The Repertory Dance Theater which opened its two-night season at the Capitol Theater on Friday night, looks vital, technically proficient and charged with personality in "Now...an Evening of Contemporary Dance" (The program will be repeated Saturday night.) [...]Douglas Dunn's "Relief" stands up well to repetition.  In a sheer movement piece with few musical clues (unless you could call wind tunnel noise and bowling alley effects music), the company shows coordination and concentration, and rapport with an original style. Those who met Dunn during his Salt Lake visits and have seen him dance in his intensely introverted way recognize the vigorous presence of a different drummer, one which will reward exploration. "Relief" offers a kind of unstructured polyphony in which the individual lines move independently and converge at a few prearranged points.  It's troubled beginning eases into greater harmony and more marked rhythm towards the end.  "Relief" is a piece to be pondered, and needs many viewings, many performances to bring out all it nuances.  Dunn's provocative choreography is definitely worth the trouble.

Deseret News                                                                                     October 13, 1979

RDT provocative and theatrical in fall concert

by Helen Forsberg

[excerpt] Douglas Dunn's "Relief" emits an entirely different kind of energy.  The joy of the piece is in its attention to detail, its subtleties.  A flick of the wrist or the finger is eyecatching.  In Dunn's piece, eight dancers, dressed starkly in black or white, take over the stage.  There are no distractions.  Accompaniment is not music, but rather droning and terse sounds.  The beauty is in carefully watching one dancer, two dancers, maybe three dancers, carefully.  There is a cohesiveness about it all, but everyone is moving in different directions.  Exits and entrances become important.  One dancer whirls like a propeller, another slowly squirms backwards, one walks as stiffly as a soldier.  There is a feeling of suspension throughout the piece, and when it's over, a sense of relief.  But I also knew when "Relief" was over, that I wanted to see it again.

The Salt Lake Tribune                                                                               October 14, 1979

RDT: cliche to sublime

by Michael Rotter

[excerpt] Douglas Dunn's "Relief" is just that in this context. Dunn, who worked with Merce Cunningham at one time. reflects that influence in a very personal manner in this dance.  "Relief" is challenging both for the audience and the performer, and so carries with it the danger of alienating those who prefer to let their minds sleep when the house lights go down. Costumed almost entirely in black and white with a steel-blue background, the dance is accompanied by a nonrhythmic nonstop drone.  The dance allows the performer to inject his own variation into the movements within a precise general structure.  This imparts a vivid sense of spontaneity within an obviously organized ensemble picture.  Movement is abstract, bordering on the mechanical, but there is always an underlying sense of unpredicability and essential human element of choice.  Its mechanical appearance does not prelude the dancers' unmistakable emotional input, both of which elements are in a constant tenuous balance.  It is disturbing to see the human personality imprisoned within that machine, and furthermore to admire the precision of the resemblance.  It is disturbing to see the human personality imprisoned withing that machine.  Yet the relief is in the vague promise that the machine may not succeed in totally submerging the human element.

The Daily Utah Chronicle                                                                      October 16, 1979