After last year’s success with its newest version of Regalia — So You Think You Can Choreograph — Repertory Dance Theatre (RDT) is re-upping it this year. Making their debut as choreographers will include the mother of one of RDT’s current artistic leaders and one of the event’s hosts and whose profession is as a life coach, therapist and social worker. Others are a Qigong Instructor and registered nurse who is the mother of one of the current RDT dancers; psychotherapist and relationship expert and an artist and jewelry designer. Regalia will be held March 15 beginning at 6:30 p.m. in the Rose Wagner Center for Performing Arts.
Regalia is RDT’s most important annual fundraiser. The event showcases not just what audience members have come to expect from the productions staged every season but also about its statewide Arts-in-Education programs; the RDT Dance Center on Broadway which offers classes and workshops on every imaginable form of dance, and a major foundation of community projects that frame dance as a lifetime activity, which anyone, regardless of age, dance experience or ability, can pursue.
Like last year, RDT has not left the quartet of new choreographers to their own means and devices in an artistic wilderness. The choreographers are experiencing first-hand what can actually happen in the creative process for setting a dance piece. Each choreographer also was tasked to raise $2,000 to support RDT programs. They took a course in the process of choreography which Nicholas Cendese, RDT’s associate executive and artistic director and development director, led. Each guest choreographer has been paired with a mentor from the professional dance world to prepare them for the March 15 event.
In addition to Cendese, the other mentors are Meghan Durham Wall, chair of the dance program at Westminster University; Elle Johansen, a former RDT dance artist who also is a certified teacher in Progressing Ballet Technique and a realtor, and Nathan Shaw, a former RDT dancer who also has been performing with SB Dance for more than a decade and is director of admissions and activities at Judge Memorial High School. Each choreographer will be assigned six to eight dancers and they will have four hours to create a work.
Unlike previous Regalia events, there will be no commission winner but there will be a panel of judges to offer constructive insights and make awards. The evening’s hosts will be Alexander Cendese, American/Canadian film and television actor, writer and producer who is a Salt Lake City native and has appeared both on Broadway and Off, along with narrating nearly 700 audio books, and Gabrielle Miller, an actor widely recognized for her lead roles on two of Canada’s most successful series: the runaway hit CTV series Corner Gas, which inspired a feature film in 2014, as well as an animated series, and the critically acclaimed series Robson Arms.
Regalia audience members are invited to arrive as early as 6:30 p.m. go to peruse auction items and register to bid, which will be available throughout the evening. A cocktail reception with drinks and appetizers provided by Utah Food Services will be held in the Rose Wagner Center for Performing Arts lobby until 8 p.m., when audience members will be directed to the theater for the hour-long show. Audience members also will have opportunities to donate to RDT programs. The evening will conclude with a dessert reception on stage where audience members can meet the choreographers and dancers. Tickets are available at the RDT website.
GUEST CHOREOGRAPHERS
Jan Cendese (Personal Life Coach, Therapist, and Social Worker)
Cendese’s connections to RDT were formed in 2002 which her son, Nicholas, was hired as a company dancer. ”So, when Nicholas asked if I wanted to participate in Regalia, I thought it would be a new and fun way to continue my support of RDT and have some extra special, one on one time with Nicholas,” she said. Her son also has been her mentor in preparing for Regalia. “As we were allowed, Nicholas and I met for several meetings to discover my theme and plot out how to get the dancers’ creativity going and how to impart to them my ideas,” she explained. ”My mentor has been great at helping me relax and learn to give ideas and then let the creative process between all of us flow. I feel confident that I can stay out of judgment and see the whole thing as fun.”
As an existential, experiential psychotherapist, Cendese said, “My whole life has been about living in my body and my experiencing and enjoying what a key this approach is for a centered, inspired, and satisfying life.” She added, “When one is clear that they create their own reality, life comes amazingly fun and creative and motivated by passion, expanded feelings and the metaphorical meanings of life. This all lends itself to dance as a way to connect to being human.”
She explained how surprised she has been to discover that setting choreography ”uses so many of the same attitudes, mental states, experiential tools and experiences that I use in my work with people in psychotherapy.” She continued, “I have learned to be in the moment with my theme and myself. I have brainstormed sensory words, colors, shapes, and mental clues that elici movement that could represent my theme and I have learned even more deeply to suspend judgment and trust my experience in the moment.”
Reflecting on being an audience member for many RDF productions, Cendese said, “What I appreciate about myself as an audience member with any performing arts experience is my willingness to be present and be completely engrossed in the experience. I am there to be entertained and inspired from the experience and there is no distance between me, the performers or the performance.”
Melissa Faber (Qigong Instructor and Registered Nurse)
Faber said there are two major reasons for why decided to step into a choreographer’s shoes. “One, I am excited for the challenge. I have no dance experience or choreography experience, she said, adding. “The only experience I have is being a ‘dance mom’ while my two daughter were growing up in the Tanner Dance program. Also, my daughter [Lindsey] dances with RDT. It’s been so great as a mom to watch her since she was little and now, I’ve created a ‘bring your mom to work day’ scenario. It should be a blast for me.” The other is RDT, according for Faber. “They are all so talented and amazing human beings. I believe that anyone, not just me, who comes to experience an RDT performance or their community outreach, leave better for it,” she explained. “I appreciate the opportunity to be in that space with them, not just as an audience member. What a gift for me to be amongst these great dancers.
Faber said the idea of setting a dance in just four hours “is super wild.” She added, “I am excited to see these professional dancers show me their ‘stuff’. I am leaning on their ability to take what is inspiring me and go with it. I feel like I am in a place of inspiring an emotion and story, and they will creating it with me.” In preparing mentally for Regalia, Faber talked about immersing herself in the hobby of mix-media/collage art. She explained it has been “a way of journaling for my personal growth and personal awareness. For the last couple of years, this ‘art journaling’ is my way of preparing for this challenge. It is an opportunity to take what I have done on canvas and translate it onto a kinesthetic art form.” Faber added, “This idea of taking and inexpressible experience or emotion and using dance to express this inexpressible is what motivates me.”
She said that it is inspiring to observe the amount of time and work the dancers need to create movement. ”The mentors are so good at deconstructing the process into interconnecting pieces that build upon each other. They did this with us, and made it tangible and doable,” she explained. “All of a sudden, you have words, emotions, and movements on paper that you want to express and impact the audience with. It is these layers that they pull out of their mind and heart (and helped me to do) and place them in the right way, kinesthetically, that is a wonderful process to watch and be apart of. Significantly, they truly show how much they want to move, and impact an audience member with each movement and dance they create. A movement, a dance, is a ‘piece’ of them.”
Speaking from her own experiences as an audience member, Faber also expressed something that many choreographers know intimately when stepping into a studio and working with a new set of dancers the first time. “The humility and vulnerability that a choreographer may be putting into their dances and performances,” she said, “magnifies the sense that they just provided a piece of themselves to you, it brings a sense of magnified appreciation and reference into what they are providing me as an audience member.l
Christine Holding (Licensed Psychotherapist and Relationship Expert)
Holding, who is friends with Faber, said, “I was inspired by my friend Melissa’s enthusiasm to choreograph and wanted to join the fun. Opportunities to choreograph don’t come up very often.” About the road to preparing for the Regalia. She explained. “Already, the process led by the RDT instructors has eased my nerves and has helped me relax and enjoy the whole process. I’m preparing by letting go and letting the artistic process take the lead.”
As for her approach to Regalia, she said, “Usually starting with a theme or inspiring event is where I begin. For this piece, I am reflecting on the joyful and adventurous life of a nephew who passed away a few months ago due to complications from a mountain bike accident.” She added, “In the short time I have worked with my mentor, it’s been surprising to see how fun it makes the process of choreographing with another dancer. She’s shared wonderful ideas.” When asked what she had learned to appreciate more about herself as an audience member, Holding explained, “I think we all appreciate something more once we’ve experienced it ourselves. This is certainly the case with this experience and I hope if anyone is considering the opportunity in the future, they will seize the moment.”
Georgia Reuling (Artist and Jewelry Designer)
For Reuling, the decision to jump in as a guest choreographer was easy. “The main reason I applied to be a choreographer for Regalia is that I wanted a chance to work creatively with the wonderful dancers of RDT and the local professional community,” she explained. “What a great, very challenging, opportunity to participate in such an unusual creative process!”
As for preparing for the four-hour process of setting a piece on dancers, she said, “I am preparing for this challenge by listening to my music, getting a feel for the sensations and experience I want the audience to have, creating a structure for roughly what I want to happen during the various sections of the dance, and exploring movement for phrases I will teach the dancers.” She added, “I am getting my thoughts together on how I will talk to the dancers about the movement they will create for the dance.”
As for inspiration for the piece she will set or for creativity in general, Reuling explained. “Usually I get an awareness, image, or gut feeling from some life experience I am having, which makes me want to dive deeper into it and figure out what else it leads to. It can be from something I see in the world, an experience in nature, something I read or hear, or music. In the case of this dance I am creating for Regalia, it started with music, and then grew from there.“
Having met just once with her mentor [Elle Johansen], Reuling said, “We seem to have an understanding of each other’s way of talking about dance, which I am very happy about.” She is not a stranger to the underlying dynamics of Regalia. “I have danced and done choreography before, years ago, so I have experienced the choreographic process before, but never on a project like this one,” Reuling said. lI think that it will be wonderful to work with her [Johansen] on making this dance a reality in such a short time. She can be working with one group of the dancers while I am working with another group, which will help the process go faster. She has already had great suggestions. Mainly it is a good thing to have her acceptance and understanding of my ideas. She is another pair of eyes and another mind and artistic point of view to bounce ideas off, and to notice things that I might not notice.”
Reuling said she will teach the dancers some movement, but primarily she will ask them to generate movement based on ideas and impressions that I give them, “and that come from their own minds, hearts, and physicality.” She added, “While I am preparing for this experience, I am reminded of my preference as an audience member for the balance of, one,, what the choreographer, artist, composer or director wants to say to me about their ideas, vs. two, how much is left up to my impressions and imagination. I like for there to be space for both as I watch a dance or experience any kind of art.”