The Great Salt Lake Mime Saga and Amsterdam’s Festival of Fools

This attractive collection of images and words shows an unfolding story of artists and musicians meeting at the University of Utahs now-famous Dance Department then taking their original ideas into some of the best theaters in Salt Lake City then even further on to Colorado, Wisconsin, and the first International Mime Festival held in the United States during 1974, just about a year after we launched our Dance Company. The group called themselves Salt Lake Mime Troupe, partly as a gimmick that separated them from the other luminous talents on the Dance Scene, but it also allowed them to explore acting and visual comedy. They had their own band and performed original music from the very beginning too, so they knew how to entertain! The rigor of their Ballet and Modern Dance backgrounds made them standouts at the International Mime Festival in 1974, and they were invited to perform in Europe at the first Festival of Fools in 1975, but were faced with the challenge of keeping bodies, souls, and an unconventional company together until they could make it to Europe. The book follows them to California and all the way to New York City where they hopped the Atlantic Ocean and met up with a globe-encircling network of performers who are still active throughout the world - forty years after Amsterdam’s Festival of Fools began its long run over two different decades.