Lisa Traiger

in ‘Xenos’ at Kennedy Center, Akram Khan dances to the end of the world

A rumination on identity, memory, death, life, and regeneration — a portrait of humanity captive to demons.

Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE takes a soul-infused journey from mercy to grace

At Kennedy Center, a rich triptych of works with historical underpinnings of the African American experience.

‘A Black and White Cookie’ premieres at Silver Spring Stage

Can a bakery favorite repair the world?

Paul Taylor Dance Company opens Kennedy Center dance season with verve

Two familiar works ease us back into the theater on a high note.

‘Clowntime’ takes down politics with smart snark and belly laughs

Saving the world from its grim humorless political maneuverings through comedy feels right at this moment.

Chamber Dance Project takes bold step back to normalcy

An evening of choreography titled ‘Tear the Edge,’ featuring four world premieres, comes to National Cathedral Sunday, July 18.

Bowen McCauley Dance to take last bows, gives penultimate performance

As the dance world eases back to stages, Bowen McCauley Dance was among the first to dip a toe in to test the waters, dancing together on the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater stage before a very...

An independent woman faces cancer in Solas Nua’s intimate outdoor drama

There couldn’t be a more perfect setting for Irish playwright Deirdre Kinahan’s In the Middle of the Fields than the grassy, clovered slope of P Street Beach, a sliver of Rock Creek Park a quick walk...

In Matthew Bourne’s ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ the lovers are teens in juvey

“For never was there a tale of more woe, than this of Juliet and her Romeo.” Who doesn’t know the tragic ending of star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet? Yet we continue to be besotted by the...

Muslim women’s voices in ‘Unveiled’ serve up tea and empathy

Hot tea is the recommended beverage for viewing Chicago-based playwright Rohnia Malik’s Unveiled, available online through January 2021 from Baltimore Theatre Project. The one-woman show introduces us...

A son summons his absent father in ‘Dear Mapel’ at Mosaic Theater

Urgent times call for urgent theater. And urgent theater has been Mosaic Theater Company’s calling card since its founding — rather unexpectedly — five years ago, by artistic director/playwright Ari...

Fearless feminist dance takes the stage in Martha Graham Dance Company’s ‘The EVE Project’

On the eve of the day we learned that we still can’t elect a woman as qualified as Elizabeth Warren president, the Martha Graham Dance Company returned to the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater with...

Round House’s ‘Spring Awakening’ captures the essence of teenage angst

With her green roots and sneakers that spout “fuck you,” Billie Eilish, who swept Sunday night’s pop Grammys, sings a new song for a new generation. Her 2020 teen angst recalls hardcore punk and rock...

Mark Morris Dance Group boldly re-imagines ‘Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ in ‘Pepperland’ at the Kennedy Center

Mark Morris dances are emphatically watchable, easily digestible, eccentric, and smartly witty. He so proficiently pairs music and dance, costume and set – with a cadre of collaborators – that it’s...

Review: ‘Merce Cunningham at 100, Beach Birds and BIPED’ at the Kennedy Center

What a pleasure to celebrate the centenary of modern dance master Merce Cunningham with a pair of works that demonstrates his formidable vision for dance, imbued with clarity of form and generosity of...

Review: ‘Bright Colors and Bold Patterns’ at Studio Theatre

Gerry is mad. Furious even. And who can blame him? He’s all set for the wedding of the … well … summer. He’s driven out the I10 from Los Angeles to Palm Springs and the expensively tasteful invitation...

Review: ‘New York City Ballet: New Works and New Productions’ at the Kennedy Center

It’s been a challenging few years for New York City Ballet, the nation’s preeminent ballet company. What with the misconduct and resignation of its ballet master in chief, subsequent misconduct...

Review: ‘Analogy Trilogy’ by Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company at the Kennedy Center

It’s too simplistic to call Bill T. Jones a choreographer, although that’s been his stock and trade for more than 40 years. This past week his Analogy unfolded as a trilogy, over three nights at the...

Review: ‘Hair & Other Stories’ by Urban Bush Women at Dance Place

Don’t think you’re going to sit back and observe if you show up at Urban Bush Women’s latest, Hair & Other Stories, which made its Washington, DC premiere this past weekend at Dance Place. Oh no. Read...

Review: ‘Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (Program A)’ at The Kennedy Center

A cough, a gasp, the sound of a heartbeat. A sudden flash in the darkness. These sounds and images begin “Lazarus,” the brand-new work from hip hop master Rennie Harris, which opened a glitzy...

Review: ‘Cinderella’ at The Kennedy Center Opera House

Don’t walk into the Kennedy Center Opera House expecting a Disney-esque, happily-ever-after retelling of the evergreen fairytale Cinderella. British director/choreographer Matthew Bourne has spent his...

Holly Bass Celebrates Black Sisterhood in ‘The Trans-Atlantic Time Traveling Company’

District-based solo performer Holly Bass creates in so many media and art forms I can’t keep up with her—and I’ve been covering her for nearly a decade. Her latest devised work, a dance-theater piece,...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘The Unaccompanied Minor’

Comedy. It isn’t always pretty. And sometimes it isn’t even funny. In the case of Elan Zafir’s biographical one-man show The Unaccompanied Minor, although it’s billed as a comedy, it really isn’t all...

2018 Capital Fringe Review: ‘Isadora Duncan: Landscapes of the Soul’

Church basements have a long and surprisingly illustrious history in the evolution of modern dance, particularly in the mid-20th-century when they were creative strongholds for iconoclastic...

Review: ‘Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations’ at The Kennedy Center

Ain’t too many surprises in Ain’t Too Proud, the new jukebox musical about the supergroup The Temptations and their rise to meteoric heights. Their music defined a generation and gave voice to the...

Review: ‘#poolparty’ by Ally Theatre Company

“No diving. No running. Absolutely no cannonballs,” the pre-show announcement at Joe’s Movement Emporium orders. But get ready to dive deep for the world premiere of #poolparty as it unpacks the...

Review: ‘Portraits’ by Dana Tai Soon Burgess Dance Company at the Kennedy Center

The portraits hang solemnly, unmoving at the Smithsonian’s Portrait Gallery. Choreographer Dana Tai Soon Burgess breathes life and movement into these two-dimensional works of art with a triptych of...

Review: ‘Goldberg Variations – ternary patterns for insomnia’ with Andersson Dance and Scottish Ensemble

Making the extraordinary ordinary appears to be a notion we can’t shake. If it isn’t dumbing down, it’s taking down, mashing up or just plain copying. Thursday, April 26 at the Kennedy Center’s...

Review: ‘Works by Balanchine, Martins, and Peck’ by New York City Ballet

In this era of #MeToo, a review of the New York City Ballet can’t begin without noting the allegations of abuse against now-retired Ballet Master in Chief Peter Martins. Late last year, the company...

Review: ‘Layla and Majnun’ by the Mark Morris Dance Group with the Silkroad Ensemble

A tapestry of poetry, chant, music, and dance drawn from a swath of the ancient Silk Road has provided vivid inspiration for influential choreographer Mark Morris. His re-envisioning of Layla and...

Review: ‘Quartet’ at The British Players

Growing old isn’t for sissies. In South-African-born, British playwright Ronald Harwood’s smart 1999 comedy Quartet, he gently wrestles with the indignities of aging in a British senior-citizens’...

Review: ‘American Ballet Theatre: Ratmansky, Robbins, Millepied and Wheeldon’ at the Kennedy Center

As parts of the nation settled in to hear 45 read the script of the State of the Union address, and other parts assiduously ignored the same, balletomanes and ballet goers in the Washington area...

Review: ‘ink’ at The Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater

In ink, choreographer/dancer Camille A. Brown’s final installment in her trilogy examining African-American identity, an entire history of a people is written indelibly on the bodies of her six...

Review: ‘The Red Shoes’ at Kennedy Center Opera House

Generations of budding ballerinas have lusted after the shiny crimson satin pointe shoes in the classic 1948 film The Red Shoes. Who can resist those shoes, they make the wearer dance, and dance, and...

Review: ‘Lotus’ at The Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater

Tap dancers are family. As family they gather together, catch up, trade stories, reminisce, honor their forbears and simply, yet profoundly, enjoy each others’ company. Saturday evening’s sold-out...

Review: ‘In the Heights’ at Olney Theatre Center (in a co-production with Round House Theatre)

In a week that began with the repeal of DACA — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals – what better way to end it than with a musical about dreamers. For those children – many now young adults, among...

Review: The Kinsey Sicks in ‘Things You Shouldn’t Say’ at Theater J

There’s virtually nothing a drag queen won’t say, or do, in public or private, say the Kinsey Sicks. The San Francisco-based beauty shop quartet that puts the show into show business, the bawdy into...

Review: ‘Ballet, Brass & Song: Chamber Dance Project’ at Sidney Harman Hall

Baseball players take the winter off. Football players do the same in the summer. Ballet dancers are of a different breed. When their companies go on hiatus, typically in early June, they find other...

Review: ‘Ballet Across America’ at The Kennedy Center Opera House

What does 21st-century ballet look like? For The Kennedy Center’s Ballet Across America program, principle dancer and celeb ballerina Misty Copeland, 34, and 29-year-old New York City Ballet dancer...

Review: ‘Les Ballet Trockadero de Monte Carlo’ at The Kennedy Center

Men in tights and pointe shoes ballet super seriously and have fun doing it. The all-male comic ballet company Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo returned to the Kennedy Center March 21 with a...

Review: ‘Cave of the Heart’ By the Martha Graham Dance Company at the Smithsonian American Art Museum

“Archaic/Modern” is not only the title of the estimable exhibit of Japanese American sculptor Isamu Noguchi mid-20th-century works at the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum. Archaic/modern describes...

Review: Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at The Kennedy Center

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is looking as strong and beautiful as ever in its annual February visit to The Kennedy Center Opera House. Now in his sixth year as artistic director of the...

Review: ‘Sleeping Beauty’ at Synetic Theater

Briar Rose. Brunhilde. Talia. Rosamond. Aurora. Over the centuries Sleeping Beauty has been known by many names, but the long abiding folk tale of good conquering evil and love conquering all, has...

Review: ‘What’s Going On: Life, Love, and Social Justice’ at Dance Place

Walking into Dance Place for the world premiere of choreographer and dancer Vincent Thomas’s What’s Going On: Life, Love, and Social Justice, an homage to Marvin Gaye, the great Northeast D.C. native...

Review: Debbie Allen’s ‘FREEZE FRAME… Stop the Madness’ at The Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater

Ever since Debbie Allen parleyed a killer look in the 1980 movie Fame into a featured role on the popular television series, this triple threat has been busting open doors in Hollywood for women of...

‘Black Diamond’ by Danish Dance Theatre at The Kennedy Center

The choreographic universe Tim Rushton created for his evening-length contemporary ballet Black Diamond is made up of an engaging accretion of enticing, quirky, and oddball moments in movement. The...

Review: ‘The Blues Project’ by Dorrance Dance with Toshi Reagon and BIG Lovely at The Kennedy Center

If you want to know how America dances, don’t tune in to those kitschy television competition shows So You Think You Can Dance? and Dancing With the Stars. Check out Dorrance Dance in The Blues...

Review: Martha Graham Dance Company at The Alden Theatre

Heraclitus may have said it first, but 20th century modern dance pioneer Martha Graham followed his dictum: “Change is the only constant.” The company the iconic dancer and choreographer founded in...

Review: Paul Taylor Dance Company at The Kennedy Center

The last living – and working – link to the founding generation of modern dance choreographers, Paul Taylor remains true to his values as a consummate dancemaker imbuing his works with impeccable...

Reviews: The Washington Ballet’s ‘Carmina Burana’ and ‘Bowie/Queen’

Going Out With a Bang: The Washington Ballet’s Carmina Burana and Bowie/Queen The standing ovation came before a single dancer took the stage. It lasted about two minutes to honor the final time The...