(bright upbeat music) - Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company is one of Utah's most established institutions for contemporary dance, pursuing its mission to make dance a viable part of everyone's life.

And here to tell us about their upcoming fall season is artistic director, Daniel Charon.

Daniel, so nice to have you back.

- Hi Mary, hello.

- So I'm excited for this, because you're paying homage to your founders.

- Yeah, we sure are.

We're starting our 60th anniversary season, so we're kicking that off this fall with a show called Groundworks.

And this show is really a looking back at our history and looking back at our past as an homage.

And one major part of that is a retrospective tribute we're doing for our two founders, Joan Woodbury and Shirley Ririe, and we're essentially taking work of theirs, we're weaving it together, so excerpts of their work, we're weaving it together with current company dancers, as well as historic video.

And so it's gonna be this tapestry kind of woven together, really celebrating the, you know, hundreds of works that they've done over the years on the company.

And so we thought it'd be a really fabulous way to kick off our season and really honor them as founders, because none of us would be here without them.

- Oh, that's so wonderful- - Yeah.

you're doing it, and I guess Joan's been to watch some of the rehearsals.

- Yeah.

Yes, she came into rehearsal the other day.

We're doing some work of Alwin Nikolais, who is a groundbreaking choreographer, the father of multimedia in dance, we're doing one of his works, and he was an integral part of forming the company, really encouraging Joan and Shirley to start a company.

And so without him, we probably wouldn't be here, as well.

- Oh, wow.

So it's everybody who made you what you are today.

- Exactly, exactly, so that's the idea.

- You're also doing some of your works, I think.

- Yeah, we're doing one of my works.

As artistic director over the last 10 years, the company's really supported my work and they always support the work of the artistic director.

And so yeah, we're bringing back one of my works to kind of round out the program.

- And what's it called?

- It's called On Being, and it was actually the first work we made after COVID, and it was the first work we could touch and partner again.

- Great.

- And so it's a really impactful piece.

- All right.

Well thank you so much for being here, thanks.

- Thanks, Mary.

- And if you'd like to know more about Groundworks, the upcoming fall season of Ririe-Woodbury, easy, go to ririewoodbury.com.

That's ririewoodbury.com.

I'm Mary Dickson.

Thanks for watching "Contact."

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