Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company

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Dance Magazine
Cover Story
Jannas Zalesky

Shirley Ririe and Joan Woodbury: pathbreakers - founders of Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company - their role in supporting arts and dance in Utah schools - Interview

How do you create a dance company? You put two impassioned women together--Joan Woodbury (right) and Shirley Ririe--at the right time, some forty years ago, and let them go at it. Voila! The Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company. The pathbreaking twosome from Utah shared stages, jobs, desks, and most important, the philosophy and the passion that "dance is for everybody." They even managed the births of their children on alternating years so that they could cover for each other.

* Yet as conjoined as they are on a professional level, they are very different in their personal lives. "Our differences give us balance, and our similarities keep us on the same path," explains Ririe. "I was born in Salt City in 1929, the height of the Depression. My parents were both actors," she continues. "My father was extremely talented, and my newly married parents thought they were beaded to New York City when I came along and stopped the plans. My mother reinvented herself several times and became a professor in the MBA program in business at the University of Utah She wrote seven textbooks, two still being printed after her death fifteen years ago.

"Because my parents were always rehearsing at night, I became the baby-tender of my younger brother and sister, I remember spending many hours improvising dance to radio music when my siblings were asleep and my parents were gone. My mother was a frustrated dancer, so I had dance lessons from age 3 on."

Woodbury recounts, I'm a Utahan too. I was born in Cedar City in 1927, the second of five children. My earliest memories of my family life are connected with music. Mom was a pianist of concert capabilities who had chosen to marry and build a family rather than make a career as a soloist. In reality she did both: She played for almost every event in the community, was church organist and orchestra pianist for the operas at the college, and so on. We always had piano) students and singing evening rehearsals in our house, and all of us kids learned to play the piano. So music was a very strong influence in my life. My father was a cattleman/sheepman and business owner. Grandpa Jones and his sons homesteaded in the mountains above Cedar City, and he had a great sense of giving back to the community. So from my parents I got both the aesthetic and the practical side of my nature.

"I was a kid who loved to moved. I played on the haystacks, ran through the Fields, and climbed all of the trees. It was through movement that I understood life. Mom saw this in me and put me in a tap dance class at age 4."

The dynamic partners met in 1952 through Betty Hayes, who chaired the University of Utah modern dance division from 1940 until 1976. She had been Ririe's teacher and was Woodbury's boss at the time. "I know this wonderful person whom you should meet. You'll like her," she said to each of them.

Hayes was right. The two got together and made a dance about two vaudeville performers, performing it at both Brigham Young University where Ririe was teaching, and at Woodbury's university concert that year.

The partnership continued when Woodbury, then eight months pregnant, went on the firs-ever Fullbright fellowship for dance in 1955 to study with Mary Wigman in Germany, and Ririe taught for her at the University of Utah. After Woodbury's return, then with one child each, the young mothers inarched in to the university president's office and proposed that they joh-share. Woodbury remembers, "What a coup! The university got two dedicated women--splitting a $3,500 salary, working full-time for half-time pay."

This pooling of creativity helped build a strong dance program. At first they danced with the students, but soon it didn't seem right to perform roles that could be given to students. So they spent their extra energies on their group of dancers, by then called Dancer's Company. hr 1964, Ririe recalls, "under advice from [by then modern dance giant] Alwin Nikolais, we named the company Ririe-Woodbury--our names, since Nik said, 'That is the way we all do it.'"

Nikolais had a strong influence on them. "In about 1961, when I asked Nik to teach at the university in the summer, be asked if I could pay for Murray Louis to teach as well," Woodbury recalls. "We had no money, but I said he could have my salary if he'd come, and he did. It was a fabulous time--a time for Nik to try out his choreographic ideas on us, which we attacked with great enthusiasm."

Louis says, "I think it was great luck that Nik found these two ladies and their summer sessions, for they were a sounding board for his budding philosophy on teaching creative dance and composition. The classes were wildly productive." These formative workshops continued for six summers; Nikolais, Louis, Ririe, and Woodbury used the ideas generated there for their choreographic mills during the coming year.

To get the newly formed company started, Nikolais gave them a dance from Totem, "Striped Celebrants," and Louis gave them Suite de Danse and later Landscapes. The two founders initially created the rest of the works (over the years, they've made more than fifty works each for the company), then branched out to include a diverse roster of choreographers.

"Both women have always encouraged dancers to hone their technique and performance skills, their choreographic ability, and their teaching philosophy and style," remembers Jena Thompson, Woodbury's daughter, all artist booking manager who has worked with Ririe-Woodbury intermittently over the past fourteen years. "They have always stressed to the dancers the importance of understanding all three aspects as a way to continue their careers in dance."

Juan Carlos Claudio, a dancer in tire company for seven years, credits them with helping him become an artist: "Joan and Shirley have nurtured me through my years of dancing, making me shine not only onstage but also in life."

In the early 1970s Ririe and Woodbury became part of two National Endowment for the Arts programs, which brought dance education into public schools around the country. Both women served on national committees, convinced the Utah legislature to provide line-item funding for dance companies' outreach work in public schools, and helped pass the Zoo, Arts, and Parks Tax, which provides funding for county arts organizations. Rifle worked with the state legislature for twelve years to create a coalition of major arts and science groups, which is now a powerful instrument in keeping an arts presence in Utah's schools.

"I do know that Shirley and I have made a difference," affirmed Woodbury. "It is partially because we have lived so long, persevered, and helped pave the way for others.... I think that it is partially my conviction of the importance of our art form that has kept me working so hard."

Thompson says, "1 don't think they could have done what they did without the support of their families.... But growing up with these two crazy ladies was a great experience."

Shirley Ririe and Joan Woodbury have stayed true to what began as a dream and ended up as a mission. Through perform-dances and residencies, they have taken the company's humor, diversity, compelling choreography, and dance experiences for all ages to almost every state in the U.S. and to many countries.

According to Betty Hayes, in its nearly forty years "the Ririe-Woodbury company, in my opinion, has contributed more to the understanding and appreciation of dance as a creative activity in America than any other such organization."

Ririe and Woodbury are looking toward the future which includes the addition of Charlotte Boye-Christensen, a choreographer, dancer, and teacher from Denmark, as associate artistic director. "I am going to carry on the legacy of the company regarding the educational work and the focus on promoting new and innovative dance," Boye-Christensen says. "However, I said yes to the position because it also allowed me to work creatively with the same group of dancers for an extended time and to bring in other choreographers to challenge the physicality and creativity of the dancers as well as the aesthetics of our audiences. Ririe-Woodbury is a unique company, both because of-its location, its artistic premise, its focus on the significance of education in dance, and its tremendous longevity. I think it is time that this company becomes as known in the rest of the country and abroad as it is in Utah."

Jannas Zalesky is president of Together in Dance, a dance-education consulting firm.