Ririe-Woodbury dancers will perform 'Cloudless'

Susan Marshall's award-winning dance, "Cloudless," is a substantial piece.

"The whole work is comprised of a total of 18 sections," said Darrin M. Wright, a member of Susan Marshall & Company. The piece will be part of "Surfaces," Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company's season closer.

Wright and Petra van Noort recently spent five days in Salt Lake City staging six sections of the work for Ririe-Woodbury.

"That is the most sections that a company, other than Susan's, have done in the past," said van Noort.

"Cloudless," which garnered three "Bessies" (New York Dance and Performance Awards) and the MacArthur Genius Award, is a favorite of both Wright and van Noort, who were among the work's original dancers.

"I like how down-to-earth it is," said Wright. "Each section can stand alone. They are fun to dance, and they have a lot of technical workings that are part of the performance."

By technical workings, Wright said, the audience will see stage hands moving props and scenery into place that is intentionally part of the performance.

"Susan's style has been involved with creating vignettes," said van Noort, adding Marshall believed it would be tiresome for audiences to sit in the dark through scene changes after just a few minutes of dance.

"So she worked it in to have the stage hands be part of the performance," she said.

Van Noort also likes the feeling of "magic" that surrounds the work.

"It's like the audience is drawn into this little world," she said. "The audience will see the crew moving things on stage, and then the dancing begins. And it draws you in. It's an inviting piece."

The work, five sections of which premiered at Jacob's Pillow dance festival in 2005, was officially declared complete in 2006. It has also been set in segments by college companies.

"Rire-Woodbury is one of the few professional companies we have worked with," said van Noort. "But the process is the same. We come in and hold auditions within the company to see which dancer would dance what role."

"Casting is actually one of the hardest aspects of staging the work," said Wright.

"We try to find dancers who have similar qualities as the original, but in some cases, there are places where the dancers are totally different and add a new dimension to the production, without taking away the basis that Susan had envisioned."