This spring produced an overflowing bounty of great programs in dance, which enjoys imperial status among the performing arts in Utah. The following five exemplify this distinction.
Ballet West: Choregraphic Fest VII: Spotlight Utah
Donald Byrd’s Processional world premiere capped a distinguished choreographic valedictory in the history-making closing production of Ballet West’s 2025-26 season. The company’s seventh choreographic festival production emphasized why dance stands so prominently in Utah’s performing arts scene, as Ballet West was joined by Repertory Dance Theatre, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company and SALT Contemporary Dance. As noted in the preview at The Utah Review, this was the first time that four such distinguished dance companies in Utah took the stage, with Spotlight Utah as the production’s theme.
Opening the evening with a commissioned work that closed out RDT’s blockbuster Ovation production last November, the eight RDT dancers snapped to thrilling precision in Norbert De La Cruz III’s Scherzo Fantastique, whose title comes from a late Romantic composition by Czech composer Josef Suk. Stacking, shoving and restacking their own white chairs as props, the dancers lift themselves as well as us audience members from a humdrum world into a robust fantasy crackling with jest that is tinged with bittersweet nostalgia and somber dark shadowy moments. De La Cruz tucks deeply into the music’s invitation for the inner drive to leap into bursts of dizzying acrobatics.
As impressive was Ririe-Woodbury’s contribution, The Rate We Change, set by Kellie St. Pierre, with an original score by Daniel Clifton, a local composer and one of the original musicians of the famed Salt Lake Electric Ensemble. The company’s six dancers produce a wholly absorbing demonstration of trusting themselves and their bodies as well as their colleagues, while continuously moving on and off a human-powered rotating platform. The work vividly encapsulates the tight bonds the dancers have fortified with each other, regardless of whether they have been in the company for a couple of seasons or for as long as even up to five or ten years. Dancers subconsciously stretch beyond what they perceive as physical limits to the creative possibilities in their body’s expressive capabilities in movement.
Two months after premiering Noelle Kayser’s Time Comprises A Net, SALT Contemporary Dance offered it for the Spotlight Utah showcase, which provided an engrossing divergence from the perpetual motion feel of the three other works. Inspired by Marc Wittmann’s 2016 book Felt Time: The Psychology of How We Perceive Time, Kayser, who opens the work with her recorded narration of excerpts from the book, sets movement that echoes Wittmann’s beliefs that our embodied selves along with the signals of how we move are how we really perceive time passing, instead of relying upon our primary senses. There are moments when time seems to move excruciatingly slow, as when we are bored or are awaiting something that we anticipate will stimulate and excite us. Then there are fleeting bursts where we almost seem to step out of our bodies and time moves quickly. Likewise the music, with excerpts from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C Minor and piano ballads by Aphex Twin, emphasizes these dynamics. As Wittmann contends, “the more we feel ourselves, the slower felt passage of time.”
Quite serendipitously even if it was unintentional, Ballet West’s premiere of Byrd ‘s Processional, set to the score of Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments, tied the underlying dynamics of the three other works which preceded it and fortified them. As mentioned in The Utah Review’s earlier published preview, Processional is inspired by the fabled Défilé du Ballet (Ballet Parade), a tradition that the Paris Opera Ballet follows at the beginning of every season. The most impressive moments came in the second movement, featuring the duet of Tyler Gum and Victoria Vassos, which emulates the dissonant yet beautiful solemnity of the concerto’s slow movement.
Repertory Dance Theatre: Anthology
Repertory Dance Theatre’s 60th triumphant anniversary season ended with Anthology, which epitomized the landmark company’s central mission as the artistic custodian and curator of modern dance history.
The lyrical opener of Soaring (1920), a work that Doris Humphrey created with Ruth St. Denis, featured the company’s four women dancers plus a guest artist, working with a large rippling scarf as the communal prop, who synchronized exquisitely with the ebb and flow of Schumann’s ‘Aufschung’ Fantasiestücke, Op. 12. José Limón’s Concerto Grosso (1945), which was the first major acquisition by RDT in 1967, followed. Here, the dancers demonstrated their facility with the muscled rigor in Limón’s choreographic interpretation of one of Vivaldi’s most famous chamber string concertos.
Meanwhile, the other two works on the program emphasized the theatrical potential of modern dance which was envisioned by the likes of Martha Graham and Helen Tamiris. The company’s premiere of the suite for Dark Meadow (2016), which was created 70 years after Graham premiered the work, with music by Carlos Chavez, demonstrated the company’s signature performing acumen with works that sprout from community rituals. RDT dancers consistently excel in attending to the choreographic parallel of dramaturgy in theater, which brings out the creative integrity that led to the genesis of these works.
Indeed, the closing work was the proper coda to an emotionally enriching season of productions for this company’s diamond anniversary. Dance for Walt Whitman by Helen Tamiris, a 1961 work based on Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, with music from Rounds for String Orchestra by David Diamond, had been rescued from being lost forever. Fifteen dancers from the University of Utah School of Dance and a member of Tanner Dance Children’s Dance Theatre joined the eight RDT dancers. This is a pure icon of the roots of Utah dance heritage—conceived and structured like a pageant but yet an exuberant reminder of the indelible cultural character that underlies the real and uncompromised soul of a nation that is struggling to reconnect with the historical provenance that led to its independence 250 years ago.
Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company: Vantage Point
Capping Leslie Kraus’ first season as Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company’s artistic director, Vantage Point was exceptional in all respects, particularly in demonstrating dance’s astute capacity to put the zeitgeist of the moment in the language of movement. Kraus considered In-Kind Growth a full-fledged collaboration with the company’s six dancers, along with a dynamite live sound design score by Harrison Lind, a local musician-actor, as well as an avant-garde floral sculpture and costuming by Galore Floral artist Meagan Bertelsen.
This was a fascinating piece of dance theater, inspired in part by Annihilation, the 2014 novel by Jeff VanderMeer, which was the first installment of his Southern Reach Trilogy, as noted in a preview published at The Utah Review. Hence, the appropriate incorporation of elements of plant life served the larger thematic purpose. In-Kind Growth, which Kraus said is the second installment in a trilogy which she has been setting on the company, has arrived at a time when various dimensions criticizing and outright rejecting the promulgations of AI have converged on a coalition that is justifiably hostile and alarmed about its presence. There is an instinctive realism which the dancers effectively convey. Whatever failures as humans we have experienced do not have be to seen as inevitable or irredeemable. Kraus and her collaborators show us the converging powers of art and life especially in the fight against anti-human technology.
Kraus’ world premiere was joined by equally fabulous performances of two works in the company repertoire that consistently highlight its artistic strengths: Two Hearted (2021) by Keerati Jinakunwhiphat, with its silky R&B score by Bryndon Cook, and audience favorite, Tzveta Kassabova’s The Opposite of Killing (2010), which really is an effective companion to In-Kind Growth.
RDT’s Link Series: Of Each OtHER
Repertory Dance Theatre’s Link Series (RDT) is one of the best platforms for presenting examples from the deep bench of independent dance creators in Utah. The most recent production amplified this point, with Of Each OtHER, with choreography by Liz Dibble and collaborators Rachel Barker, Alexandra Bradshaw-Yerby, Mo Crump, Melissa Bobick and Tara McArthur.
The seven works encompassed a comprehensive look at womanhood. Dibble’s Seven Seeds was an ingeniously crafted choreographic album of family memories spanning seven generations of her family tree. As the choreographer mentioned in a program note, her daughter is the seventh generation to carry the namesake of Charlotte Elizabeth. Normally, the contexts of birthright and namesakes are treated as the provenance of men, but Dibble’s piece vividly makes the case for the unique legacy of women in the history of her family. The accompanying score notably included the original O Virtus Sapientiae by local composer Andrew Maxfield.
Elements of Impressionism were meaningfully incorporated in Bobick’s A Slash of Blue,inspired by an Emily Dickinson poem and Michael Torke’s music, Bright Blue Music. Likewise, Mo Crump’s Terms of Service was convincingly framed in its creative brief critiquing propaganda in the contentious propagation of AI. With original music by Jon Paul Yerby, Bradshaw-Yerby and McArthur choreographed and performed the duet Starboard, which effectively captured the irresistible awe we find in Pablo Neruda’s Elementary Odes, an inspirational source for the dancers. A worthy companion to this poetic choreographic reflection was Dibble’s This Arm Beneath Your Hand, inspired by Robert Frost’s Nothing Gold Can Stay.
One of the most impressive works of the evening was Rachel Barker’s solo, Herstory. An accomplished dance artist with a substantial portfolio, Barker articulated a theme that other Utah women dance artists periodically have addressed in choreography—what is the artistic evolution like for a dancer who experienced injury, pregnancy, loss, post-partum and, finally, the responsibilities of motherhood. Barker generously put her own story in an elegant choreographic study that also provided space for others to engage in finding their own relevant epiphanies. This was beautifully conceived, enhanced with photographic and video elements along with a musical score which included a voiceover by her child, Jada Beck.
The program closed with the ebullient Cattle Call, choreographed by Dibble and Crump, which alluded nicely to the depth and breadth of the legacy of women who have pioneered and led the way in making dance one of Utah’s greatest performing arts genres.
Nitya Nritya Foundation: Praachi
Indians from the Asian subcontinent are represented among the fastest growing demographic groups in the Salt Lake City metropolitan area and their presence is reflected in a rapidly growing number of performing arts opportunities. A prominent entry is the Nitya Nritya Foundation, which recently introduced a professional Bharatanatyam (pronounced Bah-rah-the-na-tee-yum) ensemble in Utah.
For viewing, it is an entrancing experience, as this dance form dates its origins to the late 16th century. It is a surprisingly approachable form because human emotions are effectively communicated even in the movement of arms, hands and fingers a well as subtle facial and eye gestures. One does not necessarily have to understand Bharatanatyam’s underlying cultural manifestations. But the excellent quality of the performance whets one’s intellectual curiosity to learn more about the art form, especially in how it celebrates the power and divinity of the feminine.
While the art form was conceived within the upper-class realms of the royal courts, its current practices resituate its significance and reclaim its value for the egalitarian purposes of empowering women.
The performers, nearly all of whom have established careers in various STEM fields, are comprehensively trained in the movement language of Bharatanatyam: Jyothsna Sainath, from Bengaluru, India, who studied under numerous renowned gurus and scholars; Sarayu Ramanan, who began her training with her grandmother and her aunt, and continued under the tutelage of gurus; Aiswarya Josyula, whose roots include her aunt Sabitha Bhamidipati, a disciple the legendary Guru Vempati Chinna Satya; Sradha Ramesh Bhatt, who began studying at the age of five in India and has studied under numerous gurus with major reputations in the art form.
Likewise, Varshinee Devanand started at the age of eight and continued through her schooling years; Rashmi Hungund comes from a family of Hindustani classical musicians and art connoisseurs and began her dance training as a child in Bangalore; Parimala Maremanda is a well-known Kuchipudi dance artist from Hyderabad, who also has studied Bharatanatyam under Sainath.
Their collective credentials come through clearly in their performances. We are accustomed to the physicality of movement in other dance forms especially as artists strive to transform themselves into the characters of the narrative being told choreographically. In Bharatanatyam, dancers strive for similar effects but their subtle poise, eye contact and facial expressions go a long way beyond physical limits.