Owen Fulton’s story is one of grit, persistence, and determination, fed by a quite remarkable Utah dance scene little known outside that part of the country.
Owen has always loved dancing and watching dance, but because of the expense he didn’t actually begin instruction until he was 15. That was when he started at the tuition-free Pioneer Performing Arts High School in American Fork, Utah, where he grew up. Dance occupied the first half of each school day, with classes in contemporary, jazz, ballet, hip hop and tap. Owen, of course, lapped it up and thrived. Sadly, however, he only was able to attend Pioneer for one year before bankruptcy closed the school down.
What came next was Odyssey Dance, a professional company that is part of the Utah Conservatory of the Performing Arts and based in Draper, Utah, near Salt Lake City. The mission of Odyssey Dance Theatre was, among other things, “to provide employment for Utah’s talented dancers… and to make theatrical dance more accessible to a wide audience by utilizing current social themes and music, as well as creating and re-creating classical and full-length works that are exciting.
Owen joined full time, at 16 the youngest in a company, many of whose members were in their mid-20s and up. Meanwhile, he was also taking academic school for some of the time. Because of the pandemic, both the school and Theater 2, which he was part of, were online. But eventually, Odyssey was able to go on to tour, all over Utah and even to Germany. “Over the next three years, I performed in Thriller over 200 times and also did about 7 other original shows with Odyssey. It’s a Wonderful Life, Let it be (Beatles show), Chicago, and repertory work, to name a few. And all of them were dance-only adaptions of theater productions or original dance productions.” Owen loved the performing and the travel. But alas, Odyssey too went dark. “The founder/artistic director went to serve a mission for the Latter Day Saint (Mormon) church, so they closed down after 30 years,” although as Owen also notes, “they are actually back up and running again upon [the director’s] return.” So yet again, Owen had to look elsewhere.
And once more, Utah’s rich dance culture presented new prospects for personal and professional growth. “I then worked at Hale Center Theatre [a 900 seat hall], 2022-2023, doing 3 theater shows: The Little Mermaid and Hello Dolly, as an ensemble member, and I played Elmer is Newsies. Each production ran for several months with shows nightly. I was lucky enough to be in all three back-to-back, but they were all different directors and choreographers for each show.” Good training for Whim W’Him!
“At the same time,” he recounts, “I was on Junction Dance Company,” whose vision involves “bridging gaps between age, race, religion, sexual orientation, identity, street and concert styles of dance” in a non-competitive environment. Junction’s stated goal is to “educate our dancers on the history, culture, musicality and technique of each genre, [and] we also emphasize development in improvisation, freestyle, partnering, choreography and stage performance.
“On Junction,” says Owen, “I did I think 3 dance shows with them that only had weekend runs—much like Whim—so it was mostly studio and rehearsal time during the day, while I was doing the theater shows at night with Hale… At both Odyssey and Junction we had class daily in various styles. Mostly jazz and ballet with Odyssey, and mostly house/hip hop and contemporary with Junction.”
But for all this breadth of experience, Owen had his eye on the wider world. A new opportunity came along when he was invited to join the Gibney Dance Certificate Program (GibneyPRO). He had long wished to go to New York “to get background and fill the training I was missing, especially in true contemporary dance that I wanted.” Not surprisingly, NYC was a shock, but Owen was surrounded by a lot of friends. Of the 18 students in the program, 5 were from Utah. There is, as he says, “a huge Utah dance industry.”
At Gibney Owen also met Stella Jacobs, also soon-to-be a Whim W’Him dancer. During his 10 months in New York, he mostly concentrated on the Gibney program, though he also did a few little outside projects and a lot of auditioning. As luck had it, at the Whim audition his partner was Daeyana Moss, yet another future Whimmer.
Color: “Forest green, maroon.”
Foods: “Pasta, dumplings, ice cream.”
Drinks: “Ginger ale, orange wine, coffee.”
Favorite music: “Folk, Indie-rock, pop.”
Hobbies: “Collecting vintage trinkets and furniture, drawing, hiking, reading, watching TV, singing playing Dungeons and Dragons—and I recently started rock climbing. When I had more free time I took care of a lot of pets and reptiles, did archery, and karate.”
The first and last 5 photographs are courtesy of Whim W’Him. The others were provided by Owen.