Repertory Dance Theatre: Vanguard

For its season opener, Repertory Dance Theatre takes a look at that influential time in modern dance during the 1960s when choreographers were aggressively challenging every preconception that ruled the form before: the avant-garde (or “vanguard”) period.

Up to that point, work had mostly taken on expressive and interpretive qualities that choreographers Merce Cunningham and Yvonne Rainer worked hard to transcend, mostly by way of obliteration. Rainer went so far as to create her “No Manifesto” that included such tenets as no virtuosity, no spectacle, no heroic (or for that matter, anti-heroic), no style, no eccentricities and, most importantly, no moving or being moved.

So what does that leave to say “yes” to? For Cunningham, that meant creating works such as Scramble (1968), a series of 18 varying sections that could be mixed and matched, all removed for the most part from the accompanying dissonant score by Toshi Ichiyanagi and a modernist set created by artist Frank Stella. As you can probably imagine, for Rainer that meant turning toward a minimalist structure and movement vocabulary. In her work Trio A (1966), she drew upon disjointed pedestrian movement juxtaposed with classic flourishes, forgoing a score altogether.

At times, this avant-garde work can come across as dated, yet contextually important to the progression of modern dance as an art form. It will be interesting to see what RDT dancers have come up with for their new collaborative piece Gamut, which is consciously informed by just such Vanguard work. (Jacob Stringer)

Repertory Dance Theatre: Vanguard @ Rose Wagner Center, 138 W. Broadway, 801-355-2787, Oct. 6-8, 7:30 p.m.; Oct. 6, $15; Oct. 7-8, $30. RDTUtah.org, ArtTix.org