Shirley Ririe, the dancer and choreographer who helped bring modern dance to Utah audiences as co-founder of the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, has died.
Ririe died Sunday from natural causes, according to Thom Dancy, the dance company’s current executive director. She was 96.
Ririe and her artistic partner, Joan Woodbury, built the company “on a foundation of creativity, courage, and boundless generosity,“ a statement posted Monday on the company’s Facebook page said.
For decades, the post said, Ririe ”inspired dancers, students, and audiences with her artistry and her deep belief that dance and art should be universally accessible. Shirley was more than an artistic pioneer —she was our teacher, mentor, and friend."
Ririe and Woodbury formed Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company in 1964, when the pair both taught dance at the University of Utah. The professional partnership continued through to Woodbury’s retirement from the company in 2011.
“We’ve known each other and worked together longer than most marriages last,” Woodbury told The Salt Lake Tribune in 2009. “We both believe the same things about dance. That’s what’s made it work.”
(Ryan Galbraith | The Salt Lake Tribune) Joan Woodbury, left, and Shirley Ririe — co-founders of Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company — in 2004 at the troupe's home, the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center in Salt Lake City.
Woodbury and Ririe also were one of the earliest cases of job-sharing on the University of Utah campus. They both worked as dance instructors at the U. in the 1950s and 1960s — back when dance was part of the Physical Education Department, and they also had to teach swimming. The arrangement allowed the two women to teach and create dance pieces while also raising their families.
“It gave us double the energy in that job,” Ririe told The Tribune in 2009. “We were both giving full time, but we were paid for half. We didn’t care about the pay, just what we could do, and it became very fruitful.”
Woodbury and Ririe — along with Repertory Dance Theatre’s Linda Smith and Ballet West’s Bené Arnold — are credited with giving birth to professional dance in Utah in the 1950s and 1960s.
Ririe had a career as a dancer for 35 years. She also choreographed more than 100 works for Ririe-Woodbury and other companies. She taught modern dance at the U. for 39 years, and also taught at Brigham Young University.
Ririe was a staunch advocate of children’s arts education, and could be found in her semi-retirement lobbying the Utah Legislature for funding to teach kids about the arts. In 1994, Ririe was appointed to a committee that developed national standards for arts education for grades K-12.
Ririe advised parents to encourage their children to “find something your child really enjoys, really loves, in the arts … where then can make a connection with themselves,” she said. “They’re not getting it in elementary schools, mostly, and that’s where it should be happening. If parents don’t step up, children don’t have a chance to experience the arts in their lives. Parents need to push for arts instruction in the schools.”
Ririe was born Shirley Russon on Feb. 20, 1929, in Salt Lake City, to Stan Russon, an actor and a jeweler, and Allien, a musician and a secretary. She and her siblings grew up in an adobe house on 400 South on the city’s east side. As a teen, she had a room in the attic, and would go out onto the roof to sunbathe, she told a University of Utah interviewer in 2002.
Working summers at the North Rim Lodge at the Grand Canyon in the late ‘40s, she met Olin Rhees Ririe, a young man from American Fork who went on to a career as a bank executive and a talented furniture craftsman. Shirley and Rhees were married in 1951, and were together 59 years until Rhees’ death in 2011.
Shirley Ririe studied dance at the University of Utah, the top pupil of Elizabeth Hayes, the department chair. Ririe also danced for and studied under a number of dance legends, including Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham and Alwin Nikolais — who was also Woodbury’s mentor.
(Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company) Joan Woodbury, left, and Shirley Ririe, co-founders of Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, in an undated photo.
When Ririe met Woodbury, who had been hired as the U.’s first full-time dance instructor in 1951, they created their first dance together, “On the Boards.” They then founded a semi-professional company, called Choreodancers.
When Woodbury took a leave from the U. in 1955, to study under a Fulbright scholarship in Berlin with the expressionist dance pioneer Mary Wigman, Ririe took over Woodbury’s teaching position in her absence. She taught at the U. for 39 years. Ririe, Woodbury and Hayes grew the dance department into a nationally recognized unit.
In 1964, Ririe and Woodbury formed the dance company that bears their names. For the next two years, the troupe toured on weekends and during school breaks throughout Utah and into Arizona and southern California.
Ririe-Woodbury took a hiatus from 1966 to 1969, when Woodbury was asked to be the artistic director of the newly formed Repertory Dance Theatre. One of RDT’s original eight dancers was Smith, who took over as that company’s executive and artistic director in 1983; Smith moved to emerita status in July 2025.
Ririe-Woodbury reopened in the upstairs studio of the U.’s dance building in 1969. In 1972, the company went full-time, thanks to an assist from Nikolais that helped them receive the approval of a National Endowment for the Arts program, which sent R-W to tour all 50 states, plus Canada, Puerto Rico, Europe, the south Pacific and Asia. One tour, sponsored by the U.S. State Department, sent the company to South Korea and Mongolia. When the group toured, Woodbury went in the fall, Ririe in the winter, and they took turns in the spring.
Ririe never officially “retired” from Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, though in her later years, she did become a part-time employee. Joan Woodbury died on Nov. 1, 2023, at age 96.
Ririe is survived by four daughters — Robin, Megan, Dana and Melinda — as well as 15 grandchildren and 44 great-grandchildren.
Funeral services are scheduled for Friday, Sept. 19, at the Ensign Peak Ward, 125 E. North Sandrun Way, Salt Lake City. Visitation will run from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m., with the funeral to start at 11 a.m.