The best dances incorporate rhythm and structure, illuminated by spirit; nothing has ever beaten that formula since the caveman. And all of these timeless and immortal elements balance ideally in the Repertory Dance Theatre's outstanding fall concert - a program that features two of the four "Landscapes" projected for its Utah Centennial Suite, to be performed complete in 1996. Judging from the first two, the completion will mark one of RDT's finest hours.
Making its premiere bow is "Liquid Interior," an effective and attractive piece designed to suggest Great Basin country, choreographed by Margaret Jenkins with Ellie Klopp.Dance cannot exist without people, so dancing a place may well concern itself with the denizens of that place. Hence the dancers at first seem to be little creatures scurrying about - bugs, flies, snakes - dwarfed by their immense surroundings.
Evoking sun and shadows, thunder and raindrops, Philip Bim-stein's score suggests a place charged with electricity, zapping and buzzing and humming, a place teeming with an intense inner life that exists just below the surface of a dry expanse.
Progressing from the particular to the cosmic, the figures calm themselves and drift together, becoming more coordinated to suggest the grandeur of the place, its sweep and balance, the layered, spectacular configurations of nature. Graceful costumes by Beaver Bauer have a chalky, striated appearance, and Nicholas Caval-laro's lighting adds to the effect of dry, silent heat.
The program opens with a repeat of "Erosion, Landscape I," Zvi Gotheiner's stunning salute to the red rock country of Utah. Projections of John Telford's photos take care of most of the erosion business, while the dancers busy themselves in a wondrous sea of southwestern color, often moving like the stick figures of Indian drawings on a hundred canyon walls, come to life.
They scatter according to individual compulsion, then gather in ritual, rhythmic groups. Besides giving a pleasing linear contrast to the vertical movement of the dancers, the ropes which they try to pull across the stage suggest a comforting stability; and their slipping away, upsetting those who cling to them, makes you think, "that's life."
Scott Killian's strong and often melodic score evokes sounds of nature and its symmetry. This dance means a lot of things you can't quite put your finger on, and it ends with a sense of having somehow lost a race or contest.
The company concludes with Laura Dean's spectacular "Sky Light," set to her own percussive score. Dean is a minimalist, who explores every facet of one rhythmic pattern before moving on to the next; there's a lot to be said for this approach, in a society that loves to skim the surface. It's as if the whole world were contained in a drop of water, which is held up to the light and examined from every aspect.
Clad in brilliant yellow pants suits, the six dancers enter consecutively, and it's intriguing how the same movement differs, enlivened by six different spirits and personalities.
The sky light changes from noon to evening to morning as they dance on, always exhilarated, exploring minute rhythmic changes. As the synergy builds they revel in the act of turning, which many societies find induces an ecstatic state.