{"id":36715,"date":"2018-04-18T21:28:52","date_gmt":"2018-04-19T03:28:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=36715"},"modified":"2018-09-19T12:42:49","modified_gmt":"2018-09-19T18:42:49","slug":"a-recital-of-right-now-rdts-current","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/a-recital-of-right-now-rdts-current\/","title":{"rendered":"A Recital of \u201cRight Now\u201d: RDT\u2019s Current"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Lauren Curley and members of RDT in Angela Banchero-Kelleher\u2019s \u201cMaterial Tokens of the Freedom of Thought.\u201d Photo courtesy of RDT.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Repertory Dance Theatre\u2019s\u00a0Current<\/em>\u00a0included five dances presented one after the other, after the other, and yet\u2026 after another. Because they were all made recently, they are a reflection of \u201cright now\u201d; they are\u00a0current<\/em>.<\/p>\n

To begin, the silhouettes of Justin Bass and Tyler Orcutt spoke their way across the stage, beginning \u201cStill Life With Flight,\u201d by former RDT member Sarah Donohue. The faces of the dancers were illuminated once they landed their popping (not locking) bodies on a bench. They shifted ever-so-slightly with harmonized pulses of their torsos that incidentally executed the larger movement of wringing hands, crossing legs and shrugging, casting quick glances at each other before interlocking to perform cartwheels over the bench. Through a series of turns en dehors with their legs in arabesque (legs held behind, turning counterclockwise) the two moved around the bench, holding each other often and expertly.<\/p>\n

Cut to Ursula Perry dancing to herself in a mirror with a scrim hanging downstage, creating a hazy, sepia effect. \u201cAloneness,\u201d choreographed by Francisco Gella, contained a lot of unison phrases considering its subject of solitude. Or, not solitude \u2014 loneliness. The choice of being alone. I sometimes got lost on the bridge connecting etymology to physicality: Were the movements representing different definitions of aloneness? Were they enacting solitude? They wore black so they must have been mourning the loss of community. Nothing was certain save for the calm and careful movement of Perry, who pierces space with her gaze. Even her fingertips and shins saw what they were moving toward.<\/p>\n

\u201cFlood\u201d began with the company in line, facing the audience, shifting together on the pads of their feet, creating a \u201ctiny dance\u201d of utmost specificity. (Choreographer Nichele Van Portfleet is always specific.) The dancers wove in and out of this line throughout the piece, pushing and displacing one another from the line, and carefully buttoning up their shirts in a mime-like fashion, ending with a gesture to form a suffocating collar made of flesh and bone (their own hand). This sequence communicated internal flooding \u2014 perhaps a flood of information, perhaps something else entirely. I was reminded of \u201cThe Green Table,\u201d choreographed by Kurt Jooss, depicting pre-World War II \u201cpeace\u201d negotiations and their ultimate futility. In both pieces, the dancers embody caricatures of those in power, whether world leaders or parts of themselves. The performers in \u201cFlood\u201d were not at peace with themselves nor with one another. They often were on the edge of physical stability, twisting themselves with movement overlapping and interweaving dynamically, likewise putting me on the edge of the seat beneath me.<\/p>\n

Next on the program was a bonus duet by Gella, aptly called \u201cSchubert Impromptu,\u201d as if one of many Schubert compositions was picked out of a hat to entertain us after \u201cAloneness\u201d and \u201cFlood.\u201d Justin Bass and Jaclyn Brown appeared to have been directed to move in sync with the music, and it was very satisfying, if predictable. At one point, Brown slows down a cartwheel on her forearms over Bass, leaving me impressed with her ability to resist gravity. The two wore black, like the costumes in Gella\u2019s previous piece. Some of the movements were similar, but, in \u201cSchubert Impromptu,\u201d there were no mirrors reflecting long beams of light into the audience, slicing through the space between stage and seats. \u201cSchubert\u201d seemed purposefully intimate \u2014 the dancers\u2019 light did not come to us, but we could go to it for a diversion or a shelter from darker subject matter.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaterial Tokens of the Freedom of Thought,\u201d choreographed by Angela Banchero-Kelleher to the music of Wojciech Kilar in honor of her mother, ended the evening. Many of the movement phrases in the piece were punctuated by the dancers pausing at length to look out into the audience, arms placed at their sides, forming a slight oval around them. They stood this way, waiting for their turn to move again, and in these moments I saw their eyes searching, perhaps to find the meaning of \u201cmother\u201d in the midst of the fan-like movement surrounding them.<\/p>\n

Current<\/em>\u00a0flowed \u2014 or careened \u2014 like a recital. One can only do so much to connect a playful duet to a reconciliation with one\u2019s deceased mother to a sociopolitical abstraction to an exploration of being \u201calone together,\u201d without any transition other than closing and opening a curtain. However, the members of RDT moved through the evening with grace and deep breaths. They exhibited a cohesion that prompted the friend accompanying me to wonder if some of the choreography throughout all five pieces was extremely similar, if not the same. \u00a0Each moment of contact carried with it a familiarity stemming from continued physical practice as a company. The dancers are fully integrated, if not the dances they are dancing.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Justin Bass and Jaclyn Brown in \u201cSchubert Impromptu\u201d by Francisco Gella. Photo courtesy of RDT.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cCurrent\u201d was performed April 12-14 at Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, Salt Lake City.<\/em><\/p>\n

This article is published in collaboration with loveDANCEmore.org<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lauren Curley and members of RDT in Angela Banchero-Kelleher\u2019s \u201cMaterial Tokens of the Freedom of Thought.\u201d Photo courtesy of RDT. Repertory Dance Theatre\u2019s\u00a0Current\u00a0included five dances presented one after the other, after the other, and yet\u2026 after another. Because they were all made recently, they are a reflection of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1545,"featured_media":36716,"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":[],"class_list":["post-36715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dance"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/materialtokensofthefreedomofthoughtangiebancherokelleher.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-09 10:20:29","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\/36715","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\/1545"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36715"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37884,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36715\/revisions\/37884"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}