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Web Extra: Tyler Measom and Diana Whitten on Ballet West's Lost Year

Skyscape Studios

As the dancers of Utah’s Ballet West prepared for their first public performance during the COVID-19 pandemic, directors Diana Whitten and Tyler Measom filmed the company to document how they dealt with the difficulties and uncertainty of creating art during unprecedented times.

Measom and Whitten more or less embedded with the ballet company for a month last year. They followed the dancers, the choreographers, the crew, and the staff as they navigated colossal challenges in the lead up to opening night. All along, they wondered: Will the curtain rise? Measom and Whitten join us to talk about filming an art form as intimate as dance under the stress of a global pandemic and what they learned from these dancers in the time they spent together.

Their nine-part documentary series is called IN THE BALANCE: Ballet for a Lost Year and is available for viewing on Films.RadioWest.org and Balletwest.org.

Doug Fabrizio has been reporting for KUER News since 1987, and became News Director in 1993. In 2001, he became host and executive producer of KUER's RadioWest, a one hour conversation/call-in show on KUER 90.1 in Salt Lake City. He has gained a reputation for his thoughtful style. He has interviewed everyone from Isabel Allende to the Dalai Lama, and from Madeleine Albright to Desmond Tutu. His interview skills landed him a spot as a guest host of the national NPR program, "Talk of the Nation." He has won numerous awards for his reporting and for his work with RadioWest and KUED's Utah NOW from such organizations as the Society of Professional Journalists, the Utah Broadcasters Association, the Public Radio News Directors Association and the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.