{"id":26753,"date":"2014-10-05T18:19:04","date_gmt":"2014-10-06T00:19:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=26753"},"modified":"2019-11-01T17:41:21","modified_gmt":"2019-11-01T23:41:21","slug":"creative-couplings-rdts-portal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/creative-couplings-rdts-portal\/","title":{"rendered":"Creative Couplings: RDT’s Portal"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Duets abound in Repertory Dance Theatre\u2019s fall season, Portal<\/em>, in which four choreographers\u2019 voices configure and reconfigure a company in transition (RDT has four new dancers: Jaclyn Brown, Lauren Curley, Dan Higgins and Lacie Scott). The evening is quite a curatorial feat, uniting four diverse pieces that have just enough in common; three from the company\u2019s archive and one new commission. The thread is the idea of the duet. These are dances in which the performers are constantly pairing off, demonstrating how changeable each can be just by standing next to a new partner.<\/p>\n

The first half of the evening seems to take place in shadows. In Zvi Gotheiner\u2019s “Duets to Brazilian-Indian Music” and in Steve Koester\u2019s “Fever Sleep” there\u2019s often barely enough light to see what\u2019s happening. In Gotheiner\u2019s “Duets,” the movement is also shrouded by the sensuous drama of the first three sections\u2019 vocals (in all three, women dance with men). Somewhere during the fourth duet (Tyler Orcutt and Efren Corado) a fog seems to lift, and by the time Ursula Perry and Jaclyn Brown pair off, there\u2019s rich clearness. Luminous lines propel themselves through space \u2014 gestures that will be fractured by dementia, confusion and plain silliness in Koester\u2019s Where\u2019s-Waldo-costumed nervous breakdown for four.<\/p>\n

After intermission, our eyes don\u2019t have to work quite so hard. For Viola Farber\u2019s 1970 “Passengers,” the wings are flown out, the lighting is more straightforward and the entire company games on equal footing. “Passengers” is a highly structured improvisation, using chance procedures, name-calling and other Cage-ian devices. It takes a minute, but eventually the company is engaged in a concentrated activity that is an odd mixture of free play and deconstructed dance formalism. It\u2019s a pleasure to watch, even if, at times, it feels like a lecture-demonstration.<\/p>\n

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Finally, we arrive at the evening\u2019s main attraction, “By the Snake,” made by Noa Zuk with original music by spouse Ohad Fishof. There is one indelible picture in this work: three pairs of men and women \u2014 the entire cast \u2014 stand facing us, hand in hand. They seem to wait for a change in the room. The center pair comes forward and all pause together, breathe, and pause again, before descending into wildness.<\/p>\n

I wonder if how I recall this recurring image has more to do with the power of this particular dance\u2019s structure or with the totality of everything leading up to Zuk\u2019s piece. I\u2019ve seen so many couplings already this evening, both hetero-normative and otherwise, that I\u2019m a little shocked to be so moved by an image that seems so predictable, so banal, so overdone. RDT has accomplished something here: they\u2019ve made me see a new possibility for how men and women might be together on stage.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it is Zuk\u2019s choreography after all. These couples move with a sense of abandon that\u2019s wonderfully at odds with the redolent forms they\u2019re constructing and destroying together. As they swing recklessly, lofting off of each other\u2019s cliffs and valleys, they eschew either male dominance or politically-correct pseudo-Contact Improvisation\u2014 this isn\u2019t a dance where the number of male versus female lifts could ever be counted. And yes, I think these are largely heterosexual couplings \u2014 but only in the most fleeting, provisional and at times ironic sense invoked by the explosion of a certain kind of social dance idiom.<\/p>\n

There are heady, heightened moments like these, in which Fishof\u2019s score lends understated, goofy humor to a party vibe. The three couples act out a double\u2019s version of one of the frenetic trios from Koester\u2019s work. There are also calmer scenes, where the cold, metallic noises that create the dance\u2019s skeleton slowly take on the comforting appeal of one\u2019s own refrigerator\u2019s unique hum. Things seem not to happen more than once, but there is a constant sense of cycling. The work really is as Zuk describes it, \u201ca fabricat[ed] folk dance\u2026with different<\/em> forms and values\u201d. When “By the Snake” ends, right after its second great group conglomeration, it feels both perfect and all too soon.<\/p>\n

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Repertory Dance Theatre’s Portal was performed at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center in Salt Lake City October 2-4.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Duets abound in Repertory Dance Theatre\u2019s fall season, Portal, in which four choreographers\u2019 voices configure and reconfigure a company in transition (RDT has four new dancers: Jaclyn Brown, Lauren Curley, Dan Higgins and Lacie Scott). The evening is quite a curatorial feat, uniting four diverse pieces that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1649,"featured_media":26811,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","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":[1477,1120],"class_list":["post-26753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dance","tag-by-samuel-hanson","tag-rdt"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/20140930-_DSC1691.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-26 06:45:49","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\/26753","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\/1649"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26753"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47961,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26753\/revisions\/47961"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}