Prime Performance 2025

Repertory Dance Theatre is excited to offer a new creative and performing opportunity for older dancers. "Prime Performance DISCOVERY” is a collaborative choreographic workshop for older adults that centers participants' own movement vocabulary and individual skills/backgrounds in a creative process to create new dance work inspired by belonging, motherhood, connection, memory, and family.

Prime Performance: DISCOVERY will take place over a 16-week period and will focus on exploring the choreographic process, collaborative art-making, and creative problem solving. Participants will flex their creative muscles as part of the choreographic process while also serving as valued performers. Emphasis will be placed on embodied movement, not ‘doing the right dance step’ with all ages and experience levels welcome. Those who are brand new to dance or have been dancers for many years are welcome to participate. Rehearsals will take place February through May 2025 once a week for two hours and will result in the creation of an original performance piece titled, “My Mother Told Me…”

Participation in Prime Performance DISCOVERY is free and costs nothing to participants. Participants are NOT expected to be present at every rehearsal and every effort will be made to work with participants schedules. To get the most from this workshop, it is suggested that participants be willing to give 5-6 weeks of rehearsal time to this process. Participants must be available on Friday May 23^rd and Saturday May 24^th to prepare and perform in a culminating performance in the Leona Wagner Black Box Theatre.

Those interested in participating in the creative workshop should fill out/register for the full 16 weeks and then fill out an online google form that will focus on their availability. Again, every effort will be made to accommodate individual schedules.

Led by Nicholas Cendese, RDT's Associate Executive/Artistic Director and experienced creative aging teaching artist, participants of all backgrounds and skill levels will contribute their own stories, movement vocabulary, and ideas to develop a multifaceted dance work that incorporates movement, music, and text while examining themes of belonging, motherhood, connection, memory, and family. The project will culminate in a performance at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center on May 24^th, 2025. It is the goal of this workshop to challenge traditional dance paradigms centering individual expression and physical diversity in the creative process. Prime Performance 2025: DISCOVERY builds upon three years of RDT's successful Prime Performance series while introducing a new approach and teaching artist that places participants' movement vocabulary at the heart of the creative process.

This project is generously funded by the Utah Division of Arts and Museums. Funding for this project prioritizes engagement of individuals 55+ older, however any mature dance-makers interested in creative aging may register.

Dates: Saturdays from February 15-May 24, 2025

Time: 10:45 am - 12:45 pm

Location: Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center
 

Cost: There is no cost to participants. Registration is on a first-come, first-serve basis with very limited class size.

*We are happy to work with participants' schedules if they cannot make every class.