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Modern dance has always been devoted to exploring new choreography, often as activism for artistic or social change.

In Ririe-Woodbury's "Fall Season," opening Thursday at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, company director Daniel Charon takes up the issue of gun violence in his premiere, "Elegy." Also on the program is Bulgarian-born choreographer Tzveta Kassabova's "The Opposite of Killing," which explores the personal side of loss and healing, and RW revisits Jonah Bokaer's "Fragments," a contemplative work premiered in 2014.

Charon said that starting the 2016-17 season with a "deeper or more serious" tone gives way to the family-friendly performance at the Capitol Theatre in February and wraps up in April with a first for RW, an evening-length work by Ann Carlson in the Rose's intimate Black Box. He said the season is all about "finding a range for what dance can be through diversity of choreographers, lighter or more serious themes, and a nice tour of the Salt Lake performance spaces."

The serious-themed "Elegy" is not a literal narrative, yet is dedicated to the victims of the June attack at the Orlando, Fla., nightclub Pulse, where 49 people died in the deadliest mass shooting by a single shooter in American history.

"I wanted to create something that was a response to the violence and reflect upon that part of who we are," Charon said. "For me to process it and put it front of an audience will hopefully provide incentive for meaningful conversations afterward."

"Elegy" is choreographed to six sections of music by J.S. Bach that Charon said he chose based on the "weight of the music rather than its analytical structure," or the "sorrowful sound of the bow pulling across the strings."

"The dancers represent different points of view rather than characters in the dance," he said. "The objective is to allow people to see themselves in the work, or reflect on their feelings about it, or just break down and cry."

The title of guest choreographer Kassabova's "The Opposite of Killing" is in memory of her mentor, Ed Tyler, whose sudden death at age 42 had her searching for answers for people's unexpected choices. The title derives from an observation by minimalist composer Arvo Pärt that the silence between musical notes provides the cover that "you are free, you can choose."

"Arvo Pärt was talking about healing," Kassabova said, "and I was making a dance using Pärt's music dedicated to my mentor, using all the things I had learned from him."

Kassabova came to the U.S. in 1999 as a graduate student in meteorology at the University of Maryland. Her first visit to Utah was for a meteorology conference in Ogden, but when they stopped through Salt Lake, she found herself drawn to the dance division more than the science department.

Dance in Bulgaria was tied to theater and traditional folk dance, and after experiencing American modern dance and a chance meeting with Tyler back at school in Maryland, science became a distance reference point rather than a passion.

"Rehearsals with Ed Tyler were not just about dancing," Kassabova said, "we were sewing costumes, building sets, painting backdrops, improvising — all these things were the process of 'dancing.' "

"The Opposite of Killing" has been staged by several university dance groups, but RW is the first professional company to perform the piece.

"I am really relying on their skills and experience to make it more than it has ever been before," Kassabova said.

The third piece on the program is a restaging of Bokaer's "Fragments," a work that when premiered in 2014 seemed more fitting for an art gallery than a traditional stage. But RW is exploring the way audiences view dance and has formed a multiyear partnership with Utah Museum of Contemporary Art.

Last summer it presented "Interstice," a performance installation featuring choreography by Charon inside Jennifer Seely's exhibition "Supporting Elements," and has taken to the streets and other museum settings in search of diverse pairings of dance and art. —

Ririe-Woodbury's 'Fall Season'

The season opener presents three diverse interdisciplinary pieces that blur the lines between traditional dance performance, visual art installation and theater: Daniel Charon's "Elegy," Tzveta Kassabova's "The Opposite of Killing" and Jonah Bokaer's "Fragments."

When • Thursday-Saturday, Sept. 15-17, 7:30 p.m.; family matinee Saturday, Sept. 17, 2 p.m.

Where • Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, 138 W. 300 South, Salt Lake City

Tickets • $15-$40, $10 matinee or 5 for $45; artsaltlake.org or 801-355-ARTS