DaEun Jung: BYOUL|NORRI
2024-03-23 19:30 - 21:00, 2024-03-24 14:00 - 15:30 UTC | Center for the Arts at Kayenta
DANCE
DaEun Jung: BYOUL|NORRI
Friday, Saturday, & Sunday March 22-24, 2024 // 7:30pm on Friday-Saturday & 2:00pm on Sunday
The Lorraine Boccardo Theater
BYOUL|NORRI by Los Angeles-based choreographer DaEun Jung features Pansori song (Korean folk opera), original electronic beats, irregular folk rhythms, Hangul (Korean alphabet system), and chance operation that deconstructs, reinterprets and transforms classical Korean dance. The hour-long concert is performed in two parts, Byoul (별): “star,” a solo performance by the Choreographer herself, and Norri (놀이): “play’, a four part ensemble work.
In her dances, DaEun Jung connects different times and spaces together across cultures and geographies. Her work has redefined the principle, form, structure, and function of Korean classical and folk dance in multicultural settings. DaEun studied at UCLA where she received her MFA in choreography and the Westfield Emerging Artist Award. Previously, she performed in Asia and Europe as a dancer of Gyeonggi Provincial Dance Company, a dance organization renowned for its traditional and contemporary Korean dance repertoire, and also performed as a main actress in Tokebi Storm, a rhythmic physical theater group, presenting Korean-style drumming and dance in more than 1,000 shows to worldwide audiences.

Tickets $35

Stories from Home by Yvonne Montoya | Safos Dance Theatre Stories from Home
2024-09-21 19:30 - 21:30
DANCE
Stories from Home by Yvonne Montoya | Safos Dance Theatre Stories from Home
Saturday, September 21, 7:30pm
The Lorraine Boccardo Theater
Stories From Home is a series of dances embodying the oral traditions of Nuevomexicano, Chicano, and Mexican American communities in the American Southwest. Choreographer Yvonne Montoya, a 23rd-generation Nuevomexicana, and an all-Mexican American cast of dancers draw upon personal histories and ancestral knowledge, including stories from Montoya’s great-grandmother, grandmother, great-aunts, and father. With palpable theatricality, moving spoken word, a movement aesthetic informed by vibrant ancestral and contemporary sources, and universal themes of love, family, and home, Stories from Home brings largely underrepresented Southwest Latino American experiences and histories to the stage.
While Stories from Home is a vessel for personal and specific tales, the performance also offers a broader look at a variety of Southwest cultural traditions and accounts not often found in American history books. The work addresses historical themes such as the Mexican farm labor Bracero Program, the creation of the Atomic Bomb in Northern New Mexico and illness related to these US Government projects, loss of language due to 1940s Americanization programs, and the experience of the Sephardim people during and after the Spanish Inquisition.
Yvonne Montoya
Artistic Director & Choreographer
Yvonne Montoya is a mother, dancemaker, bi-national artist, thought leader, writer, speaker, and the founding director of Safos Dance Theatre. Based in Tucson, Arizona and originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico, her work is grounded in and inspired by the landscapes, languages, cultures, and aesthetics of the U.S. Southwest.
Montoya is a process-based dancemaker who creates low-tech, site-specific and site-adaptive pieces for nontraditional dance spaces. Though most well-known in the U.S. Southwest, her choreography has been staged across the United States and in Guatemala, and her dance films screened, at Queens University of Charlotte, North Carolina and the University of Exeter (U.K.) Under her direction, Safos Dance Theatre won the Tucson Pima Arts Council’s Lumie Award for Emerging Organization in 2015. She is currently working on Stories from Home, a series of dances based on her family’s oral histories.
From 2017-2018 Montoya was a Post-Graduate Fellow in Dance at Arizona State University, where she founded and organized the five year dance advocacy project Dance in the Desert: A Gathering of Latinx Dancemakers from 2017-2022. From 2019-2020, Montoya was a Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellow, and a member of the 2019-2020 Dance/USA Fellowships to Artists pilot program. She was also a 2021-2022 Southwest Folk Alliance Plain View Fellow. Montoya was a recipient of the 2019 National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures (NALAC) POD grant, the 2020 MAP Fund Award, and the first Arizona-based artist to receive the 2020 New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) National Dance Project Production Grant. Montoya won the Arizona Creative Excellence Award at the 2021 Arizona Drive-In Dance Film Festival. In 2022, her company Safos Dance Theatre received the National Performance Network Creation Fund Grant and the National Endowment for the Arts Grants for Arts Project Grant for her piece “Stories from Home.” Yvonne was also recently featured in KQED’s If Cities Could Dance.
Tickets $35

The presentation of Stories From Home was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and the Mellon Foundation.

SALT Contemporary Dance
2025-04-25 19:30 - 21:30, 2025-04-26 15:00 - 17:00
DANCE
SALT Contemporary Dance
Friday, April 25, 7:30pm
Saturday, April 26, 3:00pm
The Lorraine Boccardo Theater

“SALT prides itself on being “current,” we love to bring in new choreographic voices from around the world that are truly making waves in the dance community. We have had incredible success bringing thought provoking contemporary dance to the Utah community of artists and are so pleased to be touring some of these incredible works.”

SALT Contemporary Dance was founded in 2013 in an effort to bring new voices of dance to Utah. In its 10 seasons, SALT has grown exponentially into a well-respected company, working with some of the most sought-after choreographers to create innovative new productions.
This performance will feature choreography from Rena Butler, Ching Ching Wong, Brandon Lee Alley and Racheal Prince.
TICKETS
This performance is generously sponsored by Desert Dweller Real Estate.

Repertory Dance Theatre
2026-01-23 19:30 - 21:30, 2026-01-24 15:00 - 17:00
DANCE

Repertory Dance Theatre

MIGRATIONS

Friday, January 23, 2026 at 7:30pm Saturday, January 24, 2026 at 3:00pm

The Lorraine Boccardo Theater

For six decades, Repertory Dance Theatre (RDT) has stood at the forefront of modern dance. Founded in 1966 in Salt Lake City, Utah, RDT is one of the world’s most respected repertory companies—celebrated for both preserving the legacy of modern dance and pushing the art form boldly forward. Often described as a living museum and a contemporary gallery, RDT’s extraordinary collection spans the earliest pioneers of modern dance to today’s most innovative choreographers, making the company a vital resource for artists and audiences alike.

As part of its 60th Anniversary Season, RDT brings MIGRATIONS to the Center for the Arts at Kayenta—an evening-length work by acclaimed choreographer Zvi Gotheiner with an original score by Scott Killian. Created in 2023, MIGRATIONS is a poetic and urgent meditation on movement, survival, and transformation in a rapidly changing world.

Drawing inspiration from the instinctual journeys of migrating birds, the relentless pace of human displacement, and the accelerating loss of natural resources, MIGRATIONS explores the fragile intersection of nature and civilization. Striking physicality, evocative imagery, and emotional depth come together to reflect a world in flux—beautiful, precarious, and profoundly interconnected. Through this powerful work, audiences are invited to consider what it means to adapt and endure amid the realities of global climate change. MIGRATIONS also honors the 30-year creative partnership between RDT, Zvi Gotheiner, and composer Scott Killian—a collaboration that has shaped the company’s artistic voice for three decades. This performance is both a celebration of RDT’s remarkable history and a bold statement about the future of modern dance.
TICKETS
