REPERTORY DANCE THEATRE, "Interior/Exterior," Jeanné Wagner Theatre, Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, continues through Oct. 5 (355-2787).
The properties of wood and water and a smoky city filled with people jogging backwards are the themes — shorthand version, anyway — of choreographer Zvi Gotheiner's three dances as performed by RDT this month.
"Interior/Exterior" is the name of the production, and it is said to be about a "sense of place."
In her program notes, RDT executive director Linda Smith explains that members of her company, "residing in one of the most beautiful geographic regions of the nation, have seen a frightening deterioration of our wilderness and depletion of the pristine . . . rural and urban landscape." In response, RDT will commission a series of works to promote greater awareness of human relationships and the human responsibility to nature.
Gotheiner's "Lapse," which premiered Thursday, is the first in the "Sense of Place" series. Yet the other dances here seem also to fit Smith's definition. "Chairs" is about human relationships and "Glacier" is about how relationships are strained when resources are exhausted.
"Chairs" begins with a row of people sitting. Their backs are as straight as the wooden chairs they occupy and their legs are set firm and square, just like the chair legs. The dance begins with bodies in firm, flat planes, like slats of wood. The dancers eventually begin to twist and turn and wrap themselves around the chairs and then each other. The men's duet is especially sensuous; Thayer Jonutz glories in this piece, as well as in "Lapse."
Utah audiences may remember "Glacier" from the millennium celebration, with its onstage waterfall and huge mirror. The dancers are supplicants, and Chara Huckins practically immerses herself at the end, dancing with the water as her partner.
Though "Lapse" was partially inspired by Sept. 11, it is somehow triumphant, nonetheless. Scott Killian's music calls to mind the industrial and urban, yet the dancers, dressed in black, seem as joyful as they are frenzied. Nicholas Cendese gets a nice solo.
"Interior/Exterior" allows the audience to reflect on three dances by the same choreographer. Gotheiner does complex things with lines of people weaving in and out. He is a master of detail. It's fascinating to watch the way heads are caressed, for example, as dancers encircle their own faces, and each other's, throughout all three pieces. Then, too, there are sinister little bits featuring entrapped women.
Actually, there's a lot to ponder just in the Exterior dimensions of these dances. You are to be forgiven if you don't try to interpret the Interior.
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