(upbeat music) - Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company and Repertory Dance Theater's, "Dance West Festival" is a workshop committed to nurturing the whole dancer through the exploration of contemporary and traditional techniques, creative process, self-care and more.

And Daniel Charon is our guest today to tell us all about it.

Hi, Daniel.

- Hi, Mary.

Nice to see you.

- So good to have you.

Okay, so you've been collaborating on this since, 2019?

- Yes.

Yes.

- Yeah.

- So we've been working with Repertory Dance Theater.

And originally, it started with the University of Utah, as well, but then COVID happened, so we kind of streamlined down to just be us in Repertory Dance Theater.

And it's a great opportunity.

We feel so strongly about our summer workshop being for pre-professionals, professional dancers, 17 and up.

And it's a great place.

We feel so strongly about nurturing the whole dancer.

And so it's a place where they not only get performative aspects of the art form, like strong technique classes and repertory classes, but we want to nurture them as artists, we want to cherish their individuality, and it's just so important to us to do that.

They get to dance alongside both companies.

They get to form relationships with the different directors of the companies.

And it's really amazing, 'cause they get to choose their own adventure.

- [Mary] Ah.

- And so they can do one week, they can do two weeks, they can drop in for classes.

And so we really want to curate it for each individual dancer.

- [Mary] Ah, great idea.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- It's so good you do that.

And I know you bring in featured guests, as well.

- Yeah.

- Who are some of the featured guests you're bringing?

- Yeah, there's some local artists, like Natosha Washington, who's making a piece for RDT.

She's gonna be teaching.

Alberto del Saz, from The Nikolais Foundation, who's coming and staging a Nikolais work on Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company.

He's coming.

And then it's just company, you know, it's different company dancers, alumni, and so it's really an eclectic mix.

There's a lighting design class.

And so it is really there's so much to offer.

- [Mary] Wow.

You covered all.

Yeah - We try.

We try.

- Wonderful.

Well, thank you for coming on and telling us about it.

Thank you - Yeah, thank you.

Thanks, Mary.

- And if you would like to know more about that festival coming up, the "Dance West Festival" and workshops, they go July 17th to 29th.

Again, it's a collaboration of Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company and RDT.

Go ririewoodbury.com.

That's ririewoodbury.com.

I'm Mary Dickson, thanks for watching "Contact."

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