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Modern times: Salt Lake City's Repertory Dance Theatre has created a living museum of classic 20th century choreography.

Article Excerpt
When the Rockefeller Foundation approached Linda C. Smith about the possibility of establishing a modern dance company in Salt Lake City, she was stunned. The idea of Rockefeller seed money underwriting a salaried professional repertory ensemble seemed unbelievable. But it was the '60s. Definitions were crumbling, artists were heaving out the old assumptions, and arts funding in the United States was entering its most imaginative and expansive period. In 1966 the Rockefeller's philanthropic gamble launched the Repertory Dance Theatre, now celebrating its 40th anniversary as an anchor component of the Salt Lake City arts community.

Prompted by the influential Utah modern dance educator Virginia Tanner, the Rockefeller Foundation envisioned a small company that would function leaderless, an "artistic democracy" performing revivals of landmark dances as well as new works. Repertory--in the sense long accepted for opera and symphonic music--has been a difficult concept for modern dance. Companies lived uncertainly from year to year, fed by the creative energies and personal charisma of their leaders, and convinced that to be "modern" meant dispensing with the past. By the mid-'60s only one major company, Alvin Alley American Dance Theater, regularly showed the work of several choreographers, but like its peers Ailey's identity in the world bore the imprint of its artistic director. Given the highly individual, choreographer-centric nature of the field, it took an outside agency to create a different model.

Repertory Dance Theatre was conceived as a permanent company committed not to any...

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