New York choreographer Tim Hadel came into Salt Lake City during the summer to stage a new work with the Repertory Dance Theatre.
Notebook in hand, he directed the seven dancers as they passed, tossed and balanced large cardboard boxes in movements across the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center stage.Hadel returned a couple of weeks ago to fine-tune the piece, which will have its world premiere next week.
"I'm basically making this up as I'm going along," he said during a quick break in rehearsal. "I'm basically looking at my old work and trying to make it better for kids and families."
The Repertory Dance Theatre will perform an evening of Hadel's work, collectively called "Surprise Packages," in the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, 138 W. Broadway, beginning Friday, Nov. 26, at 7:30 p.m. Additional performances will be Saturday, Nov. 27; Wednesday-Saturday, Dec. 1-4, at 7:30 p.m. There will also be a 2 p.m. matinee on Sunday, Nov. 28. Tickets are available for $14 at all ArtTix outlets or by calling (801) 355-ARTS (2787). Discount tickets are available for students and senior citizens.
"The entire dance performance lasts about an hour, without any intermissions," said Hadel who has performed with such dance companies as Lar Lubovitch, Doug Varone, Tandy Beal and Jose Limon, just to name a few. "The performance is deliberately short so kids won't get bored."
Hadel always wanted to create a dance concert for children. But he also wanted to create something that adults would enjoy as well. "There are so many times when children will love a program, but the adults would be bored out of their minds. So I tried to get what was in between. I wanted to appeal to the kids but not insult their parents."
What Hadel came up with was a collage of works that uses boxes, games, rhymes and a huge Cat's Cradle web.
"There are a whole bunch of individual works in the program," Hadel explained. "Some are extremely short -- like two minutes short. Others are a bit longer."
Hadel, a recipient of the Harkness Foundation Space Grant and a National Endowment for the Arts choreographer fellowship, is the curator for the Dance Theatre Workshop in New York City. He began officially creating shows called "Family Matters" for the workshop about two years ago.
"I've been actually doing these kinds of performances a lot longer than that," Hadel explained. "But those shows were official."
Hadel is a father of two boys, ages 4 and 8. And he uses his children to gauge what would go over well.
"Obviously there is no violence, nudity and adult themes, whatever that means," Hadel said. "I do a lot of creating in my own living room. I use a lot of props, and my children tell me what they like and what they don't like. And to think I'm competing against the Internet, multimedia, TV and movies, makes it that much more interesting. At least I have to make the works more interesting."
Hadel said he usually keeps the ideas his kids like.
"I trust them," he said. "And, besides, I'm an overgrown kid, myself, and I try to do things I like, too."
RDT artistic director Linda C. Smith met Hadel while he was attending the University of Utah back in the '70s.
"He did a workshop that really caught my attention," Smith said. "And we've been in contact ever since."
The Repertory Dance Theatre has always wanted to reach the younger audiences, Smith said. "The 'Ring Around the Rose' programs we perform are aimed specifically for children.
"A lot of modern dance is too sophisticated for kids, and Tim's work is just perfect for what we want to do."