Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company opened its 2024-2025 season with an evening full of tension, humor, elegance, and exuberance, featuring two world premieres and a dynamic exploration of human emotion. The evening begins with The Bunker, choreographed by Laja Field and Martin Durov. Set against an original score by Durov, […]
Ririe-Woodbury recently celebrated sixty years with Groundworks, a show that honors the company’s long standing relationship with Alwin Nikolais, its founders, Shirley Ririe and Joan Woodbury, and the current artistic director, Daniel Charon. The opener was Tensile Involvement, an iconic Nikolais piece that uses elastics coupled with movement to […]
The drive to the new Mid-Valley Performing Arts Center involves a turn off Redwood Road to a straight shot down 5400 South’s Flex Lanes – the middle lanes in the road are marked solely with dotted yellow lanes and a light indicating which direction of traffic is allowed […]
Ririe-Woodbury’s Fill In The Blank on Thursday, January 27, was a wild ride of dance, throwbacks, and emotional tension. The show opened with the premiere of jo Blake’s “coincidences, when we meet up.” Blake is the only Utah-based choreographer in the program, but it’s nice to see Ririe-Woodbury […]
Ririe-Woodbury Cadence was pre-recorded and streamed as an on-demand performance. The show proceeded after the company’s land acknowledgment, which read aloud the names of the Indigenous nations who have resided upon the lands presently known as Salt Lake City and the surrounding regions for millennia. The statement read: […]
Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company’s Bloom featured two new works, one by artistic director Daniel Charon and one by University of Utah professor Stephen Koester, as well as a piece by Tzveta Kassabova (2010) that Ririe-Woodbury first performed in 2016. The concert was well formatted, with Charon’s dynamic and daring […]
Since its genesis by visionary founders Joan Woodbury and Shirley Ririe 55 years ago, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company has cultivated a family, in Salt Lake City and beyond, that manages to thrive with each new addition and that can be seen and felt in the embraces and warm smiles […]
In the intimate space of the LeonaWagner Black Box Theater, Ririe Woodbury opened Spring Season with two premieres and one reconstructed work, concluding the company’s annual season with a show that is as virtuosic as it is contemplative. Joanna Kotze’s commission, “Star Mark,” begins with increasingly rapid projections […]
Without Alwin Nikolais there might not be a Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company. Shirley Ririe and Joan Woodbury were young choreographers and dance instructors at the University of Utah when, in 1963, they invited Nikolais to lead the summer workshops for their fledgling dance company. Woodbury had met Nikolais in […]
In bringing a cross section of performance to a broad public, the Utah Arts Festival fulfills an important role each summer. Dance is often accused of being one of the more insulated art forms, as audiences find difficulty in analyzing nonverbal ideas and, more specifically, doing so at […]
Ririe Woodbury’s Spring Season was a challenging program exploring abstraction as a method for viewing as well as moving. Artistic Director Daniel Charon’s program note suggested a hope for his premiere to be taken as an experience without a need for definition while visiting artist Netta Yerushalmy suggested […]
We’ve been taking advantage of the “pause” in our state’s cultural programming to take stock — both of our supply of toiletries and our past coverage of the arts scene (i.e. we’ve been working on our archives). We wanted to bring this video from 2015 — about a […]
by Samuel Hanson Featuring the work of three male choreographers, Ririe-Woodbury’s season opener had no particular through-line, except perhaps in its attempt to stake a claim for the group on being “contemporary.” The strongest work in the evening, artistic director Daniel Charon’s, was arguably the least au courant, […]
Accelerate marks the end of Ririe Woodbury’s fiftieth season as well as the end of the first year with their new artistic director, Daniel Charon. Comprised of three premieres, the show features Bradley Beakes, Alexandra Bradshaw, Yebel Gallegos, Mary Lyn Graves, Tara McArthur, and Bashaun Williams, […]
This year has been one of great change for Ririe-Woodbury. In addition to celebrating the 50th Anniversary and welcoming new Artistic Director Daniel Charon the company has also welcomed new dancer Yebel Gallegos as they prepare to say goodbye to Tara McArthur. Rather than interview either, it seemed […]
Momentum, the annual showcase of choreography by alumni of Ririe-Woodbury, took place this past weekend. For the first time, it was partially funded by the dance company and included on the season schedule for their fiftieth anniversary. So inclusive was this convocation, that the four performances were split […]
This weekend, Ririe Woodbury opened their 50th season with “The Start of Something Big” at the Rose Wagner. The concert celebrates the work of company founders Shirley Ririe and Joan Woodbury while welcoming the work of Daniel Charon (see our article in the September edition), the company’s new […]
