RDT Brings Together Junior High Students From Across The State For Choreography And Performance

Over the course of the current school year, Repertory Dance Theatre, the nation's oldest and most successful modern dance repertory company, has been working with junior high students from across the state to create choreography based on their heritage. On May 21, students from 13 different junior high schools will come together to perform their respective works in a professional theater setting.

This is the sixth year that RDT has offered this program to Utah's schools and each year it has grown in popularity. The 2018-2019 season saw this program expand to 13 schools - including Desert Hills High School in Saint George, Utah.

Each residency with each school begins with a basic exploration of choreographic principles, movement generation/invention, and conversations about the artistic process and abstraction. Acting as mentors and facilitators, an RDT dance educator then asks each student to write about "heritage" and what it means to them - using verbal prompts, questions, and stream-of-consciousness writing to explore and develop each student's own relationship to their personal heritage.

The second half of the residency takes students' written responses and, using the creative process and elements of abstraction, turns their words into movement that can then be structured into a larger dance work. The culmination of the program is the creation of a final dance work that the students perform at their respective schools and at a year-end Heritage Project showcase at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center.

This final showcase brings schools from across the state together to not only perform, but also the opportunity to meet students from other schools in a friendly, non-competitive environment.

The public is invited to see the final showcase on May 21 at 7:15 pm at the Black Box Theatre. Admission is free, but seating is limited.

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