{"id":38851,"date":"2018-09-28T19:00:42","date_gmt":"2018-09-29T01:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=38851"},"modified":"2018-10-03T19:08:20","modified_gmt":"2018-10-04T01:08:20","slug":"beauty-through-change-ririe-woodbury-opens-55th-season-with-a-splice-of-old-and-new","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/beauty-through-change-ririe-woodbury-opens-55th-season-with-a-splice-of-old-and-new\/","title":{"rendered":"Beauty Through Change: Ririe-Woodbury Opens 55th Season with a Splice of Old and New"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Melissa<\/a>

Melissa Younker in Joanna Kotze\u2019s \u201cStar Mark.\u201d Photo by Stuart Ruckman.<\/p><\/div>\n

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 shared at its shows. Their 2018 season opener, Splice, <\/em>includes four works from the past as well as two new company members, Brian Nelson and Breeanne Saxton, and is a veritable blending, or splicing, <\/em>of old and new.<\/p>\n

To open the evening, Joanna Kotze\u2019s \u201cStar Mark\u201d (2016) <\/em>saturated the stage with a floral pattern projected onto the scrim, the dancers nestled upstage, holding hands in an \u2019X\u2019 position and facing the flowers \u2014 or maybe not facing them as separate entities so much as simply existing among them, as <\/em>flowers. Both choreographer and whimsical florist, in this case, Kotze, has created a work that blurs animate and inanimate entities and modes of existing. The movement was linear in one moment, curling with expression the next. Yebel Gallegos had a delightful solo in which he grimaced and flexed at the audience amid longing looks of flirtation. All of the dancers scanned the audience at one point or another, aided by lights revealing the audience sitting in its own arrangement, perhaps inspiring some audience members to consider rearranging themselves in response to the dancers\u2019 confident explorations of what is corporeally possible. The piece persisted to the point of wilting, then perked up again, before gracefully but suddenly stopping, eliciting laughter throughout.<\/p>\n

Following Kotze\u2019s piece, Jena Woodbury and Daniel Charon \u2014 who have a respectful and humorous rapport together as executive and artistic director, respectively \u2014 made opening remarks thanking donors; and then offered everyone a splice<\/em> of cake after the show. Party on.<\/p>\n

\"Yebel<\/a>

Yebel Gallegos and Breeanne Saxton in Adam Barruch\u2019s \u201cprima materia.\u201d Photo courtesy of Ririe-Woodbury.<\/p><\/div>\n

The next piece, however, took the party in a darker, moodier direction. \u201cPrima Materia\u201d (2015) by Adam Barruch featured three sheets of almost-opaque plastic rectangles hanging across center stage, obscuring the dancers, who began with twisted arm gestures above their heads like specimens in an incubator. They then moved from behind the sheets, born into transparency, but their purpose (or that of Barruch) remained unclear. The rhythm of the piece was consistent throughout, featuring lots of forceful partner work paired with music that directed the movement. There was one very refreshing moment when Bashaun Williams supported Megan McCarthy in a floating meditative stance that suddenly highlighted the fact that they had been moving swiftly for almost the entire piece without any distinct dynamic developments.<\/p>\n

Doug Varone\u2019s \u201cStrict Love\u201d (1994) <\/em>was also static, but with more clarity of intention. The dancers moved almost entirely in unison throughout except for the beginning, during which Saxton initiated a robotic phrase to The Jackson 5\u2019s \u00a0\u201cABC.\u201d It should be mentioned that this was not in fact the true beginning of the piece because it stealthily began as the audience trickled back into the theater after intermission, with \u201cSpirit in the Sky\u201d playing softly as if the dance was just that \u2014 a spirit slowly materializing before our eyes. The choreography was keenly in sync with the radio-pop-medley soundtrack, but it never succumbed to any literal interpretation of the lyrics, or standard groove that you might expect when hearing such classic, groovy tunes; instead, the dance was dedicated to its own logic and just happened to exist in this space of popular music.<\/p>\n

\"Ririe-Woodbury<\/a>

Ririe-Woodbury in \u201cStrict Love\u201d by Doug Varone. Photo by Tori Duhaime.<\/p><\/div>\n

Charon created the final work, \u201cConstruct,\u201d in 2014 with a score by local composer Mike Wall. Charon has a knack for and deep interest in digital dance work that \u201cConstruct\u201d represents well. Two screens accumulated onstage, onto which the dance was projected and then slowed down to different degrees, constructing a poignant representation of time and visual memory. To conclude the piece, and the evening, a quartet that featured the more senior members of the company (Melissa Younker, Williams, Gallegos, and McCarthy) was punctuated with Younker standing alone at the end, first physically, then virtually, her calm strength in that stance a reassurance of beauty through change.<\/p>\n

\"Yebel<\/a>

Yebel Gallegos and dancers of Ririe-Woodbury in Daniel Charon\u2019s \u201cConstruct.\u201d Photo courtesy of Ririe-Woodbury.<\/p><\/div>\n

Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company’s Splice was performed at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center September 27 – 29.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1545,"featured_media":38853,"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":[3238,1798,2556,2285,1463,3239,3240,3241,2317,1627],"class_list":["post-38851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dance","tag-adam-barruch","tag-bashaun-williams","tag-breanne-saxton","tag-brian-nelson","tag-daniel-charon","tag-doug-varone","tag-joanna-kotze","tag-megan-mccarthy","tag-melissa-younker","tag-ririe-woodbury-dance-company"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/barruchprimamateria.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-10 09:13:06","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\/38851","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=38851"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38856,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38851\/revisions\/38856"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}