RDT's LINK Series Presents REDUCER By The Woods Dance Project This June

On June 5-6, & 8, choreographer Nichele Woods premieres The Woods Dance Project's inaugural evening production, REDUCER, presented by Repertory Dance Theatre's Link Series.

With two world premieres, the evening features five evocative and powerful dance artists from the Salt Lake community: Natalie Border, Jonathan Kim, Tara McArthur, Morgan Phillips, and Melissa Younker. Come to opening night to catch dancers from UVU's Department of Dance perform Clear... as a burnt-out match in a dark room., Woods' recent commission for the department's Contemporary Dance Ensemble—Wednesday, June 5th only! Thursday, June 6th will feature a post-show Conversation with the Artists. 

The evening's first premiere, Volcano, is performed by Natalie Border and RDT dance artist Jonathan Kim. Volcano is a meditation on the potential inside of quietude and draws from improvisation and a simmering approach to composing choreography. The work asks how repetition offers opportunities for reflection, and what happens when we try not to tackle a “problem” to make it better but rather sit with it and remain curious. It also considers what learned gender roles emerge through contact work and how dancing in contact with another can offer opportunities to reflect upon the roles that we play in relationship to others and ourselves. This work emerged from a gentle place and a desire to accept what is.

Following the duet, a new quintet serves as the evening's main dish. Woods pushes her Postmodern and Release-style aesthetics into the surreal as she muses upon the space between our private and public lives. To present dance is, for Woods, a public expression of her personal, internal world. Woods is bracing herself for the unknown in this process as the artists together explore the space and tension between these very real though subjective, unique yet shared realities.  

REDUCER is supported by the Salt Lake City Arts Council, and by individual contributors through the project's Kickstarter, “The Woods Dance Project—Hits the Ground Running.” To learn how you can support the project, please visit nichelewoods.com. 

About The Woods: 

Created by choreographer Nichele Woods, The Woods Dance Project is a new project-based dance company committed to supporting equity and career sustainability for contemporary dance artists in Salt Lake City. Woods has been publicly presenting her private world of choreography since 2013. Her dances often chew on questions of power and vulnerability. She tends to partnerships—to the sharing of momentum, weight, and risk—that are grounded in the focus of an internal, present experience. To this end, her creative process aims to create a space and framework in which the dancers can have an honest experience that is informed by their lived and living histories. Rigorous and complex choreography layers atop sensorial physical vocabulary to create a rich and dynamic journey for audience members and dancers alike. 

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