Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company in Salt Lake City
Dance is a universal form of expression
By City Weekly Staff
Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company's Utah roots stretch back to 1964 when University of Utah dance professors Shirley Ririe and Joan Woodbury founded the company with the mission to further contemporary dance as an accessible and valued art form. Since then the Company has created innovative original works, commissioned pieces from world-renowned choreographers, provided dance education through summer intensives and school visits, and toured regionally, nationally, and globally. In 2018 the Company will travel to South Korea and Mongolia as part of DanceMotion USA, the international exchange initiative of the US Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, administered by the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
But even a journey as far as Mongolia always brings the Company back to Utah. Besides the three annual performances in Salt Lake City, the Company travels throughout Utah to perform and offer educational lecture-demonstrations at schools in every corner of the state. This past year the six full-time company dancers, joined by Artistic Director Daniel Charon or Education Director Ai-Fujii Nelson, visited elementary, middle, and high schools in 27 of Utah's 41 school districts, from Cache Valley to Bluff to the remote West Desert High School, which is reachable only by a long drive on the old Pony Express Trail. Though the 2016-2017 season seemed to come to a close after April's premiere of Ann Carlson's Elizabeth, the dance at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, the real season finale was several weeks later on the stage of Escalante High School. That performance capped two days of workshops and creative movement classes for students in the Boulder area.
Dance is a universal form of expression and these trips throughout the state provide smaller communities with exposure to contemporary dance they might not otherwise receive. Community engagement like this helps children or seniors discover the joy of movement, and makes a profound impact on the dancers themselves. Dancer Yebel Gallegos reflects:
"At the beginning of a two-week residency at an elementary school we met Wesley, a student with autism. He showed a wonderful appreciation towards movement and creativity and it was noticeable that it was a great way for him to engage, focus, and feel part of a collective. Wesley came in smiling and excited to dance with us everyday. At the end of our residency Wesley's mom came up to me and said that for those two weeks, he would get home from school very happy and couldn't wait to share with his family what he had learned that day in dance class, something that had never happened before. This made my heart swell and it reaffirmed to me how important it is to have various ways to teach and connect to all students."
Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company is now led by a new generation with Executive Director Jena Woodbury, and a staff hailing from Salt Lake City, Puerto Rico, Japan, Minnesota, California, and Wyoming. The six dancers come from California, Colorado, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Texas. They all now make Salt Lake City home and are proud to be able to connect to Utah communities in such meaningful ways, through performance and educational engagement. Everyone at Ririe-Woodbury embodies the company motto: "Dance is for everybody!"
