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City Guide - Salt Lake City - Culture | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Culture Salt Lake City's founders made it a mandate to foster the arts, and that legacy continues with world-class performing arts companies in music, dance and theatre. There is also a host of museums and art galleries. CitySearch Utah (web site: www.utah.citysearch.com) provides an on-line guide to events, while the Salt Lake City Tribune has daily listings, and City Weekly and The Event are free weekly papers with extensive reviews and listings. Smith's Tixx (tel: (801) 467 TIXX or (800) 888 TIXX; web site: www.smithstix.com) is the most accessible ticket agency, with branches located in Smith's grocery stores throughout the city. Music: The Mormon Tabernacle Choir is famous throughout the world, and visitors can attend weekly performances (see Key Attractions section). The Utah Symphony, the 12th largest orchestra in the country, stages regular concerts at Abravanel Hall (tel: (801) 533 5626). Utah Opera Company (tel: (801) 736 6868) stages four operas a years featuring internationally known artists. Theatre: The Pioneer Theatre Company (tel: (801) 581 6961) performs classic and contemporary plays and musicals, from September to May, in their theatre at the University of Utah campus. Also located here is the Babcock Theatre, which stages more experimental productions. Salt Lake Acting Company (tel: (801) 363 0526) is a professional theatre company producing regional premieres of Broadway plays. City Rep, 638 South State Street, puts on musicals, comedies and classics for family entertainment. Dance: Ballet West (tel: (801) 323 6901) is considered one of the country's premier dance companies. Its repertoire includes classic ballets as well as original works. The Repertory Dance Theatre (RDT) (tel: (801) 534 1000), founded in 1966, was the first professional modern dance repertory company established outside New York. Also widely renowned is the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company (tel: (801) 323 6801), with innovative and often humourous dance productions. Film: Sundance Institute, a non-profit arts organisation dedicated to the development of independent film-makers, which is run by Robert Redford and located in the nearby mountains, has an office at Suite 5002, 307 West 200 South (tel: (801) 328 3456). Two central mainstream cinemas are Cineplex Odeon Broadway, 300 South State Street (tel: (801) 359 2112) and Trolley Square Cinemas, 300 South and 700 East (tel: (801) 363 1183). Museums: Among the city's museums and galleries are the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, on the University of Utah campus (tel: (801) 581 7332); Salt Lake Art Center, downtown on South West Temple (tel: (801) 328 4201); the Arts of Utah Gallery on South 700 East Street (tel: (801) 467 7477); the Utah State Historical Society in the Historic Rio Grande Depot (tel: (801) 533 3500). Cultural events: The most famous festival in the area is the Sundance Film Festival (web site: www.sundancefilm.com), every January, in Park City - just 51km (32 miles) from Salt Lake City. It is an internationally recognised showcase for new independent cinema. Literary Notes For over a century writers have marvelled at the Great Salt Lake. In City of the Saints (1861), Richard Burton called it 'that inland briny sea which apparently has no business there'. In Roughing It (1872), Mark Twain joked that Salt Lake City was so healthy that its one doctor was regularly arrested for having no visible means of support. Robert Gottlieb and Peter Wiley offered an insight into the politics and economic strength of the Mormons with America's Saints, published in the 1980s. Local writers include Tom Roulstone, whose One Against the Wilderness (1996) is a work of historical fiction that chronicles the life of a woman in the mid-nineteenth century as she travels west with the LDS; and Angela K. Black, who wrote Bitterbrush (1994), a mystery story set in the Wasatch Mountains overlooking Salt Lake City. |
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