World-renowned choreographer Graham Lustig doesn't like to categorize dance. Although he has choreographed ballet, modern and jazz works, he doesn't approach any of his stagings of various styles uniquely.

"It's so easy for patrons to stereotype and categorize dance styles," Lustig said during a break in rehearsals with the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company. "I talked to a woman the other day who asked me what the difference was in choreographing ballet as opposed to modern. I told her it was all dance. That's my upbringing. I trained in all forms of dance, and my works have been performed by ballet and modern companies."Of his work, "Star Dust," which will be part of the Ririe-Woodbury program Friday to wind up the season, Lustig said, "I got the idea for the work from the music. It was an old French children's name game song set to the music of Mozart. The English version is known as 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.' Thus 'Star Dust.' "

The piece runs about 13 minutes and has a childlike quality. "I think very much it's the combination of the melody line that gives it that characteristic. And it's very well-known, so that makes it a little easier on some people."

The Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company's season closer, "Odyssey," will run April 28-29 at the Capitol Theatre, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are available at all ArtTix outlets or by calling 801-355-ARTS (2787).

In addition to "Star Dust," Alwin Nikolais' "Tensile Involvement," co-artistic directors Joan Woodbury's and Shirley Ririe's respective works "Golden Oldies" and "Window Washers."

Lustig hooked up with Ririe-Woodbury for the first time in 1996. He was in town setting "Paramour" on Ballet West. "It just took us this long to get the logistics and schedules right," he said.

Lustig trained at the Royal Ballet School and joined the Dutch National Ballet when he was 18. That was where he was immersed in the works of George Balanchine. That was when Lustig knew ballet and contemporary dance could work together. "All my career has really all been about dance in all its forms," he said.

In 1980, Lustig, a British native, joined Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet -- which was later renamed the Birmingham Royal Ballet. Then in 1993, the dancer became the first non-American artistic director of the American Repertory Ballet. Last August, Lustig took the helm of the Princeton Ballet Society, which is over the American Repertory Ballet.

Lustig, who left the stage to focus mainly on choreography and teaching, garnered a Laurence Olivier Award nomination for his 1990 work "Inscape."

"My next project is staging 'A Midsummer's Night Dream' on ARB," he said.

The Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company's associate artistic director, Emmy Thomson, will also be part of the program. Two of her works -- "Invocation" and "Tethered" -- will be performed during the course of the evening.

"Invocation" is a group work that will involve eight dancers, while "Tethered" will feature Thomson in a solo.

"My idea for 'Invocation' was sparked when someone asked me to create a work for Martin Luther King Day," Thomson remembered. "It originally went up as a quartet work. But the more I worked at it, the more things were changed and added."

Thomson's first idea for "Invocation" was different cultures taking a similar journey in a nonverbal way because of the different customs.

"It's a very evolutionary work," she said. "The performance is a journey just as the creation of the work was. And I believe if I continue to stage this until I'm 80, it will go through some changes.

"But the whole idea is the idea that in order for things to flow well, we need to be connected," she said. "But it doesn't have to be a verbal connection. And when the dancers work and rehearse this piece, they need to find themselves sensing each other in a deeper level in order for it to work."

Thomson's solo "Tethered" was based on the concept of being tied to the past.

"We all have things we are tied to," she said. "But in order for us to move on, we need to recognize that."

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Although Thomson's works are based on her own ideas, she relishes the fact that audiences can read their own concepts into her works.

"That's the beauty of dance," she said. "I'm only up there moving in abstract ways. And I think its important for people to get something out of what I'm doing. Whether or not it's what I was originally thinking is beside the fact.

"I encourage people to look at my works like they would an abstract painting," Thomson explained. "What kinds of emotions do they feel when they see the different colors? What kinds of emotions do they feel when they see a certain movement? It's that same concept."

You can reach Scott Iwasaki by e-mail at scott@desnews.com

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