"ELEVATED," Momentum, featuring Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company alumni, Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, Aug. 28; additional performances through Aug. 29 (801-355-2787, 888-451-2787)
It's always nice to see former Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company dancers dance in Utah again.
This year, Momentum, co-directed by former RWDC members Jill Voorhees Edwards and Juan Carlos Claudio, welcomes Patrick Damon Rago and Jillian Harris back to Utah. Also, while Doris Hudson-Trujillo wasn't able to break away from her job as the modern-dance coordinator and artistic director of Contemporary Dance Ensemble at Utah Valley University, she sends six of her dancers to dance a work she created for the performance.
Hudson-Trujillo's "Resilire" is the starting piece of an enchanting and expressive evening.
"Resilire" dancers start dancing in silence. When the music kicks in, the dancers are fully engulfed in the movement. Simultaneous solos emerge across the stage and quickly come together in unified segments that add to the moving compositions.
Current RWDC member Caine Keenan's works are two audience favorites. His solo, "Elre," is a visual balance of limber energy and angst, laced with innocence.
His other work, "Act 4, Scene 7, Line 180," refers to Ophelia's drowning in Shakespeare's "Hamlet." And the work, as the program notes state, was choreographed by Keenan and "six fierce Ophelias."
The Ophelias are students in the RWDC high-school "Step Up" program. They emerge drenched to the bone and contort, flip out and capture the tormented spirit of the heart- and spirit-broken Ophelia.
Alum Patrick Damon Rago also presents a solo and an ensemble work. "Dancing Larry" is an inspiring combination spoken-word and demonstration that ends with Rago dancing for the love of dance.
His "La Bella Bel" is a study about labels. The five young women don various tops that feature words such as "racist," "sloth," "OCD" and "NRA," to name a few. As the dance progresses, the layered tops come off (without any nudity), symbolizing the need to find the human inside the labels.
Jillian Harris, another alum, finds herself back on stage in a solo work called "NoExit" and a duet with Edwards called "Shed." Harris' strength and expressions are still intact after all these years, as she tormentingly displays in "NoExit." When she teams with Edwards in "Shed," the two, who danced together in the 1990s, are at once friends, competitors and physically expressive dancers who have found closure.
Edwards' other work, "Les Filles," is a playful romp featuring three women with flashlights and different, but complementary personalities. The three solos at the beginning of the work introduce the characters to the audience, while the combo at the end brings smiles to the audience members' faces.
If anyone misses seeing Claudio on stage, all they have to do is look in the back of the house. He's videotaping the performance.
e-mail: scott@desnews.com