{"id":23023,"date":"2013-09-28T11:13:10","date_gmt":"2013-09-28T17:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=23023"},"modified":"2013-09-28T11:13:52","modified_gmt":"2013-09-28T17:13:52","slug":"its-always-something-big-ririe-woodbury-opens-its-50th-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/its-always-something-big-ririe-woodbury-opens-its-50th-season\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s Always Something Big: Ririe-Woodbury Opens its 50th Season"},"content":{"rendered":"

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This weekend, Ririe Woodbury opened their 50th season with \u201cThe Start of Something Big\u201d 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<\/a>), the company\u2019s new artistic director. As a whole the evening is evidence Ririe Woodbury\u2019s celebration of dance has employed numerous choreographic approaches over the last fifty years and will continue to play a vital role in the Salt Lake arts community.<\/p>\n

The concert opens \u2014 and finds each dance interspersed \u2014 with excerpts from \u201cMove It,\u201d a film by Stanley and Judith Hallet featuring early members of the company. As the film begins, Shirley Ririe climbs out of a sewer and onto the city streets. From that moment it becomes clear that these women have been everywhere and done it all in even zanier outfits than we might imagine. The magical nature of the film creates a situation where anything can happen and the audience is drawn into the action of what these women have been offering. It\u2019s truly rare that something moves a concert along so quickly or creates such a unified investment in otherwise disparate aesthetics.<\/p>\n

Many of the works on the program are formal in the way audiences might expect. The works of Shirley and Joan, and those by their choreographic mentors Alwin Nikolais and Murray Louis, feature a range of specific technical markers: clear lines, turning sequences, strong spatial formations and complex partnering. The company looks incredible\u00a0 and after a few seasons of watching them explore contemporary notions of aggressive virtuosity, it is refreshing to see them dance with such clarity, and in some cases, softness.<\/p>\n

Despite these unifying features the worlds of these choreographic works differ greatly. \u201cClouds,\u201d by Shirley, initiated the company\u2019s use of dance to explore concepts for children, something RW\u2019s now well known for. The dance takes place in a sweet and sincere space where science can become magic. In a sillier turn, Joan\u2019s \u201cAffectionate Infirmities,\u201d takes on the use of props popular in the NIkolais tradition. The dancers perform using colorful crutches and it\u2019s clear that while humorous, there is a complex investigation of extending the limits of the body that was unique to a generation. The dance stands up against other light repertory the company frequently features and despite being less \u201ccontemporary\u201d than Larry Keigwin\u2019s \u201c80s Night\u201d for example, the dance seems to speak more and in a timeless way.<\/p>\n

Also by Joan, \u201cPlay It As It Rings\u201d is a highlight of the evening. Originally made in 1970 for Limon dancers Betty Jones and Fritz Ludin, the dance utilizes fractured vignettes that culminate in a domestic dispute among dancers Alex Bradshaw and Bashaun Williams. The dance demonstrates that the \u201cstop, start then change your clothes\u201d aesthetic popular today was being employed over forty years ago to great effect. The narrative is so fractured it\u2019s hard to know where to begin; whether the robotic movements characterizing interrupted intimacy, competitive delivery of text, tortured expressions playing out slowly on a bench, or the layers of theatrical costuming shuffling back and forth in space.<\/p>\n

The one premiere of the concert, \u201cEverything That Changes\u201d by Daniel Charon, seems to draw on the vastness explored by the rest of the program. Utilizing a series of connections that build and disintegrate in space, Charon seems to attempt synthesizing the momentum of this company while questioning the directions in which they may find themselves moving. While it\u2019s easy to physically map Charon\u2019s work in context of other choreographers he\u2019s worked with (namely Doug Varone) it seems more important to say that the dance invites us to imagine where something new might be headed. The dance suggests it could be somewhere as imaginative as the locations in the earlier mentioned film \u2014\u00a0 on a gondola above the fall trees, outside a barn with some bulls, with in water and sand, together in a way that\u2019s unyielding.<\/p>\n

Ririe-Woodbury’s<\/a> The Start of Something Big<\/em> is at the Rose Wagner Arts Center through September 28.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This weekend, Ririe Woodbury opened their 50th season with \u201cThe Start of Something Big\u201d 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\u2019s new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":861,"featured_media":23025,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1627],"class_list":["post-23023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dance","tag-ririe-woodbury-dance-company"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/Screen-Shot-2013-09-28-at-11.11.25-AM.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-09 01:29:37","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/861"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23023"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23028,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23023\/revisions\/23028"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}