A 30th anniversary program that would suggest the significance and essence of Ririe-Woodbury and its accomplishments through the years, while saluting its present standing: That was the need that was met by the company's season-opening weekend concerts.
The occasion was plagued by almost more injuries than the company has sustained in all its previous history, at least since I have been watching. This necessitated a great deal of shifting about, adding new dancers and omitting where all else failed. But no problem - the essential Ririe-Woodbury remained intact and unsinkable.Ordinarily, company dancers take on the R-W mystique as they dance together. But since their substitution 10 days ago, four guest women absorbed enough of that essence in fast forward to convey the right spirit and flavor.
In a significant program, Joan Woodbury's "Incantation" shone as a masterwork among her prolific lifetime output, a powerful piece that invites individual interpretation, with its pioneer use of slide projections and its provocative score by John La Montaine.
Woodbury placed slides and dancers in masterful juxtaposition or opposition to convey the struggle, the life force, the human condition inching toward fulfillment. Often the slide content dwarfed the little figures floating before them in a sort of Blake-like detachment or sometimes suggesting the tortured creatures in Dante's "Divine Comedy." Thus the viewer was caught between the giant background and the scurrying foreground, the mind forming subliminal concepts.
This deep piece builds to its climax as cooperation leads to attaining the light, and substitute dancers Eleni Kambouris, Gesel Mason and Lynn Topovsky had made themselves remarkably conversant with the idiom.
"Short Stem Roses," a world premiere of a Douglas Nielson piece, is a charmer and an athletic achievement, reflecting a world of humor and romance in its nine vignettes, with a lively and listenable electronic score by Mike Vargas.
Dancer Anthony Roberts was injured at the last minute, making substitution impossible here, but the remaining five dancers carried the work admirably, with litte loss of impact. After the entrances and exits, the almost spontaneous happenings of the early parts, the final moonlit sections with their lyric accompaniment concluded the program with the grace and amiability suitable for a celebratory evening.
"The Shoulders of Significant Others" showed company member Keith Johnson at his greatest maturity yet. Its four couples interchanged and mixed, conveying friendly, sometimes intimate encounters; showing by turns the dependence and support of loving people and their need for each other.
This vital piece is sleek and charged with youthful enthusiasm. Johnson's distinctive voice sounds through a movement vocabulary recognizably his own, and composer Rick Chitwood's instinctive affinity for dance results in a score well reflective of the movement.
Completing the program was "Ceremonial Rites," intended for three men, but still effective when danced by two. This dramatic dance began with poses and continued with turning, while manipulating great capes. A gift of Annelise Mertz, a pupil of Mary Wigman, it suggested the nautch dance of Ruth St. Denis, by whom Wigman may have been influenced. At any rate, Philip Glass' music was made for this sort of hypnotic, flowing movement.