Ballet West: Choreographic Festival

The future of ballet may very well look like the third annual Choreographic Festival presented by Ballet West, only more so. The performance itself was breathtaking. The sheer range and breadth of artistic perspectives, institutional development and support, and scaffolding of public engagement made it an unforgettable experience.

A night of mixed repertoire is expected to be stylistically diverse. The Festival’s choreographic works were diverse not only in style but also across vital metrics that may be consistently problematic in the culture and institutions of ballet.

Three of the five choreographers presented on the program were women, a noteworthy majority in a field in which women are radically underrepresented, or tokenized, in the commission and presentation of new works. A United States premiere performed by the Scottish Ballet and a premiere by the artistic director of another major American ballet company, BalletMet, were presented alongside three creations from Ballet West company artists. The Ballet West choreographers represented different ranks from within the company’s internal structure, as did the dancers each choreographer featured - ranging from the corps de ballet to principal artists.

In addition to the Festival’s performances, a screening of the documentary film Danseur on a previous night, with a post-film discussion led by professor and journalist Kate Mattingly; a visual art installation showcasing local artists; and a pre-performance lecture/Q & A with the program’s choreographers deftly mediated by Ballet West artistic director Adam Sklute all worked together to enliven the intimate Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center with a sense of community and critical viewership.

Sophie Laplane’s Sibilo opened the program with a joyful provocation superbly executed by the Scottish Ballet, for whom Laplane is choreographer-in-residence and a former dancer. As mentioned in the program notes and elaborated in the pre-performance lecture, Sibilo began as a silent duet articulating the two dancers’ personalities. The conceptual framework was drawn from pairing the duet with a whistled song, which then led to the commision of the original score and expansion of the ensemble piece.

The whistling theme threaded through an electronic pulse and drone, pacing the shifting vignettes. It began with four pairs of men in suits and women in dresses dancing in stunning unison. Fluid transitions through angular and iconic postures set the tone. A woman shed her outer layer to actively reveal a (fantastically costumed) nude-colored top and bottoms and began a quirky and intricate duet. Many iterations of duet, trio, and ensemble followed, with different facings, pacing, and affective quality, including a gorgeous dance that twined two men together and apart through the arms of one suit jacket. Other clothing articles were whisked into the wings by wire; the donning and shedding felt like an integrated allegory for personal revelation but never a gimmick. The end was familiar but fitting, the dancers in a line downstage facing out. They fully committed to individual signature movements, which the audience was by now conditioned to recognize, and then together executed the signature motif of a full-body shimmy that really must be seen to be believed.

The three works by Ballet West choreographers followed an intermission. First, principal artist Emily Adams interpreted archetypes with the high-flying, and thoughtfully cast and costumed, But A Dream. Though occasionally overwhelmed by the music and widely spaced freneticisms, the piece was an effective exploration of interacting and contrasting qualities, and reminded me of early Ballets Russes collaborations with the Surrealists. Assembling a trio of Tyler Gum, Arolyn Williams, and Jordan Veit as The Seekers, all clad in modish gender-neutral garb, was a pitch-perfect decision. Corps artist Olivia Gusti completely inhabited Adams’ mode of graceful strength as The Racer.

Ballet West first soloist Katlyn Addison’s Hidden Voices established a beautiful dynamic with its selection of an Antonín Dvořák string quartet, inspired by African American spiritual music, and the recurrent theme of hummed hymns. This musical choice, and in fact every choice in Addison’s work, indicated a commitment to the marrying of aesthetic beauty and meaningful context - a hallmark of consummate artistry and craft. The primarily classical/neoclassical vernacular was refreshing and evocative. Particularly moving for me was the stunning Gabrielle Salvatto in the Humming Section as well as the return to the stage of new mother Allison DeBona.

Demi-soloist Trevor Naumann’s disquiet was unsettling, as its title forewarns, but quite crowd-pleasing. My initial reaction was to note the strikingly vampiric quality of the undulating, scantily-clad Victorian-Gothic cluster. The cluster jerked and contorted, then emerged into controlled chaos, a surprisingly mature expression of themes that could have been less tasteful in hands other than Naumann’s. Hair whipping, lightning quick piqué turns, and group undulations in canon, the combination of which could have easily bordered on too much, were integrated here into something darker and sharper.

Edwaard Liang is both a sought-after choreographer and the artistic director of the Columbus, Ohio-based company BalletMet, following a career dancing with many internationally renowned companies. He is therefore in a prime position to encapsulate what he, Adam Sklute, and Scottish Ballet artistic director and CEO Christopher Hampson espoused in the pre-performance lecture: the creation and production of new work in collaboration with company dancers, in support of their company dancers’ artistic growth.

It was clear that Liang has a strong stylistic vision, and as readily apparent that he recognized and valued the strengths and qualities of the Ballet West dancers on whom he set his new work, Constant Light. The piece began with dancers moving in full silhouette. Warm lighting came up on a large ensemble in ombré unitards, with white on the top that transitioned to red down through the flat shoes and pointe shoes, accentuating full lines.

Constant Light was aptly named, evoking an unremitting beauty that the piece achieved both technically and expressively. Innovative partnering and interesting formations and spatial densities enlivened the abstract interpretation of string and piano concertos. An ensemble of men performed some truly lovely fouettés, a step usually reserved for women. Principal artist Adrian Fry looked at home in the style of the piece, especially during a brisk petite allegro. Soloist Chelsea Keefer caught the eye with the best onstage breakaway run I’ve seen - a surprisingly difficult task - and held that attention throughout the remainder of her section. The sparing use of silhouette was reprised only once, with a single dancer, who was discernible as the inimitably poised Emily Adams, well before the lights came up. Constant Light was a great opportunity to appreciate the individual artists familiar to Ballet West’s audience through different eyes.

Ballet companies face the challenge of continuing to broaden their horizons, while fostering the creative growth of their own artists, if they wish to remain vital. There can, and will be, documentation that addresses gender inequities in ballet through a lens even more inclusive than that of the film Danseur. The same goes for more accessible or immersive venues than the Rose Wagner Center, and for more, and wider-reaching, educational outreach than the pre-performance lectures. There will be more interdisciplinary intersections, beyond those of figurative and portrait paintings and photography that depict dance. There will also be greater institutional support for the continuing artistic development of company dancers and choreographers, especially women, especially women of color (and the list goes on). Having seen the third annual Choreographic Festival, hosted by Ballet West, I am more hopeful than I have been for quite some time that these things will happen - because they have more than begun to happen, here and now.

The Scottish Ballet in Sibilo by Sophie Laplane. Photo by Jane Hobson.

Nora Price is a Milwaukee native living and working in Salt Lake City. She can be seen performing with Durian Durian, an art band that combines post-punk music and contemporary dance.

Lost Love Socialite Sweet Love Recluse

There are countless frames in this dance: walls that rearrange themselves, curtains and doors that close, and a hazy story about a hotel where tall tales are told. Memories of an audition. A history lesson. Ponce de León and the Fountain of Youth. There’s definitely a heroine, Gertrudine, who wants – and maybe gets – to die because she’s reached the age of fifty and has lost her “sparkle.” Gertrudine is reanimated by most of the cast, one at a time, though none seem to fit her perfectly. John Allen understands age, but might not have learned any of his lines. Eliza Tappan is Gertrudine more often than anyone else, though she’s twenty-two or twenty-six, anything but fifty, a diva nonetheless. Juan Carlos Claudio is perhaps the most compelling Gertrudine, but she leaves you with the least information.

Visual pleasure and misdirection abounds, and I keep thinking, this is a story I know, isn’t it? I am reminded of the feeling years ago, when I watched Big Dance Theater’s piece about the film Cleo from 5 to 7. I knew we were somewhere in the French New Wave, but I’d yet to see any of Agnès Varda’s films.

Throughout this collaboration between Satu Hummasti and Daniel Clifton, I keep wracking my brains for the story about a fabulous dame who wants to off herself. At one point, Eliza/Gertrudine discards John Allen for Christine Hasegawa, who roller-skates impressively while sporting Lolita’s red, heart-shaped glasses. Natalie Border dons a fur vest and becomes a lithe, frightened horse. My meaning-making senses gravitate toward the gender line. The three women revel in a youthful sexuality that seems haunted by specters of age or mania. The men, who are (or appear) older, are occasionally violent but mostly just seem benignly confounded. Even when Eliza (temporarily a mother) fights with John (a father) for the affections of a sleeping (or dead?) baby Natalie, they do so in song.

Near the beginning, John beats Eliza’s head against the ground in slow motion. This seems very important. Later on, the action is replayed in a different context with roles rearranged. Another salient image: Before the funeral scene, in which Bashaun Williams enjoins the deceased to “say hello to Jesus,” a round robin of talking corpses speculate on the details of Gertrudine’s demise. Does she die in possession of herself, or is she slowly robbed of her faculties in a parade of indignities? We simply don’t have all of the information. The most pleasing image, and perhaps the most conventionally romantic, ends the action. The large square panels which comprise the set, brilliantly attuned to the costuming by designer Dan Evans, have been theatre wings, a table, an altar. Finally, Bashaun and Eliza climb into them as they form a makeshift treehouse. They close the door, and shut the light.

A tempest – sex, silliness, death, and jealousy – has concluded in unexpected coziness. The ends are not so neatly tied up, and I’m not sure this last image really fits. Why is she in there with Bashaun, who we know so little about? Is it a triumph of love over death? Or is this just another snapshot of Gertrudine’s irretrievable life and times? I feel like I’ve been on the outside of an inside joke. Maybe that’s the point.

Satu Hummasti and Daniel Clifton’s Lost Love Socialite Sweet Love Recluse continues through Saturday, May 11, at Sugar Space Arts Warehouse. Tickets are available here.

Samuel Hanson is the editor and executive director of loveDANCEmore. 

Efren Corado Garcia: Dust. Breath. Place

Dust. Breath. Place is Efren Corado Garcia’s story. It is one of his stories, and Garcia is one person in the story, which is also made up of many stories and many people. On its most basic terms, Dust. Breath. Place is the story of Garcia’s journey as a young child from Guatemala to the United States and a reflection on that core memory as it pertains to his current self and life here in Utah.

The cast included faces mostly familiar to me, made up Garcia’s friends and collaborators from his time dancing in Repertory Dance Theatre - Natalie Border, Sarah Donohue, Austin Hardy, Tiana Lovett, and Tyler Orcutt. Technical direction was executed by RDT’s resident technical wizard Pilar Davis, and the simple, ingenious costumes were created by Carly Schaub. The production was sponsored and produced through RDT’s Link Series and Atlas Peak. An illustration by Tim Guthrie, drawn from the final image of the dancers on stage, graced the programs. Garcia called our attention to and thanked this group, and his larger community, both before and after the performance.

Segmented into nine sections, Dust. Breath. Place followed a journey, from a beginning to a middle to an end, and on to somewhere that was a bit of all three – new opportunity, process, something to stick around. Each short section received a minimally descriptive title on the program; home, first departure, migration, second departure, scorn/internal call, third departure, home revisited, dreams, and memories. These “chapters” pinned characters to distinct, if vague, points in time, and space kept them moving forward linearly as a narrative. Certain gestures and music molded the story and its characters, especially the sounds of dancers stamping the soles of their feet into the earth, of vibrant warm voices, clicking crickets, rumbling thunder, and of sweet, complicated reunion.

Kinesthetic choices, on the other hand, frequently took direction from cycling and reformulating un-pinnable elements of memory to bind the story together and give it the complex and building sense of an identity formed and remembered. The dancers walked forward through each stage, passing through movements, sounds, and emotional landscapes, gathering and trailing all behind them.

The costumes, first appearing uniformly dark and plain, were revealed to have vibrant and richly colorful patterns printed on the inside. These were made visible by each dancer, one by one over time, as they pulled up a pant leg and turned it inside out, hooking it over their shoulder to fashion a bright cross-body sash. This simple, inventive construction by Carly Schaub was delightful and highly effective in communicating various transformative states.

Garcia offered additional insights to the audience both before and after the show – earnestly and generously giving us something while firmly asking us to listen deeper. He shouted out to his community, filled in more of the details from his personal journey underlying the show, and outlined a litany of critical contextual factors regarding its creation and existence.

Garcia described the process he undertook to produce the folk dance-informed sequences that opened the show. Because he had immigrated at such a young age, before some cultural inheritances could fully and consciously land, Garcia had to perform research (in a literal, academic sense; different than the “research” that has gained popularity with dancers recently, which often describes an introspective, experimental approach) into Guatemalan folk dance traditions in order to approximate a dance that could imagine the “Efren who would have been” if he had never left the town of his birth.

When the same patterns were reprised later on, they followed one of the most emotionally dark and kinetically tense sections of the piece. Austin Hardy walked on stage in a moment of silence towards a painfully contorted and straining Tyler Orcutt, and began to stamp out the call-and-response-like pattern from the beginning, the familiar rhythm both warming and softening Orcutt mid-contraction and gently pulling the whole group back together. Garcia told us that for this reprisal he took those initial “what-if Efren” movements, and re-adapted them to reflect the real life Efren,who lives in Utah as a Guatemalan American.

Garcia also noted his thoughts on “making an ethnic dance for people who aren’t ethnic,” making the critical distinction (too often unacknowledged) that his cast of white dancers isn’t and can’t portray him or embody his experiences. What they are doing instead, he noted, is listening and thereby meeting him at a level of understanding which enabled them to understand how to transmit the work in a way that appropriately points the viewer to its referent.

Speaking later about a moment influenced by his reunion with his mother (the two were separated when he was very small because she paved the way for the rest of her family to follow by making the trip first), Garcia described it as “a simple way to make a picture of something very complicated… concurrent duets of bitterness and tenderness.” Orcutt and Hardy would grab each other’s shoulders and spin around, throwing their weight heavily and rotating faster and faster until Orcutt’s feet flew into the air while Hardy kept spinning him tenderly, his hands around Orcutt’s neck. Tiana Lovett and Sarah Donohue weaved around them, gliding and chassé-ing into floating arabesques, their bodies open, forward, and linked side by side. These sequences were repeated throughout the section.

Moments of contradiction and juxtaposition ran throughout the piece. Garcia noted that he filtered depictions of intense struggle and danger through the sense of wonder and adventure experienced by a young child, such as he was when the events actually took place. Watching it, I could glimpse that feeling, especially when the whole group raced around the stage at top speed, jockeying for places with the biggest, widest grins each of them could muster.

In the penultimate section, Tiana Lovett danced a beautifully light and sincere solo that evoked the joy of opened horizons and newly possible aspirations. The end threaded motifs together from all the previous sections, a true re-encapsulation that looked back upon the whole. Which is as memory is: everything you’ve already done will always keep washing through you as you continue on.

The evening was a beautiful, transformative, and emotionally affecting experience, performed in the Rose Wagner’s small, black box studio theater with simple staging and just two rows of seating. It was impeccably rehearsed and polished in its presentation, which allowed the message and experience to clearly and fully stand on their own. The themes and modes of communication felt as intimate as a confidence received from a good friend, and equally as expansive, and called out a mass of other stories, questions, suggestions, and challenges, stretching from border to arbitrary border.

A simple way to paint a complicated picture. How do you un-muddy something so complex? How do you unearth a way to reach an understanding? Ask your friends about their stories, was Garcia’s advice. And then listen.

Emily Snow is a Denver native who now calls Salt Lake City home. She has most recently been seen performing with Municipal Ballet Co. and with Durian Durian, an art band that combines electronic music and postmodern dance.

Ririe-Woodbury: Bloom

Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company’s Bloom featured two new works, one by artistic director Daniel Charon and one by University of Utah professor Stephen Koester, as well as a piece by Tzveta Kassabova (2010) that Ririe-Woodbury first performed in 2016. The concert was well-formatted, with Charon’s dynamic and daring work splicing two more humanistic explorations of relationship and transition. I’m not convinced the title Bloom accurately described my experience, but how does one accurately name a diverse repertory program? If the title didn’t portray what was happening on stage, it did sum up the beautiful Salt Lake City spring that is happening outside.

Kassabova choreographed “The Opposite of Killing” as an exploration of emotions pertinent to losing a close friend, and the piece has been performed by multiple casts, including by students at the University of Florida, University of Maryland Baltimore County, and Middlebury College. Amy Falls did a thorough job of describing and unpacking the piece at its Utah premiere; I will add that I especially found meaning in its arc.

The beginning was an exploration of movement, absence of movement; sound, absence of sound. The dancers confidently found their places making parallel lines and right angles, clear in their mission and devoid of emotional ambiguity. As the piece unfolded, it slowed down, weighted with grief. Breeanne Saxton found herself upstage and alone, bathed in a warm spotlight, isolated, watching the movement carry on without her.

There were the more obvious moments of experiencing loss, such as soft embraces and collapsing bodies. Particularly resonant, however, was the constant shift of dancers’ costumes. As the choreography moved the dancers on and off stage, each subtly shifted what they were wearing; one who was wearing shorts came out in pants, one previously showing skin next appeared in a turtleneck. The costume changes never departed from a gray palette, but morphed enough to signal that each dancer was, in fact, changing; as if to say, “I may be similar on the outside, however, with loss, there is a shift.”

The end was the beginning, the dancers lying down in horizontal and vertical lines. What felt self-assured and expectant in the opening scene now felt unresolved and heavy. What we experienced in the middle shifted everything.

Charon’s Dance for a Liminal Space, divided into two parts, buffered either side of the intermission, and each part diverged from the other in their definitions of “liminal.” From the program notes, the first section related to a transitional or initial stage of process, while the second explored occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary. I found both parts showcased the five dancers beautifully (Brian Nelson, who joined the company in 2018, did not appear in the piece), as well as challenged notions of how to convey something both in transition and arriving from transition. That is to say, I liked it.

The first part began with the three women of the company (Megan McCarthy, Melissa Younker, and Breeanne Saxton) as clear, directional, and undulatory, their bodies bright and severe against the darkness of the stage. Then, just when I started to put my finger on the piece, text by Meredith Monk began. Phrases such as “he salted his empty plate first” and “she wears the same bow as her dog” refused to relate to what was happening on stage, and scrambled any definitive meaning. This absurdity paired with the robust physicality was oddly satisfying, and forced my mind to open and receive instead of to close and define. Undoubtedly, there will be those that find the disparity jarring, even frustrating; but when the closing image was settled and fixed, two groups having taken their places, statuesque and clear, I appreciated it even more.  

The second part of Dances for a Liminal Space was highlighted with bold and geometric lighting by Ririe-Woodbury technical director William Peterson and relentless music by Michael Gordon. Did I mention that the dancers looked fantastic? Because they did. Bloom is also the farewell concert for both Yebel Gallegos and Breeanne Saxton, two versatile dancers that will be greatly missed. They, along with the others, were in perfect form, and this section of Charon’s piece in particular showed off the company’s range and virtuosity. Bashaun Williams and Megan McCarthy travelled from one side of the stage to the other, flying, twisting, and turning, and when they leapt into the wings, I wished they would run back around and soar through the phrase again. The stakes were high in this section, the position had been chosen, and it was time for the dancers to confront the consequence with intensity and resolve.

The final piece was Koester’s “Departure - A Last Song, Perhaps a Final Dance Before a Rest.” As the program note detailed, Koester is retiring from his position at the University of Utah in the School of Dance, and perhaps from dance in general. I was his student at the U during graduate school, and thus feel a personal connection to his retirement; he has been a strong figure in the Utah dance community for decades. I have admired him as a choreographer, and found his pieces bold and impactful -- even the few that I did not enjoy would run through my mind for weeks after, as I tried to find a landing place for them (arguably the biggest compliment of all).

To that end, I found myself anticipating what his final work would be. Conceptually challenging? Movement-driven? Autobiographical? Trying not to be too melodramatic (although the piece’s title doesn’t temper this), it was as if we were all huddled around him, staring intently: “What are your parting words?!”

His parting words in “Departure” seemed to be, “Find community. Help one another. Be together.” The piece featured the entire company, clad in pedestrian clothes, with music by David Lang. There was form to it, but that form sprouted from relationships as each dancer seemingly took a turn at being supported, or at least seen, by the others. Sometimes the relationships poked, nagged, questioned, or insisted; there was little movement for movement’s sake, each vignette attaining an emotional resonance that could also immediately shift or drop.

The final image was a terse wave from Yebel Gallegos, as he and Brian Nelson retreated upstage, the lights fading.

Bloom concludes tonight, April 20, with a final performance at 7:30 p.m. at the Rose Wagner Center for the Performing Arts.

Erica Womack is a Salt Lake City-based choreographer. She coordinates loveDANCEmore’s Mudson series and contributes regularly to the blog.

Repertory Dance Theatre: Voices

Watching Repertory Dance Theatre’s Voices, a show that reiterated the company’s theme this season of “Manifest Diversity,” was a distinct pleasure. Nearly every piece was preceded by a video featuring the choreographer, or re-stager of the original choreography, providing a glimpse into their intent and process, which I found to be particularly effective and illuminating for a non-modern trained dancer such as myself. This was something I especially appreciated throughout the evening: the thoughtful, unobtrusive way in which these videos blended and drew connections through the program, which then became as much a part of the program as the dances themselves. They were like delightful appetizers followed by a sumptuous main course. The program itself was a varied menu with distinctly different flavors, some emotionally gratifying, others intellectually appealing, and all of them aesthetically pleasing.

The first piece, “Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor,” was originally choreographed by Doris Humphrey in 1938 and was “inspired by the need for love, tolerance, and nobility in a world given more and more to the denial,” according to the program notes. In the introductory video that featured Nina Watt and Jennifer Scanlon, who re-staged the piece, the audience was reminded that “Passacaglia” was originally conceived while fascism was on the rise in Europe. The significance of that historical context in today’s world was not lost.

“Passacaglia” was a lyrical piece, glorious and effulgent in the dazzling confluence of Bach’s music and Humphrey’s choreography, and transported me to a different realm. Lauren Curley and Dan Higgins led movements that found their refrain in the ensemble silhouetted in a pyramidal configuration on boxes, some seated, others standing. There was a sense of conductor and choir, song and chorus, and the struggle of dynamic leadership, as each dancer seemed to be every other dancer, an individual yet uncompromisingly part of a whole. The blue-lit background and white costumes accentuated the arabesques and turns and further underscored the uplifting nature of the piece.

RDT in “Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor” by Doris Humphrey. Photo by Sharon Kain.

Second on the program was the world premiere of “Event,” an incisive and interrogatory piece, with a distinctly different tone, choreographed by Bebe Miller. It was a joy to watch and a joy to listen to. Miller, in the introductory video, first told us that she is not a “storyteller” and that she began by observing who the dancers were together and allowing “the serendipity of interaction” to come to the fore. I found it intriguing to listen to her choreographic process. Her piece centered around the idea of an event occurring in a room of 6 people, which then gradually evolved/devolved from event into narrative, focusing more on each observer’s interpretation, feelings, and sentiments, the recall of it, and the correspondent emotions.

“Event” featured a brilliant score by Mike Vargas that highlighted a penetrating text by Ain Gordon, crisply delivered in this context by Miller. The movement was dynamic and accurately reflected Miller’s intent. Real drama was conveyed by the eight extremely strong dancers in the telling, retelling, and diverse experiences of the “event,” until the “event” became the remembered experience and no one really cared or could recall what the original “event” was. What I really loved about the piece was that I totally got it. I often struggle to understand the intent behind some modern pieces, but not here. The dancers were that effective in their spatial configurations, their energetic movements, and their convincing facial expressions (Abhinaya, as we call it in Bharatanatyam). I sincerely hope that RDT continues to collaborate with Miller.

RDT in “I give myself” by Bryn Cohn. Photo by Sharon Kain.

The next piece, “I give myself,” was choreographed by Bryn Cohn and was also a world premiere. As highlighted in her video, Cohn’s choreographic process starts with aesthetic empathy and articulation. She observed, and thus is able to spotlight for the audience, the energetic traits and mutual connections between the eight company dancers. The score, which felt unbroken but was actually three distinct sections, was composed by Michael Wall.

“I give myself” began with dark undertones; there was a relentless feeling of dread in the sometimes convulsive movements and the music reinforced this sentiment. It did gradually evolve to become a more optimistic endeavour, with the sense that the dancers withheld nothing and “gave themselves,” surrendering their vulnerabilities to interactive movements and embodying a confidence and mutual trust. The stark lighting, by Pilar, and dark costumes were effective as well, further emphasizing the sheer strength and technical prowess of each dancer.

The next piece, “Voices,” was a lovingly crafted tribute to Salt Lake City’s community of dancers, teachers, and mentors, choreographed by Nicholas Cendese with input from the performers, who were dance educators from across the Wasatch Front. The piece had a gentle, lilting feel to it, and the plethora of “voices” that informed it shone through without being discordant. It was moving to see and appreciate the generous contributions of local dance educators; our community, I have come to recognize, has one of the richest, most supportive dance cultures in the country.

Israeli choreographer Danielle Agami’s “Theatre” was the last piece on the program and was “dedicated to non-actors,” according to the program notes. Incredibly athletic in scope, the piece had the dancers fittingly attired in costumes with numbers on the back, as though they were members of a sports team. There were moments where the dancers would build up enormous momentum, bump into an invisible barrier, stop, and then recede with such control and finesse; at other moments, they seemed to engage in common exercises that one might see a team do before a match, except magnified and transformed with an inexplicable panache.

Tyler Orcutt in Danielle Agami’s “Theatre.” Photo by Sharon Kain.

The extremes to which Agami pushed the dancers of RDT, getting them to explore their limits or perhaps realize that they have none, was a powerful display of mutual enjoyment and a feat of singular stamina. Agami informed us in her video that she is interested in seeing how dancers convince her that they are engaged in her fantasy, and then uses that as a medium in creating her work. One could see RDT’s exceptional and diverse dancers rise to this challenge, and with support and encouragement, exult in exceeding any confines to create a fitting finale to the evening.

RDT is currently comprised of Jaclyn Brown, Lauren Curley, Daniel Do, Efren Corado Garcia, Dan Higgins, Elle Johansen, Tyler Orcutt, and Ursula Perry, an excellent ensemble who had us at the edge of our seats. I learned, speaking to a friend, that this was Efren Corado Garcia’s final season with the company. His note in the program thanking local employers for their flexibility in accommodating dancers’ schedules caught my eye and brought a lump to my throat: "All of you dealt with my tired body, long working days… your patience, commitment to me… helped me live a dream."

“Voices” was a banquet to be relished, and I left the theater satiated and eager for another program by Repertory Dance Theatre.

Srilatha Singh is a Bharatanatyam artiste and the director of Chitrakaavya Dance. While interested in encouraging excellence in her art form, she is also keenly compelled to explore relevance and agency through the artistic medium.