community. Visual, film, video, interdisciplinary artists, musicians, poets, writers, actors, and dancers, ranging from first time presenters to professionals, participated.

One of the more interesting performing arts companies in Salt Lake City.
Steve Miller -The Daily Utah Chronicle

1990-1991 saw the expansion of the company to a larger group of performers: Chara Huckins, Sarah Hudelson, Eleni Kambouris, Michael Larkin, and Lori Nichol. Our performances included the Brown Bag Concert Series,the Egyptian Theatre in Park City, Utah and the O.C. Tanner Ampitheater in Springdale, Utah, another Sounds That Art Makes - featuring Henry Kaiser, Jin Hi Kim, and Phillip Bimstein and formal concerts Home Movies and Other Family Secrets and Moving Words. In addition four Artists' Exchanges were presented and the Company helped to organize classes and performances by other artists in the community at Another Language Studio.

The Artists' Exchange...a group comprised of some assortment of artists - dancers, painters, photographers, poets, and/or musicians - perform at Another Language Performance Studio, 345 West Pierpont Ave...members of the audience voice their impressions, opinions, reactions and emotions....Magic happens.
Joyce Marder - The Event

Another Language's performance was stimulating and entertaining, a combination not always achieved by many performing groups.
Carolyn Wardle - The Daily Spectrum

1991-1992 offered the debut of Eglantine a solo video dance work. Created by Beth Miklavcic, with videography and editing by Jimmy Miklavcic, the successful collaboration was described as:

A remarkable multimedia piece...The symbolism is of a rose, but the imagery of the dancing figure in black with tangled braids moves into mysterious, decadent and even threatening realms, suggesting the decay that lurks just below the surface of all blooming, radiant things in their prime. Beth's dancing was vivid, strong, wild, original, and loaded with memorable images.
Dorothy Stowe - Deseret News

The work led to a visual art fellowship nomination for Beth, juried by Henry T. Hopkins, chairman of the Department of Art at the University of California at Los Angeles and director of UCLA's Wight Art Gallery. The prestigous nomination acknowledged the quality of expression defined by the collaboration of the Artistic Directors of Another Language. Hailed as "among the finest artists in Utah."
Ann Poore - The Salt Lake Tribune

Other performance highlights for the 1991-1992 season included a collaboration with the Salt Lake City Arts Council on an AIDS Awareness Day performance, four Artists' Exchanges, a formal spring concert, the opening of the Delta Center stage at the Utah Arts Festival, the International Composer to Composer Conference - Telluride, Colorado, and the Bumbershoot Arts Festival - Seattle, Washington.

In the fall of 1992 Another Language Company returned to Springdale to perform for New Music Utah. Which led to a mention of Jimmy's work in the Village Voice, New York. A week earlier Beth, Jimmy, Michael Larkin and two new members Jeannine Chan and Ryan Sales were invited to Boulder, Utah to create a site specific work on slick rock cliffs. Along with guest performer Tina Karlsson the company presented a work that emphasized the expanse of the beauty of the desert.

Along with the four Artists' Exchanges, the Company offered its first children's concert, Fantasy Flights, and performed monthly at the Children's Museum of Utah. The spring concert, A Blank Stare and a Whisper, marks the debut of a 30 minute work created by Beth, choreographed to the music of Pamela Z. Another Language was featured in the April 1993 issue of The Arts Magazine and was a featured performance group at the Utah Arts Festival.

Art is not a noun. It's a verb, an "action" word. It's a long slow deep breath that one begins near birth and expends when one passes on. And if artists are doing their "job" properly, that breath is expended into the mouth of a new generation.
Jimmy Miklavcic

1993-1994 the Another Language Performing Arts Company was profiled in Utah State of the Arts. A beautiful book commissioned by the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce. The Company initiated an Artist in Residence Progam, a two month residency designed to give an artist studio time and the opportunity to work with Company members who assist the artist with the development of ideas for group and solo work. Hilary Carrier, our first resident artist, culminated her residency with a performance on October 29, 1993. One week earlier the Company gave a wild and zany fundraising party, Night Light and Tails. One week after the residency is completed the company performs it's fall children's concert, See and Share.

The annual spring concert, Society in a Nutshell, included performances by Company members Jeannine Chan, Spencer John Powell, and Travis Rasmussen with guest performer Mickey Mounarath. Along with guest choreographers Hilary Carrier and Rosalind Newmark.

The spring of 1994 the development of another new program began. A four month Scholarship Program designed to give an artist solo time and space in the studio in which to develop work.

May of 1994 marked the final Artists' Exchange and began a new era for the Company. Another Language moved out of the downtown studio and became a part of the Performing Arts Coalition. Jimmy served on two boards and two committees for the Coalition. He served on the Technical Committee, Owner's Committee, and was a member of the PAC Board of Trustees, and Chair of the Advisory Board. The mission of the Coalition was to construct a performance and rehearsal space downtown that will serve many performing groups. This facility was called the West Broadway Performing Arts Center (and would later become the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center) and is located at 134 West Broadway. The plans for this facility will have a 450 seat theatre, a 150 seat black-box theatre, 3 rehearsal studios and office space for several performing organizations. A few of the organizations to be housed in this facility were Repertory Dance Theatre, Gina Bachauer InternationalPiano Competition, Utah Opera, and Stage Two Productions.

After the construction of the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, Another Language was offered office and rehearsal space as residents in the County facility, but the focus of the Company had begun to shift towards creating works in the digital world. Another Language was also in the middle of plans to build its own office and rehearsal studio space.

After the Utah Arts Festival performance in June 1994. The Company took a short break from performance activities.

...go to an Another Language performance. The motion and emotion come together for fresh, new experience that is on the cutting edge.
Sander Sharp - The Daily Utah Chronicle

1994-1995 marked Another Language Performing Arts Company's Tenth Anniversary Season. Company members were Rosie Banchero, Rebecca Groen, Spencer John Powell, Travis Rasmussen, and Mickey Mounarath. The focus of the year was to celebrate the anniversary season with a spring concert. Rehearsals took place at the Capitol Theatre and Repertory Dance Theatre's studio. The Another Language rehearsal studio and phase one of the Performing Arts Center were slated to be completed late summer 1995.

I step onto the cold floor. The sound of the wood cracks and snaps under my feet. The studio is neutral. Waiting for the next energy to arrive. As I take this first step, it is as though I've walked into a warm embrace. The warmth is the memory and experience of working through many hours of creative expression. The studio is the birthplace.

I turn on the amplifier. Put the cassette into the machine and listen. The vibrations of the studio begin to quicken.

I work on movement, combining what I imagine with what can really be done. The movement becomes bold. My joints and muscles are awake now. Spin, turn, toss, ball change, back twice, pause. . . The shape of the phrase begins to solidify.

The movement travels from my brain into my body, from my body to my soul. I'm no longer thinking about steps. Expression. Expression colors the space, molds the space, changes the vibrations in the room. Toss, burst, spiral, fall. . .

The dance is taking shape. I am learning new things from the movement. What if I take this off balance? What if I fall or leap here? Try a new idea, and another, and another...

The studio is warm now. I am warm. I am dancing, communicating with the surrounding space, communicating with the light inside.

Each time I move I learn something, I grow, I connect my heart, mind, and spirit.

That is why I dance.

Beth A. Miklavcic

Art is a journey through cool, crisp forests of dreams around worlds of arcane gestures under expansive and all encompassing skies over industrial and technological solutions to self inflicted trauma. Each motion through thought collects more experiences than any human can digest.Each stroke of color outlines and underscores the desire to prick the bubble of complacency.Each chip of stone falls away from our walls of randomly generated authority. Art is the ability to discover the unknown from the known, the unseen from the ordinary, the unheard from the sounds of our mind's breath. Art is the essence of that which we dare to seek. To look at one's self and to realize that there is more.
Jimmy Miklavcic

Stepping into the Light, was held at Judge Memorial High School Auditorium, April 21 and 22, 1995. In a review of this concert;

Dance is a universal art form that is subject to diverse interpretations - as are poetry and film. In the 10 years of its existence, Another Language Performing Arts Company has tried to bridge the chasms between these forms of communications and expressions with thoughtful imagery...
Scott Iwasaki - Deseret News

The concert premiered three new works and several previous works dating back through the past ten years. No Place Formaldehyde and Approaches choreographed by Jimmy Miklavcic and Beth Miklavcic respectively were two of the premiere works.

In June, Beth and Jimmy Miklavcic were awarded the 1995 Mayor's Artist Award for Performance, Creativity and Community Service. After ten years of participation Another Language made its last appearance at the Utah Arts Festival, where Jimmy served as the Festi-Live Stage coordinator for five years.

In December, the Company was invited to perform Photographic Memory, for a production sponsored by Repertory Dance Theatre, Experiment's in a Black Box. This would be Another Language Performing Arts Company's last live performance for eight years as the Company moved into a research and development phase.

January, 1996 marked the beginning of a new era for Another Language. The Company decided to utilize the Internet as its performance venue. This idea was to give us an outlet for a variety of artistic pursuits that include video, music, poetry, paintings and historic prose. The domain name anotherlanguage.org was registered with Network Solutions and Another Language Performing Arts Company went digital.

The web site www.anotherlanguage.org was first hosted by Phobos Corporation on a Sun Microsystems Sparc10 workstation. With the graphic design work of Susan Roberts and the web site layout and technical set up by Jimmy Miklavcic, the new web site took shape. Work on the web site continued throughout the year poems, paintings, and historical information were installed. Video streaming was in its infancy and many problems were encountered.

While the web site was being constructed, work on the studio and office also continued. The office, although not completely finished, became usable in December. Computers, office equipment and files were moved in during the Christmas holidays.

Streaming video and audio technology was evolving out of infancy when Jimmy began to investigate its possibilities in 1997. He chose, at the time, Progressive Networksproducts called Real Player and Real Server. These were offered free, although with limited capabilities. The server could allow a maximum of ten simultaneous connections and the data rate was limited to 56 kilobits per second (kbs). There were many problems to over come. The streaming server software would not run on the SPARC10 workstation so we had to move the web site to a Silicon Graphics workstation.

The learning curve for video and audio streaming technology was immense. In order to get the best quality, there were many technical hoops to jump through. Jimmy tracked down a PC that had an audio card and began the process of digitizing the first music composition. It took several weeks to learn the intricacies of digital audio capturing and editing. Finally he had a product that could now be loaded onto the web site, but it had to be converted into the Real Video/Audio format. After several attempts at conversion, at about four hours for each attempt, a digitized version was accomplished and the first streaming media was installed onto the media server.

Although hours and hours of work had gone into creating this new venue, funding was reduced dramatically by agencies that had little understanding of the complicated nature of this work.

In 1998, having installed our first streaming media didn’t quite yet mean that we were ready to present our works. Just before inaugurating our first presentation, we were faced with having to move our web site from the Phobos Corporation’s system to the University of Utah’s Center for High Performance Computing systems. This required moving the domain registration of anotherlanguage.org over to the University of Utah in such a way that there was as little disruption of service as possible.

After the “technical difficulties” endured in 1997, this year proved itself as a year of good fortune. Another Language was able to present the Internet premiere of a music composition I’m Tired (1981) and a video work Nobody Special (1996).

Work continued on the studio. In the office, there was much finish work to be done. Cabinets were installed in the area under the stairs creating a kitchen-like area. Vicki Panella a leader in the arts community made us aware of a classified ad in the Salt Lake Tribune indicating the sale of maple wood flooring for $2.00 sq. ft. After inquiring about the sale, it was discovered the maple flooring was from the old downtown Salt Lake City Deseret Gym.

First funding from the Zoo Arts and Parks Tier II Salt Lake County program was approved.

After running the website for more than two years, 1999 was a time for a new look. The current site up to this point had a dark look, for example all images and graphics floated on a black background. Susan Roberts took on the challenge to redesign the site and make it lighter with more interesting graphics. Susan created a great new look and we were excited to update the entire site.

By this time Progressive Networks, the maker of this media streaming technology, evolved into the ubiquitous Real Networks. The video and audio server software had grown to a stable and high quality product. The video server was upgraded with the new Real Server G2 product, installing streaming video and audio became easier.

This gave Another Language the opportunity to present three new network premieres. The first was A Chrysalis Project (1986), a video dance created by Beth Miklavcic and produced by Kerry Jensen. Beth composed the score for the work and created the concept for the set. Jimmy Miklavcic designed and built the stage set. The next installation onto the web site was an electronic music composition by Jimmy for When the Floor Bounces, originally scored for a dance choreographed by Beth. The final premiere for the season was, No Credit, a solo video work by Jimmy Miklavcic. As of October 1998, we discovered that there had been 61,232 visits to our web site to date.

Work began on an interactive DVD-ROM and web documentary covering the process of creating a work and tracking its changes over a ten-year period. Beth chose, What? a dance piece she choreographed with music by Jimmy. This interactive project presents an educational thesis on the evolvement of a work over time. Beth Miklavcic chose to write about What? because it had been consistently revived with different performers and performed in different spaces over the years. The interactive web presentation, currently available in the Education section of the web site involves photographic images, graphic design, video streaming, and a teachers aide questionnaire.

2000

The new millennium, marked renewed work on the rehearsal studio. Jimmy prepared the studio space to receive a 6.75" x 19.5" x 30' beam to help support the ceiling. Posts that were placed in the center of the space were removed. The beam was installed in the summer with the help of two material lifts, Robert Mcdermott, Steve Scott and others.

Beth pulled together the video documentation from the past fifteen years and transferred the tapes to the digital DVC-Pro format. These included the old BetaMax format tapes as well as VHS and Hi8mm. To transfer the BetaMax tapes a BetaMax VCR was purchased from E-Bay. Beth spent nearly six months pressing the play and record buttons. During this time she compiled thirteen different versions of What? in order to prepare for the DVD-ROM project.

In May, production started on Creative Passings. This new video work, created by Beth and photographed by Jimmy, featured dancer Hanelle Miklavcic.It was a tribute to Izzy Wagner, a major contributor to the construction of the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center. Scenes were shot at Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake, Silver Lake in Brighton, Utah and downtown Salt Lake City.

More and more computer users visited www.anotherlanguage.org. In the period of Dec 1999 through November 2000, our web server registered over 150,000 hits, from 7,000 unique hosts. This number was more than double the number of visits during the same time last year. Just over 1,000 of the 7,000 unique hosts were visits from K-12 sites.

2001

Work on the Studio was suspended due to other construction priorities.

On March 31, 2001,Creative Passings premiered at the Grand Opening Gala of the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center. Beth spent a year editing this video work. As she was nearing the end of the editing process, she received an introductory e-mail message from composer Irfan Shaw of 3jane in Leicester, UK. After visiting the Another Language web site he made his compositions on MPE.com available to the Company. Beth listened to Moves: Ariel Mix and was very intrigued; this selection was a perfect fit for Creative Passings. This was the first time that Another Language was able to participate in an international collaboration through our web site.

Later that summer, Beth began scanning in over 100 photos of What?. These images were to be incorporated into the What?: A Choreographic Evolution interactive DVD-ROM. Not only did she scan in the photographs, she also scanned in the proof sheets where she worked on enlarging some of the smaller images.

2002

From January through May of 2002, Beth and Jimmy taught Performance Art and Technology for the College of Fine Arts, Arts and Technology Program. The students worked hard throughout the semester investigating the multifaceted process of performance art. Each student’s final performance project was to incorporate technology, culminating into a fully integrated event.

Work continued throughout this year on What?: A Choreographic Evolution DVD-ROM. Beth edited each of the thirteen versions of What?. This included the creation of the title slides for each of the videos, the design of menu backgrounds, the arrangement of more than 100 photos and digital images for the DVD and the historical documentation of its creative process.

In December, Creative Passings was screened at the Loaf-I Film Festival held at the Broadway Theater in Salt Lake City, Utah.

2003

DVD authoring work continued on the What?: A Choreographic Evolution DVD-Rom in 2003. The goal was to get the project replicated by June so that it would beready for distribution by the beginning of the K-12 school year. Beth assembled all the assets, the video, images and menus into Spruce Technologies’ DVD Maestro (now Apple's DVD Studio Pro). By May, it was ready for replication and by the end of June, the DVD was published.

Through February and March Another Language began rehearsals for the first Internet performance, using the Access Grid^TM video conferencing software tool package. Interplay: Intransitive Senses, premiered on April 16 at the Intermountain Networking and Scientific Computation Center Auditorium on the University of Utah campus.The event featured performances by Alex Caldiero, Harold Carr, Flavia Cervino-Wood, Beth Miklavcic, Hanelle Miklavcic and was directed by Jimmy Miklavcic. Technical artists included Brian H. Buck, Eric Brown, Derek Cowan, and Shawn Lyons. Matthew Thorley documented the performance. The audience experienced the event in several ways. They could attend the live performance events, view the video streams at any of the Access Grid sites, or view them online with their home or work computer. Jimmy Miklavcic, manipulated each video stream to appear in any of four video playback windows similar to Windows Media Player or Apple's QuickTime Player. This created a work that took four individual stories and wove them into a multi-layered distributed tapestry.

On September 12, Beth Miklavcic presented a seminar on the process of creating What?: A Choreographic Evolution DVD-ROM. She shared the three year process of gathering all the video, editing the project, formatting the images, designing the video title slides and DVD menus. Then she covered linking the assets in the authoring system, and testing the entire project before burning the final DVD project to tape. All attendees received a free copy of the DVD-ROM. The DVD is currently available free to all K-12 educators. It is also available as an Another Language membership incentive. The cost to the general public is $25.00.

Between August 2002 and September 2003 www.anotherlanguage.org registered more than 350,000 hits.

Creative Passings was screened at two festivals this year. It appeared in the 22^nd Utah Film and Video Center’s Short Film and Video Festival on June 15 in Salt Lake City, UT. Then July 3 - 5, Creative Passings, made its European premiere at Coreografo Electronico – Festival International di Videodanza in Napoli, Italy.

Interplay: Intransitive Senses was performed a second time on October 10 for The Symposium on Science and Literature. Due to a family emergency, a cast change had to take place. Two very professional and capable musicians stepped in to perform. Sam Liston (guitar) and Kate Macleod (violin) performed with Alex Caldiero, Beth and Hanelle. The line up made this broadcast successful and exciting with a very different texture. Technical Artists were Eric Hansen, Brian H. Buck, Eric Brown, and Kent Christensen. J. C. Cunningham documented the performance and Shawn Lyons took digital photographs.

In November, Creative Passings was added to the University of Utah Marriott Library Special Collections Division. On November 25^th we unveiled the interactive web version of What? A Choreographic Evolution. Web visitors can access much of the same content as the DVD-ROM through the web site, www.anotherlanguage.org/education

2004

The first project of the season was a cinematic version of Music for Bubble Biters: The Documentary beginning in January with production continuing through June. Bubble Biters is a work that was performed in the Another Language repertory for many years. Originally created in 1985 by Jimmy Miklavcic and performed for a variety of events such as the opening of Cinema in your Face 1985, Sounds that Art Makes New Music Festival 1986 and 1990, Composer-to-Composer Music Conference 1992, and many others. Director Beth Miklavcic used the work as a springboard to expand structured situations and create scenes that covered the process of bringing Music for Bubble Biters to public view. Shot in sequential order as much as possible; the cinematic version began with the first meeting, (which really was the first meeting) and covered the rehearsal process to the final performance with character adventures and interviews interspersed throughout the rehearsal process. This film explored each Bubble Biter performer with improvised, but mostly truthful dialogue by the actors.

MUSIC FOR BUBBLE BITERS: THE DOCUMENTARY SYNOPSIS

Artistic obsession and the need to create takes on many forms and some of them are so unconventional that the adventure of bringing the idea into reality is more of a struggle then the actual performance. This is the case with Music for Bubble Biters: The Documentary. Shot in the Mockumentary film style the story follows, Jimmy, the conductor and creator of the Bubble Biters composition as he sets the work on a new cast. Some members of the cast have issues with what they are being asked to do, which is play an instrument that is a bowl of water.

The film begins with the first meeting of the new cast and shows their reaction to what they are being asked to do, for a couple, the idea is just a bit too strange, others are hesitant, others who were in the original cast are all for starting up again. This seems very representative of how the general public often reacts to a new artistic idea.

As rehearsals progress, some of the cast has to be replaced, and there is a near drowning. Tony who was a member of the original cast in the 1980’s finds a resurgence of his need to participate in guerilla art attacks such as he used to do "back in the day." Bus finds himself facing his own fears about his commitment to this strange performance. Erik has to find a path through his inherent shyness, and in the opposite direction Jimmy has to wrangle Aaron a professional water musician who travels around the country with his entourage of fans.

As the performance nears, the main issue becomes will there be an audience to see the concert and does a full house really matter when the triumph is really bringing the piece to fruition in the first place. When the cast finally does get it together, magic happens and it is a glorious moment.

As the members of the cast go back to their daily routines we see how the experience of being a Bubble Biter has affected their lives and shows the value of artistic expression in whatever form it takes.

Through interviews with the cast and conductor, the Bubble Biters story is told with honesty, vulnerability, humor and the true belief that art changes peoples lives and makes our world a better place because of the people who are willing to take creative risks.

Many of the interviews and rehearsals were shot during February and March, then production was postponed during April as work intensified on the upcoming InterPlay performance.

March 2004 marked the completion of the InterPlay: Intransitive Senses DVD. This project took Beth nearly six months to complete.

On April 23 - 25 Another Language premiered InterPlay: Hallucinations. This performance was our first multi-site event. Hallucinations explored several aspects of hallucinations within social, political, visual and audible contexts. Video imagery emanating from each remote site, Alaska and Maryland, was combined with video imagery generated at the primary site, Utah. A multilayered visual experience was achieved with more than seven video streams display on a sixty square foot area.

Each of the primary artists chose their own context on which to base their expressions. Beth Miklavcic, Artistic Director of Another Language, conceived her work, The Surface of Things, around the concept of social hallucinations by exposing the misinformation we impose on ourselves through first impressions. Scott Deal, percussionist and composer, and Miho Aoki, visual artist/computer animator, worked loosely with notions of perceived communications and encounters. Brian Buck, dancer/choreographer, explored hallucinogenic properties of the Moebious Strip, regarded as the only two dimensional object in existence. Nadja Masura, video artist, investigated the hallucinations inside the political and commercial machine, focusing on how we are conditioned into believing what we are hearing and seeing. Jimmy Miklavcic applied these individual concepts and integrated them in a tapestry of hallucinogenic images.

InterPlay: Hallucinations featured local performances by actors Tony Larimer, Aaron Henry, Beth Miklavcic, Priscilla Steed, and Marie Larimer in a theatre/video work titled The Surface of Things. This performance piece focused on the stereotypes we encounter when first impressions, based on the way we look, are in direct conflict with the sum total of our experiences that define our real selves. The old adage, "Don't judge a book by its cover," came into play as a strong motivation for the creation of this work.

During the performance of The Surface of Things Aaron and Beth held cameras and shot their point-of-views in a camera choreography experiment those video streams were incorporated into the performance in order to give the audience a more personal experience from the actor’s perspective. The hand held streams were projected on the large screen as well as on two pieces of Plexiglas^TM hung on stage right and left. The projections on the Plexiglas gave an ethereal and ghost like texture to the live video. An additional wide shot of the performance and screen display in the Utah auditorium was shot by camera operator Erik Brown.

The video streams were assembled simultaneously and mixed live by director Jimmy Miklavcic into a digital mix. In total, the performance included ten live video streams that were displayed on the screen for the Utah audience to experience and streamed out onto Internet 2 to the other remote sites. Locally, Sam Liston controlled the main display and orchestrated the entrance, arrangement, and removal of all of the video windows during the performance. All the remote sites had control of their own display design.

In May, work continued on Music for Bubble Biters: The Documentary, shooting the main performance scene and additional final interviews. By the end of the month production had finished and the post-production process had begun. Working throughout the rest of the year, Beth edited the project, created the sound score and authored the DVD into its final package. Jimmy worked on colorization of the video images during the editing process.

Additional 2004 Highlights:
Creative Passings and InterPlay: Intransitive Senses were official selections of the Just Another Film Festival in Farmington, Utah, which was held the same weekend as the InterPlay: Hallucinations performance. InterPlay: Intransitive Senses made its European premiere at Coreografo Elettronico Festival International di Videodanza in Napoli, Italy on May 10-12, 2004. A poster session of InterPlay: Hallucinations was presented at the University of Utah’s Arts and Technology Symposium in Salt Lake City, Utah on September 30 - October 2. On November 11, a paper InterPlay: Hallucinations - Case Study was presented at Supercomputing Global 2004 at the Pittsburgh Convention Center, Pittsburgh, PA.

Between January 1, 2004 and December 31, 2004 www.anotherlanguage.org registered 224,402 accesses with 8,079 unique hosts.

2005

Music for Bubble Biters: The Documentary premiered in Salt Lake City at a special screening for cast, crew, friends and family at the University of Utah Intermountain Network and Scientific Computation Center Auditorium on January 14. Bubble Biters screened on March 24, as an Official Selection of the Just Another Film Festival in the Wildcat Theater at Weber State University.

Work began on Music for Bubble Biters: The History DVD, which will make up the second disc in the two disc Bubble Biters set. From January through April Beth encoded videos of performances, rehearsals, and classes from the past 20 years. The performances had been recorded on a variety of media such as 8mm, VHS, DVC-Pro, and Mini-DV tapes. During the encoding process whenever she found a performance of Bubble Biters it was copied into a special project area, and be assembled into a history DVD project similar to the What? DVD that was created in 2003. The rest of the encoded materials will be included in an extensive History Project on the website.

This year we initiated a new program, the Actors Showcase, a forum for actors, artists, musicians and filmmakers to show and discuss their work and to learn about each other. Three events took place on February 23, May 25, and November 2.

2005 was a great year for InterPlay performances. The premiere of InterPlay: Loose Minds in a Box was held April 15 - 17 in Salt Lake City, Utah. This performance expanded its participant sites to five. Collaborators included were Beth Miklavcic, Jimmy Miklavcic, Erik Brown (Another Language/ University of Utah), Scott Deal, Miho Aoki (University of Alaska, Fairbanks/Arctic Region Supercomputing Center), Charles Nichols (University of Montana, Missoula), Tina Shah, Helen Kostis, (University of Illinois, Chicago), T.J. Rogers, Joe Hayes, Carol Cunningham, Dioselin Gonzalez, David Sigman (Purdue University/Envision Center for Data Perceptualization, Indiana), Nadja Masura, Moira Jackson, Brian Buck and Nick Bartoli (University of Maryland).

Loose Minds in a Box was a look at the boundaries of our existence, whether self imposed or inflicted by others. In this work, Beth developed the piece, Dressers. She performed in a closet behind the audience, created numerous characters and explored the concept that we are what we wear. The closet was covered with blue paper inside and out so that Jimmy could utilize chroma-key effects by placing Beth's various personalities into the video streams coming from the other five sites.

Music was performed by Scott Deal and Charles Nichols in Alaska and Montana respectively. At one point, Joe Hayes, under the choreographic direction of Carol Cunningham in Illinois controlled Charles’ electronic composition with motion-captured movement. Performance artists Eric Brown from Utah, Eleni and Tina from Illinois and Nadja, Brian, Moira and Nick from Maryland added depth to the performance while Miho Aoki and David Sigman created the computer graphics and animation.

Dioselin Gonzalez created a virtual environment that was projected onto Purdue's performance space. Audience members in Utah had access to two systems placed in the lobby of the Intermountain Network and Scientific Computation Center and were able to manipulate avatars in the virtual space changing in real-time the visual environment in Purdue.

InterPlay: Loose Minds in a Box was performed in Los Angeles, California for the SIGGRAPH 2005 conference at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Another Language recreated the original live performance on August 3-4 with great success. It was the first time that a performance utilizing the Access Grid^TM Technology appeared at this world-renowned computer graphics conference. InterPlay: Loose Minds in a Box continued its tour to Seattle, Washington for a performance at the Supercomputing Global 2005 Conference in the Washington State Convention and Trade Center. All sites came together again to help perform this project for local attendees and those connected via the Access Grid.

On June 27, Beth and Jimmy presented two papers in a panel session at the International Federation of Theatre Research. The papers, The Role of the Performer in the InterPlay Process by Beth and InterPlay: Hallucinations, A Telematic Performance Form by Beth and Jimmy Miklavcic depicted the process of creating an InterPlay performance from the perspective of the artists and the technology. The conference was held at the University of Maryland in College Park, MD. These papers were presented again on October 7 at the UVSC Humanities and Technology Association Conference 2005 in Snowbird, Utah.

As the end of 2005 approached, the company had the opportunity to screen Music for Bubble Biters - the Documentary, InterPlay: Intransitive Senses and InterPlay: Hallucinations, for First Night Salt Lake City 2006 (a New Year’s Eve celebration) at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center Studio Theater.

Throughout 2005, work continued on the website, an ongoing project The Another Language History Project was updated with programs and some restored photographs from 1990. An InterPlay section with information from the three live performances was updated and expanded as well.

Between January 1, 2005 and December 31, 2005 www.anotherlanguage.org registered 458,701 accesses with 8,070 unique hosts.

2006

The Company went right into development and rehearsals for the premiere performance of InterPlay: Dancing on the Banks of Packet Creek on March 31 - April 2 hosted in Salt Lake City, Utah. This work was an exploration into the tenuous devotion towards the inundating wave of digital information and non-experiential knowledge. Packet Creek depicted the Internet with its flow of disassembled pieces of data that course throughout the world like schools of spawning salmon. Dancing on the Banks represented the ritualistic gyrations that are expressed as people create, disseminate, search, and acquire this electronic epistemological knowledge.

InterPlay: Dancing on the Banks of Packet Creek was an exciting blend of images and sounds using the Access Grid Video Conferencing Technology into a real-time collaborative surrealistic cinematic performance. Local live performers were joined in this performance with ArtGrid participants from University of Alaska Fairbanks, Boston University, University of Maryland, and Purdue University. As an Internet2 member connected to the Abilene Network, the University of Utah provides the network infrastructure and computing facilities that made the InterPlay process possible.

On March 23, just prior to our performance of InterPlay: Dancing on the Banks of Packet Creek, Beth and Jimmy presented, via the Access Grid, an overview of the InterPlay process for the University of Alaska's Internet 2 Day. April 6, 2006 Jimmy and Beth presented an InterPlay overview for the Mid-Atlantic Gigapop Philadelphia Internet 2 (MAGPI) seminar in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

On April 28, InterPlay: Loose Minds in a Box was selected by the Peoria Civic Federation, Peoria NEXT and ArtsPartners of Central Illinois as a National Semifinalist for the 2006 Peoria Prize for Creativity.

Paradigm Entertainment's Your Indies are Showing, a Cable Network television show, picked up Music for Bubble Biters - The Documentary. Head of operations Adam Nielson arranged for a television interview on June 6 with Beth, Jimmy and performer Erik Brown.

Jimmy spent considerable time during the summer of 2006 converting the entire Another Language web site from frames to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). The web site now has a better interactive flow as one progresses from page to page.

Another Language hit the road for a performance InterPlay: Dancing on the Banks of Packet Creek on November 15 for the Supercomputing Global 2006 conference at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Florida. With the aid a new software product call AGVCR by Derek Piper of Indiana University; the performance with was recreated using the individually recorded Access Grid video and audio streams. Beth worked the display on the main node display while Sam Liston used 3D Desktop on SUSE Linux to manipulate the center video windows while Jimmy mixed the live video streams. Directly after the performance Jimmy and Beth gave a joint presentation Production Elements and The Presentation of Self Over the Access Grid. This presentation covered the production elements one should consider when meeting and working in the Internet Broadcast genre. Beth covered camera placement, lighting and background simplification; Jimmy covered audio applications, such as equipment options appropriate for personal, group, and classroom applications. He also covered some etiquette "dos and don'ts" that are unique to video conferencing meetings.

Between January 1, 2006 and December 31, 2006 www.anotherlanguage.org registered 567.195 accesses with 19,231 unique hosts.

2007

Work began in earnest on InterPlay: Nel Tempo di Sogno with weekly meetings over the Access Grid. Participating sites included the University of Alaska Fairbanks - Arctic Region Supercomputing Center, Boston University, the University of Illinois Urbana - Champaign, the University of Maryland - College Park, Purdue University - Envision Center for Data Perceptualization, and the University of Utah Center for High Performance Computing.

Featured Internet artists and performers were Musicians - William Scott Deal and David Krnavek, Dancer - Carrie Baker, Graphic Artists - Miho Aoki, Somer Hahm, Chao Peng and Siyuan Wang from Fairbanks, AK; Musicians - Junko Simons and Robert Putnam from Boston, MA; Performance Artists - Nadja Masura , Peter Rogers and Julie Zdanoski from College Park, MD Graphic Artists - Timothy J. Rogers from West Lafayette, IN; and Dancer - Chun-Chen Chang from Urbana-Champaign, IL.

Beth wrote a first draft of the script to provide a framework for the InterPlay and over the next three months she wrote six drafts as more information became available and as she began collaborating with individual artists who would perform monologues during the piece. Jimmy Miklavcic worked with the Maryland artists on their context and monologues.

...arguably the Wasatch Front's most "cutting-edge" performing-arts company
Ivan M. Lincoln - Deseret Morning News

This InterPlay performance, conceived by Directors Beth and Jimmy Miklavcic included Utah Visual Artist - Paul Heath www.paulheathart.com who created a silkscreen composition around the subject of time during the three performances and Didjeridoo musician Marko Johnson www.rounddoor.com Utah actors performed a new original collaborative script that included text contributions from most of the performers. They were William Ferrer - The Peoples Theatre, Eliza Wren - Halloween Town 4, Travis Eberhard - Church Ball, Jenni Lou Oakes - The Comedy Circuit, and Beth Miklavcic - Napoleon Dynamite.

Nel Tempo di Sogno (In the Dreamtime) focused on a voyage through distorted time, creating visual echoes of moments past, present and future. Seven distinct characters performing in Utah, interacted and communicated with each other as they depicted different moments in time. They also interacted with four additional characters from different geographical locations. The characters examined how time affected their very existence, including how they made use of their time and when they ran out of time.

The performance was held March 31 - April 1, in Utah, live attendance was available at the Intermountain Network and Scientific Computation Center auditorium on the University of Utah campus. The Utah studio audience had the benefit of seeing the screen display and the live performance that took place in the auditorium, they also saw the camera operators in action as they videotaped the live performance, which was sent through the Access Grid and manipulated by Jimmy Miklavcic in the digital mix. After the performance the very responsive audiences at all sites participated in a post performance discussion. Although the audience numbers (including on-line viewers) were still small for a total of 449, they doubled from the previous InterPlay: Dancing on the Banks of Packet Creek held in 2006.

It's difficult to explain what exactly Another Language Performing Arts Company is. The multi-media cross-genre montage of live and computer-streamed performances the group is known for doesn't exactly fit into art critic's categories.
Kelly Keiter - Salt Lake Magazine