Media-inspired dance skips media

Choreographer Wayne McGregor's "Series 1" was the spark that inspired the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company's upcoming performance, "Media + D."

Ironically, "Series 1" will be the only work presented that doesn't feature multimedia visuals.

" 'Series 1' was originally a multimedia work," said Charlotte Boye-Christensen, the company's associate artistic director. "I remember seeing it in all its glory with video projections. It made me want to put together a multimedia-based concert for the company.

"However, we realized that it would be a logistical nightmare trying to bring all the equipment to Salt Lake from Great Britain. So we decided to re-create the work, size it down and have it become a more organic work, focusing more on the dancers than the technological aspects."

Odette Hughes, rehearsal director for McGregor's company, Random Dance, said the version RWDC will be doing is a study of "pure movement." "It was originally conceived out of an educational project for children," said Hughes. "We had a lot of video and film of wildlife and nature. The concept was environmental friendly.

"When we decided to leave all that stuff out and make the work more grown up, and when we decided to leave the multimedia aspect out of it, we knew it would have to be approached differently."

The work, which originally ran 40 minutes, has been whittled down to nearly 15 minutes, said Hughes. "It's also more abstract. The focus is on movement — live movement."

While "Series 1" has been remade as an "unplugged" performance, the other works — Joan Woodbury's "No-Where Bird" and Boye-Christensen's version of "Rite of Spring" — will appear in all their video-enhanced glory, said Woodbury, the company's co-artistic director. "It's interesting to see how these show different views of multimedia," Woodbury said. "Charlotte's and my use of video are much different. We had different purposes.

"I put together 'No-Where Bird' back in 1978. I was experimenting with film — I really didn't know what I was doing. But we had a young woman working for us whose husband was a photographer/filmmaker. So the husband, Juan Salazar, and I started working together."