Utah Arts Review

Ballet West explores the energy and variety of brand new dance works with Choreographic Festival VII, their final show of the season, which opened Wednesday night at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center. 

This year’s eclectic program featured works from four Utah-based dance companies: Ballet West, Repertory Dance Theatre, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, and Salt Contemporary Dance Company.

One of the hallmarks of Adam Sklute’s tenure as artistic director of Ballet West has been a commitment to incubating new works. This legacy of encouraging and supporting young choreographers will be a significant part of Sklute’s legacy  when he retires at the end of the 2026-27 after leading the company for twenty years.

This dedicated series to choreography began in 2007 as “Innovations,” which concentrated on works from Ballet West Company members. The series has since evolved to “Works from Within,” and ultimately, the current Choreographic Festival, an avenue for ballet companies from around the world to bring modern works to Utah. 

Wednesday night’s event was historic, marking the first time these four Utah-based dance companies have performed on the same stage.

The program opened with Scherzo Fantastique, performed by Repertory Dance Theatre. With choreography by Norbert De La Cruz III and music by Josef Suk, Scherzo Fantastique is built off the gesture of sitting in an office chair, with the eight company members using chairs as props throughout the piece. 

This is a dynamic ensemble piece with short solos throughout for each of the dancers. De La Cruz constructs a contrasting vocabulary of movement to separate the soloist from the collective. Quick angularity in the group contrasts with slow curves from the soloist, before shifting to organic shapes in the ensemble and staccato jumps from the soloist.

The strongest moments in Scherzo Fantastique were when the dancers used the chairs to explore elevation levels and geometric lines and forms as they connected to or separated from each other.

Salt Contemporary Dance Company presented Time Comprises a Net with choreography by Noelle Kayser and a score compiled from multiple composers. (All music was played from recordings throughout this program.) Time Comprises a Net included a contemporary language of movement with flexed feet and knees, boxy traveling across the stage, and a periodic motif with the hand and arms diving toward the center of the body and the ground. 

This piece felt more like a series of vignettes rather than a cohesively themed work, but sections that played with the scale of repeated motion by varying the size, shape, and pace were hypnotic in their execution. An extended section where the artists stepped left and right in unison with windmilling arms was a striking use of abrupt, oversized gestures.

In The Rate We Change by Kellie St. Pierre, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company performed on a six-foot wide spinning circular platform, powered by the company members. This work ingeniously manipulated the line between movement and stillness. By moving at the same rate as the rotating platform dancers gave the illusion of moving while standing still, inviting their simple contours and balances to be viewed with a fresh perspective. 

Containing the choreography in a small space forced the maximization of movements on and off the platform, with the dancers crouching low to climb on the circle, running and leaping over it, or creating large sweeping loops with their arms and legs. The score by Daniel Clifton included ambient sounds that heightened the awareness of the shuffles and squeaks from the platform.

Closing the program was Ballet West in the world premiere of Processional by Donald Byrd set to Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments. Taking inspiration from the traditional défilé—a grand and solemn procession of dancers by rank—Byrd starts with a classical structure before tweaking elements to add modernity. A slow, regal parade in the beginning of the work builds into a bouncing aerobic jog by the conclusion.

Although it starts out solemn, the first movement quickly transitions to a faster pace focused on strong footwork and articulation. The middle adagio was an opportunity to show off powerful balance and long lines, followed by a final allegro racing to an energetic finale. The overall impression of the work was one of perpetual motion. Yet the frenetic energy sometimes felt rushed, and even in the slow movement tempos often felt too hurried for the artists to execute a full and luxurious extension.

Even with that issue, Choreographic Fest VII offers not only a chance to see new works. It also presents an opportunity to see how modern, contemporary, and ballet all overlap, merge, and diverge while exploring shape and movement in their own way. 

Ballet West’s Choreographic Fest VII continues through Saturday. balletwest.org