Where Dance Meets the Trail: Ririe-Woodbury Comes to Art on the Trails

What happens when contemporary dance leaves the theater and steps into the landscape? This August, visitors to Art on the Trails will have the chance to find out.

On August 22, the Arts Council of Park City & Summit County will once again transform the McLeod Creek Trail into an outdoor gallery, bringing together site-specific visual art, music, theater, and live performance along one of Park City’s scenic trails. Guided tours begin at Copper Moose Farm Stand and invite audiences to experience art in a setting where the landscape itself becomes part of the experience.

Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company

Among this year’s featured performers is Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, one of Utah’s longtime contemporary dance organizations. The company has spent decades making contemporary dance accessible through performance and education, creating opportunities for audiences to connect with dance in meaningful and unexpected ways.

For Art on the Trails, that mission takes on a particularly fitting form: dance in an unconventional space, experienced by an audience that is moving through the landscape rather than sitting in a traditional theater.

Ririe-Woodbury is also entering an exciting new artistic chapter under Artistic Director Leslie Kraus. Kraus brings a diverse background to the role, having performed with companies including Kate Weare Company and Punchdrunk, as well as having taught for 7 years at the University of Oklahoma. For the past decade, she has worked as a choreographer and director, and she is now embracing the opportunity to create and curate new work for Ririe-Woodbury. “I am thrilled to be in my current position so I may create and curate more work for this wonderful company,” Kraus says.

Ririe-Woodbury Artistic Director Leslie Kraus

Her approach to choreography is rooted in curiosity, imagination, and collaboration. Inspiration can come from unexpected places, including books. “I read, and the pictures in my head transform into ideas that I want to physicalize,” she explains. “I am also inspired by people, meeting artists and working with them to create choreography/scenes that inspire both myself and them is endlessly fascinating.”

That curiosity makes Art on the Trails a natural setting for Kraus and Ririe-Woodbury to experiment. Kraus will perform a duet with her dance partner and husband, Brandin Steffensen, creating a piece specifically for the outdoor setting and its traveling audience.

Ririe-Woodbury Executive Director Thom Dancy

Kraus and Steffensen first met while performing in immersive theater, so performing outside of traditional venues is familiar territory for them. “I am excited to make a duet with Brandin for an outdoor venue with a traveling audience,” Kraus says. “Brandin and I met performing in immersive theatre, so we love making and performing in unconventional spaces.”

That idea is at the heart of Art on the Trails. Rather than watching art from a fixed seat, audiences travel along the trail, encountering performances and installations at different locations. The landscape becomes part of the experience, and the audience becomes part of the movement through it.

For Ririe-Woodbury Executive Director Thom Dancy, the company’s appearance at Art on the Trails is also part of a larger moment of transition for the organization. Dancy has served as Executive Director for the past three and a half years, helping guide Ririe-Woodbury through a founder transition that has created space for Kraus to lead the company into its next chapter.

“It’s been a beautiful ride leading a founder transition that has now made space for Leslie to take the reins and usher in a new artistic era for the company! I love how great art drives communities forward,” Dancy says. 

That philosophy feels particularly at home at Art on the Trails, where artists and audiences share the same physical space and where creative work becomes part of the community’s natural surroundings.

Art on the Trails takes place August 22 from 2 to 6 p.m., beginning at Copper Moose Farm Stand. Guided tours depart every 20 minutes between 2 and 4 p.m. and travel along the McLeod Creek Trail to Temple Har Shalom and back. The approximately 1.5-hour experience includes site-specific performances and artwork along the route before returning guests to Copper Moose Farm Stand, where food, refreshments, music, and community await.

For Kraus, the event represents more than simply another performance. “The Arts Council is a brilliant organization with lovely people,” she says, “and I am excited to begin this creative collaboration.” This August, take a walk, slow down, and experience what happens when contemporary dance meets the trail. Get your tickets here.