STLDT opens its 16th season with three premieres

St. Louis has one contemporary repertory dance company, and it's about to start its sixteenth season. The Saint Louis Dance Theatre, or STLDT, opens "Elements of Harmony" on Friday, October 23, at the Blanche M. Touhill Performing Arts Center on the University of Missouri–St. Louis campus, and the opening night is a fundraiser rather than a standard show.

The season kicks off with the "Movers and Shakers" gala, which bills two dance performances, including the world premiere of "Salam," a 22-minute piece by artistic director Kirven Douthit-Boyd. He has described the work as dealing with prayer, an abundance of blessings and gratitude, and it grew out of a conversation with a pastor. If you're not going to the gala, the fall series runs through October 25, and that's where the rest of the new work comes in: "BOYS" by Rena Butler and "Sands of Time" by Keerati Jinakunwiphat are both world premieres, and the program rounds out with a revival of Norbert de la Cruz's "Cloud 9," Douthit-Boyd's "Kandinsky" on October 24, Robert Battle's "Unfold," and Johan Inger's "Walking Mad." The same set of numbers returns on October 25, including the two pieces that open the gala, so you get the full program either way. The season then carries on into December with "Gaslight Dreams."

It's worth knowing what you're walking into. The company started in June 2010 as the Big Muddy Dance Company, put together by dancer Paula David with six dancers; it now carries 14 dancers and two apprentices. Executive director Erin Prange was one of those original six and has been with the company since the beginning. Kirven Douthit-Boyd took over as artistic director in 2022 after dancing with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater for eleven years, from 2004 to 2015. Between them, the company has commissioned more than 95 works for its repertoire and put on over 400 performances as it moves into this sixteenth season.

The venue is a destination in its own right. The Blanche M. Touhill Performing Arts Center was designed by I.M. Pei, with Cobb, Freed and Partners, and it holds three performance spaces: the 1,600-seat Anheuser-Busch Performance Hall, the flexible E. Desmond and Mary Ann Lee Theater, which takes up to 375 people, and the open-form Whitaker Hall, good for up to 250. The ticket office opens two hours before showtime on event days, and the venue can be reached at 314-516-4949 if you have questions before you head over. With three world premieres packed into one weekend, it's a dense opening for a company that has quietly become a fixture of the city's dance scene.