World City Guide

Culture

Salt Lake City’s founders made it their mandate to foster the arts and that legacy continues with world-class performing arts companies in music, dance and theatre. There is also a whole host of museums and art galleries.

CitySearch Utah (website: www.utah.citysearch.com) provides an on-line guide to events, while the Salt Lake City Tribune (website: www.sltrib.com) has daily listings. City Weekly (website: www.slweekly.com) and The Event are free weekly papers with extensive reviews and listings.

Smith’s TIX (tel: (801) 467 8499 or (800) 888 8499; website: 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). The Utah Symphony (tel: (801) 533 5626; website: www.utahsymphony.org) stages regular concerts at Abravanel Hall, 123 West South Temple (tel: (801) 355 2787). The Utah Opera Company (tel: (801) 736 6868; website: www.utahopera.org) stages four operas a year featuring internationally known artists at the Capitol Theatre, 50 West 200 South (tel: (801) 355 2787). In addition to these venues, many performing arts companies stage productions at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, 138 West 300 South (tel: (801) 355 2787).

Theatre: The Pioneer Theatre Company (tel: (801) 581 6961; website: www.pioneertheatre.org) performs classic and contemporary plays and musicals, from September to May, in their theatre at the University of Utah campus. Also located at the university is the Babcock Theatre, which stages more experimental productions. Salt Lake Acting Company, 168 West 500 North (tel: (801) 363 0526/7522; website: www.saltlakeactingcompany.org), is a professional theatre company producing year-round plays, including regional premieres of Broadway plays. Hale Centre Theatre, 3333 South Decker Lake Drive (tel: (801) 984 9000; website: http://halecentretheatre.org), puts on musicals, comedies and classics for family entertainment.

Dance: Ballet West (tel: (801) 323 6900; website: www.balletwest.org) is considered one of the country’s premier dance companies. Its repertoire includes classic ballets as well as original works, performed at the Capitol Theatre, 50 West 200 South (tel: (801) 355 2787). The Repertory Dance Theatre (tel: (801) 534 1000; website: www.rdtutah.org), 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) 297 4241; website: www.ririewoodbury.com), with innovative and often humourous dance productions. Both perform at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, 138 West 300 South (tel: (801) 355 2787).

Film: Sundance Institute, a non-profit arts organisation dedicated to the development of independent filmmakers, 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; website: www.sundance.org). Two central mainstream cinemas are Broadway Center Theater, 111 East Broadway 300 South (tel: (801) 321 0310) and Regency Theatre Trolley Square, 602 East 500 South (tel: (801) 746 1555; website: http://regencymovies.com). Tower Theatre, 876 East 900 South (tel: (801) 321 0310; website: www.towertheater.com), not only shows arthouse, independent and foreign films but also hosts an annual Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) night in October.

The US TV series, Touched by an Angel, is filmed in Salt Lake City. The chase scene in How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) was filmed in Big Cottonwood Canyon, outside the city. Scenes from Desperate Hours (1990) and A Life Less Ordinary (1997) were also filmed in Salt Lake City.

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-19th 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.