In Utah, with its vivid geographic and scenic contrasts, landscapes are dramatic, spacious and uniquely beautiful. And with "Landscapes," its opening program of the season, the Repertory Dance Theatre celebrates that drama and beauty, while looking toward Utah's centennial year.
Programs at 7:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, Nov. 12 and 13, will include the U.S. premiere of Lucinda Childs' "Rhythm Plus" and the return of Yacov Sharir's "Dissonance, Harmony and More About Love."Of special interest is the world premiere of Zwi Gotheiner's "Erosion - Utah Landscape #1," with score by Scott Killian and photo projections of John Telford. The piece is the first of four in an ambitious RDT project, "Centennial Suite," to be completed and presented in its entirety in 1996, Utah's 100th year of statehood.
The company will commission prominent local, national and international artists in choreography, music, photography and visual arts. Each production team for the three other 20-minute pieces will choose its site to celebrate in dance, within the limitation that "this year's work is inspired by the Colorado Plateau, next year will be the Great Basin, and of course one year we will have the mountains," said Linda C. Smith, artistic director of RDT.
"When choreographers come in they are so excited, just experiencing Salt Lake City - the weather, the mountains, the powerful space. We hope that `Centennial Suite' will foster appreciation of this very inspiring place to live, where folks have a `can do' attitude. There is freedom if you want to work hard and just do it. But people must be aware that this unique milieu is fragile, we could lose it to commercialism. I hope we can spark some awareness of the necessity for preservation.
"Zwi's piece is concerned with endlessness, timelessness; we sense the birth and life of Earth in many organic forms, plant and animal," Smith continued. "We see `Erosion' not just in the sense of tearing down, but of becoming something else. The movement is so flowing, so carving and organic-feeling, with a tribal sense.
"The new score by Scott Killian (who has also experienced the red rock country) is just gorgeous, very listenable on solely musical terms, it could stand on its own. John Telford's photographs are selected for the sense of texture and design rather than panorama. He has an amazing feeling for the land."
Zwi Gotheiner was born in Israel, where he began his performing career with Bat-Sheva of Tel Aviv. In New York City he studied at the schools of Martha Graham and Alvin Ailey and danced with Joyce Tristler Company, Garden State Ballet and Eliot Feld Ballet. He currently is artistic director of his own company.
"I fell in love with the drama of southern Utah, I was overpowered by the vast spaces of the Southwest, with intimations of what had occurred over millions of years," he said. "My piece has no story line, it just suggests things to the mind. I feel my dancers are a community, and the piece is aimed mostly at drawing analogy between life and nature.
"In Bryce Canyon I thought of all the things that make the canyon, going by quickly, like time-lapse photography. The colors are dramatic, as if the Earth was wounded; and the biggest wounds bring out the greatest beauty."
In the field of modern dance, Lucinda Childs is an acknowledged leader. New York born, she comes through the lineage of Merce Cunningham and Hanya Holm/Mary Wigman. In 1963, she first appeared as an original member of the Judson Dance Theatre in New York, forming her own company in 1973. Among her most important accomplishments is collaboration with Robert Wilson and Philip Glass on the opera "Einstein on the Beach," both as performer and choreographer.
Her company, which dances only her works, tours widely, and is particularly popular in France. They average 20 weeks' dancing annually, this year from August to February, ending at the New York's Joyce Theater in February 1994.
With her thin, disciplined body, tightly knotted hair and reserved manner, Childs suggests a cross between school marm and ministering angel. "I never perform myself anymore, I get too nervous," she said with a little smile, as she supervised an RDT rehearsal of "Rhythm Plus."
Among her more than 50 pieces, major works are "Dance" with music by Philip Glass, and "Available Light," music by John Adams, both of which have appeared at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festivals. She choreographed commissions for the Paris Opera, Pacific Northwest, Berlin Opera and Lyon Opera ballets, and Rambert Dance Company. "I like to use light very simply, with an abstract feeling," she said.
Childs works well with minimalist composers because she too enjoys exploring patterns, and developing their sequences. Such is the nature of "Rhythm Plus."
"There was lots of elaborate floor dance in the '50s and '60s, and Lucinda wanted to go back to something more basic - walking - and explore its possibilities," said Smith."She's come a long way since then to `Rhythm Plus,' which is wonderfully complex, intellectual, based on several patterns used in many ways. It's a very different dance experience for Utah - we've had nothing quite like it before.
" `Rhythm Plus' premiered in Paris in 1992. We have the U.S. premiere, then her company, now celebrating their 20th anniversary, will perform it in 1994. It's made up of cyclic elements, everything built on the diagonal, everyone traveling from upstage left to downstage right. There is a high-energy duet, then a solo that defines the directions.
"Everyone has worked from a score, which tells them when and where to enter, how to move, with different patterns going at the same time. It's mathematical, and totally fascinating to watch. There's lots of repetition, but you are never bored, since there are endless, exponential ways of putting the patterns together. Then the whole thing unwinds and goes back to basics.
"The music is for harpsichord, to be performed live by Ricklen Nobis - a piece by Gyorgy Ligeti called `Hungarian Rock' and another by Luc Ferrari. The music is like a labyrinth, a wonderful web of patterns, a terrific buildup. The piece is very satisfying for me in terms of a cycle. This whole season deals with landscapes, and this too is a kind of geometric landscape."
Completing the program is a return of Yacov Sharir's "Dissonance, Harmony and More About Love." Sharir heads his own dance company in Austin, Texas, which he brought to Utah a couple of years ago. Since then, RDT and Sharir have carried out a number of cooperative ventures.
"The company is looking spiffy and working hard," said Smith. Tickets are $10-$20, on sale at the Capitol Theatre box office and Albertsons ArtTix outlets. Or call 534-6345.