RDT's REGALIA Offers Four Aspiring Choreographers the Chance to Create Work For RDT

Repertory Dance Theatre celebrates 57 years of revolutionary modern dance with their annual fundraiser and choreographer competition, REGALIA, on February 4, 2023, at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center. Returning LIVE for the first time in three years, the competition brings four talented and aspiring choreographers the chance to win a commission for RDT in the 2023-2024 season.

This year, RDT has four Utah locals - Constance Anderson, Rebekah JoAnn Guerra, Ruger Memmott, and Angela Smith - competing for votes from audience members to be awarded a chance to create a new commission for RDT's 2023-2024 season.

Constance Anderson, a current MFA Modern Dance candidate and Teaching Assistant at the University of Utah, creates choreography with heavy consideration for a performance's location with movement that brings attention to the venue's physical architecture. She enjoys challenging a venue's physical capabilities, finding value in its limitations. She founded her company, Sock Opera Dance, in 2019 to experiment with choreographic systems that emphasize the choreographic process while inspired by space. Anderson formerly created work in central Wisconsin and formed an artist's collective, vying for all artists to have a platform.

Rebekah JoAnn Guerra is a dance-maker based in Salt Lake City, Utah, staging original choreography that reflects the fragility and force of the human condition by repurposing the stage as a playground of human contradictions, inner dramaturgy, and domestic politics. Since 2020 Guerra has been working as a freelance artist within the greater Los Angeles area. Her choreography and films have been presented at the Lift-Off Film Festival-Paris; Inland Empire Dance Festival, Long Beach Black Dance Festival; ModCollective in Brooklyn, NY; Bond Performance Festival-Hong Kong; and Stomping Ground-Los Angeles. Presently, She is a ballet instructor and an MFA Recipient in the Ballet Program at the University of Utah.

Ruger Memmott is a dancer and choreographer from Pleasant Grove, UT. Growing up in the competitive dance circuit, he trained in multiple styles of dance as well as working off and on professionally. He was accepted into university study where he danced on scholarship with the Theater Ballet company at Brigham Young University. After his freshman year at BYU Ruger served an LDS mission and returning to Utah continued to dance freelance in Utah and California. He has danced with Utah's Odyssey Dance Theatre for several years as well as occasionally choreographing for the company. His choreography has been selected by the Palm Springs Desert choreography festival, the MOVE: A 24-Hour Film Festival competition by the Utah Film Festival and he was selected as the winner of the 2021 SHAPE choreography festival by SALT dance.

Angela Smith grew up in Northern Idaho, dancing with Festival Dance Academy and performing around her community. Having recently graduated from Brigham Young University, her work has received both nationwide and international recognition. Of note, she was selected as a rising choreographer by Sarasota Contemporary Dance Company and her work with BYU's DancEnsemble company was chosen for the gala concert at the American College Dance Association in Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania. Angela approaches her choreographic process with passionate and playful curiosity. She enjoys reimagining the boundaries between dance and theater-crafting stories that are both abstract and specific through movement, mime, and intricate soundscapes. She presently lives and choreographs in Utah County, and is applying to graduate school to continue researching her interests in dance and storytelling.

REGALIA ticket holders are invited to arrive at 6:30 pm donned in their finest RED attire (not required, but encouraged) to watch these talented choreographers at work. Choreographers begin working at 2:00 pm, so audience members will see the choreographers' final touches. While they wander the studios, audience members will enjoy a lively pre-show cocktail party with heavy hors d'oeuvres and drinks from Utah Food Services and be invited to bid on extravagant silent auction packages.

Everyone will enter the theatre at 8:00 pm to watch a performance of each newly completed piece. Then audience members will decide who wins the choreographic commission and also raise funds to support RDT's celebrated free school outreach that reaches over 75,000 students and teachers in Utah every year.

Afterward, all are invited on to the Jeanne Wagner stage to enjoy delectable desserts from Utah Food Services and dance the night away to the sounds of the Joe Muscolino Band.

New for 2023 - Voting for choreography will continue for one week after the live event. The new works will be filmed and uploaded to be viewed online and audiences can continue to donate to their favorite choreographer through Saturday, February 11 when the final commission will be awarded.

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