Mile High City

Choreography and Direction by Sarah Tallman

Music by Gabriel Otto and Tad Lusk

Lyrics by Gabriel Otto

Performed by Pan Astral

Starring Karina Cardella and Damien Patterson

Featuring Amanda Bouza, Stephen Blood, Jocelyn Green and Evan Pitts

walk on air above the street
Indian bones whispering
I let go of myself

moving slow in the heat
setting sun kissed my cheek
through the frame of the street lights

in a mile high city

oh, my girl kiss me true
let the moon follow suit
let my heart be the fool

free to be you and me
we deserve the air we breathe
we let go of the rule

in a mile high city

looking out we can see
a thousand miles to the sea
build a fire, we are free

come alive around the flame
to the sound of a train
we let go of ourselves

in a mile high city

About Mile High City

It is easy to be confounded by the grace of Denver richly falling beneath majestic mountains and sacred sunsets. It is common to read romantic rhetoric about her views and the proximity to a mecca found in her mountain tops. But to find a city’s soul, we must climb down to wander the world of tall buildings, underground tunnels, alleys and side streets. It is here we discover Denver’s heartbeat pulsing.

The heart of a city lies in its ability to invent even amidst the pervasive dichotomy of great love and great loss. Art quickly becomes an essential tool to drive conversations forward, and our inevitable evolution is not without the essence of beauty in all of its forms to do so. Life is tragic in the absence of the sublime, and therefore, the very threshold of our existence must be moved by imagination. Art intrinsically becomes a city’s heartbeat—a metronome to keep her in sync.

Wonderbound is a part of this rich canvas. The vibrant tenderness Wonderbound carries continually turns what looks like nothing into something. It is in this nothing that we sense a topple. The city turns inside out, the nothing becomes everything, and we discover place.

Creators depend on finding physical space and materials to make their craft happen. Mile High City was choreographed and filmed in a portion of Wonderbound’s future studios. A single room in a large building that contains the same magic the city holds. The same magic Wonderbound holds. The film is a live mural, painting everyday motions of expression. Splashes of color, fast moving snippets of joy, frustration, disbelief, and ultimately, what it feels like when things are left unsaid.

About the Artists

Sarah Tallman is a native of Colorado and holds a BA with honors in Dance Performance and Choreography from the University of Northern Colorado, where she was the two-time recipient of the esteemed honor of Dancer of the Year. She has participated in the Inside ODC Professional Workshop, Baardar Dance Institute in Oslo, Norway and Perry- Mansfield Performing Arts School. Sarah has danced with David Taylor Dance Theatre, Kim Robards Dance, Lynn Barr, and Gleich Dances Contemporary Ballet. Off- season, Sarah has been a Principal Artist with Central City Opera performing in Carmen, Anna II in Seven Deadly Sins and Dream Laurey in Oklahoma!. Since joining Wonderbound, Sarah has danced leading roles in Garrett Ammon’s When the Power Goes Out, Intersection, Boomtown, Gone West, and Love in the Digital Age, among others, as well as Dawn Fay’s Like An Onion. Sarah has been featured in world premieres by Alex Ketley, Maurya Kerr, Amy Seiwert, Mark Godden, Ma Cong and Lauri Stallings. An accomplished choreographer, she has created several works for Wonderbound including See Yourself, In-Between Seams, Intimate Letters and I Didn't Hear You, I Was Away with the Fairies. Sarah has taught and created works for the Colorado Conservatory of Dance, and has directed the Intermediate Program at Burklyn Ballet Theatre. Sarah's interests include her loving husband, yoga, the mountains, twinkling lights and the color orange.

Pan Astral is a Denver alternative rock band focused on pushing the envelope of musical experimentation both in the studio and during live performances. Throughout their history, the band has consistently incorporated projection mapping featuring original video art as well as artworks created by local Denver artists. As well as performing and recording as a lead singer for Lotus, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Gabriel Otto both produced and wrote music for Flobots' last album, No Enemies. Since 2010, Pan Astral has toured throughout the U.S. and recorded three studio albums. They are due to release their fourth album in 2020. Pan Astral's 2016 album Suburban Blues was released just before Flobots' 2017 No Enemies release. At this point the band had just come out of a tumultuous period which included a lineup change, influencing some of the emotional content of the album. The abstracted lyrics in Suburban Blues are mainly focused on love, loss, and socio-political unrest. From the white flag raising of Snowflake to the heartbroken crooning of the title track Suburban Blues, the album successfully captures a snapshot of the group in time and encompasses both the band's songwriting and musical styles up until that point.