When I arrived at the Rose Wagner Center on Jan. 15, Gigi Arrington was wrestling with a marked-up script for "Circle Cycle," Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company's upcoming children's show.

Memorizing pages of dialogue is unusual for Arrington, who's been the company's education director for the past 13 years. A dancer with the company from 1979 until 1981, she's used to performing with more movement and fewer words.

"I'm playing an older woman looking back on my life," said the 53-year-old Provo native. "It's an interesting character because she's kind of quirky, but then she's a real person talking about how she loved circles and cycles as a child. It's really a story of how she came to understand her life, and life in general, and the place that cycles have to play in it."

Originally choreographed in 1992 by University of Utah theater professor Xan Johnson in conjunction with company founders Shirley Ririe and Joan Woodbury, the 50-minute piece has been performed four times before. Previous productions were in 1992, 1997, 1998, and 2001, always with Joan Woodbury as the narrator. In conjunction with this year's public performances, Ririe-Woodbury will perform five student matinées which are open and free to all Utah schools.

As Education Director, Arrington runs the outreach program, which uses legislative funding to bring Ririe-Woodbury performances to schools. The funding, says Arrington, comes in mostly thanks to Shirley Ririe, who's been a lobbyist for the arts.

The company does 8-to-10 weeks of teaching in schools per year, says Arrington, which includes two two-week residences in schools in the valley and one-to-two weeks of rural touring. The legislative mandate requires that either Ririe-Woodbury, Repertory Dance Theatre, Ballet West, or Children's Dance Theatre make it to every school district in the state at least once every three years. Generally, says Arrington, who has a master's in dance from BYU, she provides the verbal instructions while the company dancers demonstrate.

Her favorite part of the outreach program, she says, is parent-child night. "The kids get to work with their parents," she says, "but the kids kind of take charge. It's wonderful to see kids and parents dancing together on equal footing. And that's when the parents go, 'Oh, I get what this is.' Because when the kids come home and say, 'We're dancing in school!' they think of folk dancing."

Children are the best and hardest audience you can have, says Arrington. "When you're teaching kids, if you can keep them captivated in a classroom or some kind of performance situation, you know you've got something that's working," she says. "Adults are pretty polite. If they don't like something, they'll tolerate it until they get out to the lobby, but you know if it's boring to the kids because they'll start talking. And if they love it, they're with you."

It helps that "Circle Cycle" has some interaction, she says, explaining that a number called "My Circle Friend" has a dancer throwing a giant ball out into the audience. It's a weather balloon filled with half helium and half air to make it float easily but gently, she says. After several minutes of the ball being tossed around the audience, the dancer indicates that it's time to return the ball to the stage.

"If you engage kids, they'll behave appropriately," Arrington says, adding that it's fun for the dancers to perform to a capacity crowd of 1,800 at the Capitol Theatre.

"Circle Cycle" also includes a number that Arrington was in when she danced with the company. Entitled "Celestial Circus," it involves tumbling and bodies flying through space.

Education has been the bulk of her career now, I observe. How does she feel about having that as her life's work?

To be honest, she says, she didn't really think this would be the direction her life would go; she thought she'd spend more than a few years teaching at the university level, but after spending three years on BYU's dance faculty and doing stints at the University of Nevada and Arizona State University, her four children required more time and energy than she'd anticipated. She started teaching in their schools, and found new focus.

"I love children," she said. "I have a great respect for kids because of their honesty and their immediacy. I feel like as we grow older, we layer a lot of things on ourselves that force us to be judgmental of ourselves. Kids can be rough and mean, too, but they can pretty easily be diverted out of that. Kids are honest. They're willing to try and willing to love. They always teach me, and I feel like the work we do here is really important and there would be a huge void if we weren't doing it."

One part of the script for "Circle Cycle" has the narrator reminiscing about her first-grade teacher and how she loved circles, too. "You are all circles," she would say. "Life is like a huge pond. We start out as pebbles and we drop into this pond of life and you become circles, and your circles spread out until you reach the shores of time."

It's true for her as well, Arrington says. "With this company, I have kind of come in circles," she explains. "Starting out as a kid, being aware of the company and watching the company and thinking, 'I'd love to be in that company. Then having that opportunity actually come for me when I thought my circles were going in other places. Then performing, and then coming back to it in another cycle in my life."

In addition to being Ririe-Woodbury's educational director, which is a part-time position, Arrington also serves as the state president of the nonprofit group NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness), where she also concentrates on children. One of her life's focuses is on making resilient people, says Arrington, whose husband is a lawyer.

"I'm waiting for that grandma cycle," she adds, explaining that her four children are now ages 17 to 26. However, she says, she feels a bit like a grandma to all the children she's taught.