Luminous pinnacle: Repertory Dance Theatre’s Ovation, choreographic feast of Thanksgiving, satisfies appreciative audience

In between pieces in Repertory Dance Theatre (RDT)’s sensational Ovation production, Nicholas Cendese, a former RDT dancer who is now executive/artistic co-director for the company, talked briefly  about the company’s 60th anniversary as an occasion to celebrate  its “luminous pinnacle.” Indeed, this phrase encapsulated the astonishing quintet of commissioned works, including two gorgeous world premieres, which brought the closing night audience to its feet in the sold-out Jeanné Wagner Theatre at The Rose.

This extraordinary choreographic production of thanksgiving produced an endless string of beautiful emotions, many inducing goosebump effects and tears in more than a few instances. 

Three commissioned pieces produced outstanding examples of mining choreomusical elements from classical musical scores not originally written for dance. Oktet: In Situ (2023) by Katarzyna Skarpetowska was crisp and ebullient, as the dancers emulated the technical hurdles, complex ornamentation and virtuosic passages in six selections from Bach’s Goldberg Variations.  Skarpetowska used a recording of the string quartet arrangement by French composer François Meïmoun. The dancers nicely intuited the emotional intelligence captured in these Bach pieces, and Skarpetowska’s choreography captures the palpable drama and robust character of the music.

The RDT dancers delivered once again a stunning performance of Solfège (2023) by choreographer Yusha-Marie Sorzano, a riveting dance theater fantasy-drama that reverberates in hard-wired  emotions. The musical source is Symphonic Poem of 3 Notes, a 2011 work from Chinese composer Tan Dun, based on three solfège pitches (LA – SI – DO). Sorzano takes Dun’s score to heed, while building a natural world that tries to preserve its primordial roots, even as the sounds of progress become more clamorous. And, then in the gripping final moments, the stupendous solo by Alexander Pham brings us back to where it started.   

The dancers hit their luminous pinnacle in the world premiere of Scherzo Fantastique by Norbert De La Cruz III, a resplendent, passionate interpretation of the eponymous score by Czech composer Josef Suk, who also was the son-in-law of Antonín Dvořák. Anyone who has watched videos of his earlier choreographic pieces will notice a new dimension in his dance language with this RDT commission. He set the ensemble piece with chairs as props for each dancer and they never stay in one place long enough.

De La Cruz’s choreography puts the dancers through many complex passages, which he does exquisitely in replicating Suk’s relentless shifts in rhythmic meters. One of the most striking moments is when the dancers replicate a passage in the middle of the piece, as a melody is being passed around while the beat is separated out into four and six parts. It is amazing how the dancers create such a burst of youthful emotional exuberance verging on the edge of becoming a runaway train, but then pull it back in the occasional pensive, even melancholic moments of the music. As the closer to a show that already had achieved blockbuster status, Scherzo Fantastique was a gobsmacking perfect nightcap.

For the company and the audience, profound emotions flowed from the restaging of Jacque Lynn Bell’s Ryoanji, which featured 43 dancers, including students from the University of Utah’s Tanner Dance Program,  seven RDT alumni and Linda C. Smith, RDT cofounder and artistic director emerita.

A moving tribute to Virginia Tanner, the Utah dance pioneer who envisioned the founding of RDT, as well as the company’s relationship to the Children’s Dance Theatre, Ryoanji refers to the famous rock garden in Kyoto at a Zen Buddhist temple. The effect of the piece is like a ritualistic procession weaving its way through the sanctuary, with music composed by Mark Kolt and created by Tristan Moore.

The youngest performer was an infant who is the newest member in the family of Virginia Tanner. Only the third time this piece has been performed, the staging for this particular Ovation show heightened the awareness of the multigenerational legacy that led to RDT’s founding 60 years ago and how it has been sustained.  

Sassy, youthful jubilation came through in Cendese’s newest piece, a hoot and a holler, Come Rain or Come Shine, set to five songs from Judy Garland’s final studio album. The dancers reveled in the spontaneous pop magic, including Caleb Daly who strutted and slayed to the opening verse in Lucky Day (“sitting on top of this great big wonderful world”), and real-life couple Jake Lewis and Alexander Pham in More Than You Know, an authentically poignant performance. Likewise, Caitlyn Richter who was joined by the company tugged at our heartstrings, dancing to the Broadway blockbuster You’ll Never Walk Alone. Cendese gave all eight dancers a heartwarming canvas for their personalities to shimmer and sparkle on stage. The piece was dedicated to the memory of longtime RDT supporter Barbara J. Lewis who passed away in September.