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Over the years, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company has developed an aesthetic that includes both the formal and the unpredictable. It's clear in its uncertainties, and we are entertained and challenged by such artistic range.
RW's season opener "Polychromatic," offers ways of looking at structure and form, and at the same time conveys emotional subtext that moves us to laugh, contemplate, or reflect — an achievement of the choreographers' clarity and dancers' authenticity.
RW Artistic Director and choreographer Charlotte Boye-Christensen's "Push" examines the meaning of intimacy through the lens of a mature artist. Boye-Christensen is a master of group movement, canon and line, so her work characteristically overflows with physical intensity.
But "Push," while still reveling in that motion, peels back a new layer to reveal vulnerability and unrestricted introspection. Boye-Christensen quiets the group movement down to a powerful and innovative duet between dancers Jo Blake and Betsy Kelley-Wilberg. The piece ends simply with Blake alone onstage, as if to say that ultimately everyone needs to be comfortable being alone to enjoy intimacy with another.
"Push" is the second work on the program, coming after a hilarious and perfect opener by choreographer Larry Keigwin, a revival of the 2007 work, "80's Night." This work never gets old. Like any really good parody, the details are accurate, and the truths create a surprising nostalgia.
When the song "Only The Lonely," by the New Wave band The Motels started to play, it seemed so funny, until it seemed sad. Dancer Bashaun Williams is only 22 years old, and couldn't possibly have experienced this dance era, but in "80's Night" and every other work on the program, Williams describes the inner life of the piece in perceptive detail.
Manipulating the form to deliver emotional subtext is perhaps most subtle in John Jasperse's 2010 work, "Spurts of Activity Before the Emptiness of Late Afternoon." Jasperse layers the complexity of time and space with the objects that are in its orbit. The cause and effect of gravity and other bodies creates an abstract narrative or at least a line of energy.
To call this pedestrian movement seems inaccurate. The articulation of the body — particularly by dancer Tara McArthur as she first enters the stage, and dancers Alexandra Bradshaw and Brad Beakes as they "partner" with the boundary of the back wall to close the piece — is hardly everyday stuff. But it's an appropriate virtuosity to embody the material.
Guest choreographer Brook Notary's premiere, "Grid," balances out the program with her high-energy exploration of bodies rebounding off the lengths of elastic prop, and the other dancers onstage.
There are many strong moments, and the opening image of the white lines across the black stage was stunning, but the middle section goes on too long to sustain the concept. It worked better in a preview performance in the smaller setting of the black box, and with some tightening could still be a convincing work.
Ririe-Woodbury's 'Polychromatic'
R This lean yet muscular company brings authenticity to new choreography. They look like real people who move like dancers.
When • Reviewed Thursday; continues tonight at 7:30 p.m.
Where • Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, 138 W. 300 South, Salt Lake City
Tickets • $30, $15 students/seniors; $3 additional charge day of show; at 801-355-2787 or arttix.org.
Running time • One hour and 45 minutes, with brief intermissions