Ilena Peng 11 posts 0 comments

On the last Sunday that Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library was closed to the public, two professional ballet dancers whirled through the historic building’s newly renovated space. The dancers, Alexandra Hutchinson and Derek…

A new initiative for local artists that has community members pay in advance for nine different original works of art distributed its first round of art to 33 participating patrons last Saturday. The program was formed by Rhizome DC, a…

The Kennedy Center and Facebook’s new Arts Across America program will feature 200 performers by the end of this year, showcasing art driven by advocacy, education and social justice. Many of the artists hail from DC, including today’s…

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, DC’s Chamber Dance Project had a list of scenarios for its seven-week performance season starting in June: “What if the theater can’t open? Could we perform outside? Can we rehearse? Can we bring into the…

Rather than performing Swan Lake at the Kennedy Center this week as originally scheduled, the dancers of The Washington Ballet are among those stuck at home due to the COVID-19 public health emergency. The performances have been…

In Balanchine + Ashton, which wrapped up a five-day run at the Kennedy Center on Sunday, The Washington Ballet took on the hefty task of capturing the essence of the 20th century’s most monumental choreographers — and it succeeded quite…

Pianist Glenn Sales is experienced enough — and French composer Jules Massenet’s music is simple enough — that Sales can sneak bites of his sandwich as he plays for The Washington Ballet’s rehearsal of British choreographer Frederick…

American Ballet Theatre brought a heartbreakingly beautiful valentine to DC last week. The New York-based dance company performed the classic story ballet Giselle onstage at the Kennedy Center for a seven-day run in a production…

Thanksgiving isn’t the only sign this week that the Christmas season is upon us, with the curtain rising on two incarnations of The Nutcracker ballet at DC theaters. An evergreen holiday tradition that originated in Russia in 1892, the…

The Washington Ballet launched its 2019-20 season last week with NEXTsteps, an aptly named glimpse of dance’s interdisciplinary and collaboration-centered future. The show at the Sidney Harman Hall featured three evocative dances: Jessica…

Mariinsky Ballet’s Paquita — on stage for the past week at the Kennedy Center — combines new choreography with that of its 19th-century predecessor in an updated production that maintains the same grandeur and classical technique that…