For more than two decades, Repertory Dance Theatre has employed the power of dance to defend and protect Utah’s landscape, but never with the ferocity of “Dancing The Bears Ears,” a tribute to Utah’s new and endangered national monument that is part of its season-opening “Sanctuary” program running through Saturday.
Repeated rhythmic patterns summoned reverence for the contested Bears Ears National Monument that inspired the choreography, and the lush movement ebbed and flowed. Guest choreographer Zvi Gotheiner’s elaborately layered structure made “Bears Ears” a stand-alone work appreciated within or outside the political context.
Dancers peeled away from the group in duets, dividing the stage yet maintaining a connection with the group’s rhythm; moving out of the range of the stage lights and then captured by projections of red desert sands, silhouetted buttes and stratified rock cliffs.