Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company History
Before founding Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company in 1964, Shirley Ririe and Joan Woodbury helped create Choreodancers, a company of professional dance performers and teachers. After the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company name became permanent, the company choreographed and performed in Utah and throughout Arizona, California and Colorado.
While assisting Alwin Nikolais in 1968 at the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, Joan accepted a Minnesota Arts Council invitation to perform at four colleges. The council asked if the company could be ready to perform in a week. "Yes, of course," Joan replied. She returned to Salt Lake City where she and Shirley choreographed a whole zany performance and lecture demonstration especially for the Minnesota tour. The resulting production was a hit. In 1971, the show was seen in Canada by representatives of the first U.S.-Canada dance conference. Performance invitations came immediately from the east and west coasts of both countries.
A breakthrough came in the following year when the company performed at The Space in New York through the generosity of Artistic Director Alwin Nikolais. Representatives of the National Endowment for the Arts attended the performance and accepted the company for the Endowment's Artists In Schools and Dance Touring Programs.
The company's acceptance in these prestigious programs offered new full-time touring as a national company and the most Artists In Schools performances in the United States of any company for 12 years. More than a third of all program performances were the result of the company's work and more than half of all program movement specialists were trained by Shirley and Joan.
Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company was chosen to be part of the Dance On Tour state-touring program from 1990 to 1994 and performed in South Carolina, Kentucky, Montana and New Mexico. The company has become a Utah institution and is recognized as a successful modern dance company combining formal performances and community residencies.
Widely recognized, the Company continued to receive many international performance. In 1977 the International Congress of Girls' and Women's Sports invited the Company to South Africa for an extended tour of Capetown, Port Elizabeth, Johannesburg and Pretoria, marking the first time that a nationally and racially diverse performing group had performed in those areas. In 1978 the company was chosen to represent the United States at the first Dance and the Child International meeting in Canada and traveled to Puerto Rico to conduct a two-week residency tour.
In 1980 Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company was selected as the first U.S. modern dance company to perform in Sibenik of former Yugoslavia. The company also performed in Hong Kong, the Philippines and Singapore. During this year, Ririe-Woodbury became the first modern dance company to perform in Canton, China.
From 1987-1992 company tours included Europe, American Samoa, and the former Soviet Union. Just one month before the destruction of the Berlin Wall, the dancers performed in East Germany and were the first modern dancers to perform in Karl-Marx Stadt (now Chemnitz) in the former Soviet Union and East Berlin in 15 years. The company returned to Chemnitz in 1991.
1993 led the company to the young republic of Slovenia which is part of former Yugoslavia. The company performed a benefit fundraiser for the 70,000 Bosnian war refugees who were seeking shelter in 53 collection centers in Slovenia. The highlight of the tour was a particularly moving performance for 500 refugees in a Maribor collection center. Slovenia invited Ririe-Woodbury back for a two week tour in July, 1996.
In 2002, Charlotte Boye-Christensen (Denmark) joined Ririe-Woodbury as Associate Artistic Director and since then has choreographed over 15 works on the Company. In 2003 the Nikolais/Louis Foundation for Dance selected Ririe-Woodbury as the dance company to house the works of modern dance innovator Alwin Nikolais, as his company, Nikolais Dance Theatre, which is no longer in operation. Ririe-Woodbury's performances of works by this American Treasure have received five-star reviews in the New York Times and the LA Times. And Ririe-Woodbury was one of five dance companies invited to perform at the prestigious Edinburgh Festival in 2004.
Ririe-Woodbury is known for its tremendous work in the education system of Utah. After working with teachers and students in schools for many years, Ririe-Woodbury formalized its education program and named it Step Lively. Step Lively is a statewide program aimed at assisting classroom teachers in meeting the objectives of the Utah Fine Arts Core Curriculum. Ririe-Woodbury has pioneered dance education in Utah and throughout the United States.
The history of Ririe-Woodbury and the strength of its co-founders and dancers built a company that fosters stability and growth in the development of modern dance throughout the world. The company's mission will carry the performing arts and dance education into the next century.