While other choreographers like to explore social issues, social ills and politics, Elisa Monte would rather look to a person's soul for inspiration.
"I've just felt more involved with that angle," Monte said during an interview at the Repertory Dance Theatre offices last month."Yes, dance can transform through other social barriers and become universal, but I prefer to keep it on a personal and emotional level. I try to stay away from politics. I'd rather leave that to other people."
Monte's work, "Pigs and Fishes," will be part of the Repertory Dance Theatre's "Packages" performance that will run Nov. 27-28 and Dec. 2-5 in the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, 138 W. 300 South. Evening curtain is 8 p.m. with a 2 p.m. matinee on Nov. 29.
Other works slated for the evening include David Parsons' "The Envelope," Tim Hadel's "Time Out" and Chris Gillis' "Spell Id Owt." And to kickstart the holiday spirit, Joe Pitti will present "A Fifteen-Minute Nut-cracker."
Monte, who was in Salt Lake City last October to stage "Pigs and Fishes" for RDT, made her professional New York debut with Agnes DeMille in City Center's revival of "Carousel" when she was 11. Since then, she's studied and performed with Lar Lubovitch, Martha Graham and the Pilobolus Dance Companies.
Her debut choreographic work, "Treading," found its way into the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre repertoire in 1982, a year after she formed her own, self-named dance company.
That same year, the Elisa Monte Dance Company won first prize at the International Dance Festival of Paris.
Other companies that have performed Monte's work include the Ballet Nuevo Mundo of Caracas, the Boston Ballet, the North Carolina Dance Theater, St. Louis Opera, San Francisco Ballet, Teatro alla Scala and Les Grands Ballets Canadiens.
The Elisa Monte Dance Company has since been renamed, to include her husband: Elisa Monte/David Brown Dance.
"In order for a work to be good, I feel it needs to come from inner explorations that include everyone," Monte explained. "And the topics can't be picked from the issues of one individual society. It needs to speak to everyone."
Monte said she's like other choreographers in that her creations start off as a personal objective. "I try to answer things in life. And I try to find those answers by observing others investigate themselves."
"Pigs and Fishes" is that type of creation.
"I chose that title because those two creatures are so far apart from each other," Monte said with a smile. "It's sort of like the I-Ching, in the fact that these organisms live in their own little world but are part of the bigger world."
Monte compared the two animals to human beings.
"One of the things we need to do in life is to trust who we are," she said. "The pigs and fishes know who they are. They do pig and fish things.
"We do human things, but the trick is to realize that no matter how different we are, we are still connected through this existence.
"That, to me, is one of the formations of society. It's that connected power of existence between people where the essence of life is."