RDT will revive a trio of dances, including Anna Sokolow's "Lyric Suite," an American dance classic that consists of a duet, quartet and solos, first danced by RDT in 1970, and Zvi Gotheiner's "Bricks," commissioned and performed in 2005 to celebrate the company's 40th anniversary. Also on the program is Susan Hadley's "Blue Grass," created in 1998 as a playful celebration of the musical genre.
"Echo is a perfect word. Each has been performed by the company, but different company members," says artistic director Linda C. Smith. "Part of what it means to be a living library is to carry these pieces, these echoes, forward. These pieces will guide us to the future."
For audiences, "Echo" will serve as an introduction. This season, RDT is welcoming four new dancers, an unusual occurrence for the nine-member company. "Whenever someone leaves, the whole company shifts, and they take on different responsibilities," Smith says. "New dancers change the meaning of the work, but it's still RDT - the structure is there. An artist's value going through the ages is part of the beauty of dance, which is always alive, never the same."
In restaging "Lyric Suite," Smith drew upon the technical expertise of M. Kay Barrell, who worked at the dance company from 1967 to 1984. When the pair had a question about the piece, which Smith learned from Sokolow in 1968, she went to the company's archives and found a folder of notes from RDT's original production.
"She's a squirrel and I'm a squirrel," Barrell says from his office at Ballet West, where he's the production designer. "She pulled out my notes, and they were still as hen-pecky as ever. 'Lyric Suite' was one of our favorite pieces, a stunning piece, and it didn't take much to bring back floods of nostalgia."
Discovering original notes in that file from the famous choreographer, who died in 2000, was "like watching 'Antiques Roadshow,' " Smith says. "In the contemporary dance world, there's a sense of no past, which makes these links so important."
"Lyric Suite" was inspired by iconic dancers such as Isadora Duncan and Vaslav Nijinsky and the love story of Tristan and Isolde, as told in Richard Wagner's groundbreaking opera. Sokolow's choreography was noted for incorporating the world's escalating tensions, particularly the persecution of European Jews in the 1930s and 1940s. The dance plays differently according to the political landscape affecting the audiences who are watching it, Smith says.
The most contemporary of the pieces, "Bricks," was inspired by the landscape of Bryce Canyon, says Gotheiner, an Israeli-born choreographer who leads his own dance company in New York City. Onstage, dancers build walls, corners and doors out of Plexiglass blocks, a new work constructed on the foundation of something old.
"We wanted to redo it because it's very much about our company," Smith says. "It's about creating community out of separate individuals. It's an important piece in our history."
ellenf@sltrib.com
Big three
* RDT's "ECHO," a concert of three revival dances, plays at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, 138 W. 300 South, Salt Lake City.
* TICKETS ARE $30 ($10-$15 students/seniors), available by calling 801-355-ARTS or visiting www.arttix.org.
