DC Dance Festival graphic comprised of seven rectangular images. On top of the images is the white Dance Place logo which shows the outline of DC with two lines running diagonally from the top and bottom.
Sept 9 & 10 at 4pm
Dance Place kicks off our 44th season with year three of the DC (District Choreographers) Dance Festival! This ticketed event is a two day festival in celebration of DC’s rich dance community, featuring choreographers and dancers specifically based in the DMV area.
Featuring dynamic and virtuosic performances by Malik Burnett, Gerson Lanza, ReVision Dance Company, Claire Alrich, Orange Grove Dance, Kyoko Fujimoto, and Daché Green.
This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Choose Your Own Adventure for the DC Dance Festival!
Site Specific + Roaming: By purchasing this experience, you will see performances in the Edgewood Arts Center (EAC), the Brookland Arts Lofts (BAL), the Arts Park, and other outdoor spaces near Dance Place. This engagement starts at EAC at 4:00pm and includes performances by Kyoko Fujimoto, Daché Green, Orange Grove Dance, Claire Alrich, and ReVision Dance Company.
Theater Performance: By purchasing this experience, you will see performances in the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation Theater. This engagement starts at the Dance Place main building around 6:30/7pm and includes performances by Malik Burnett and Gerson Lanza.
Performance Bundle: By purchasing this experience, you will see performances in the Edgewood Arts Center (EAC), the Brookland Arts Lofts (BAL), the Arts Park, other outdoor spaces near Dance Place, and the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation Theater. This engagement starts at the EAC at 4:00pm.
About the Artists
Claire Alrich
Claire Alrich is a multidisciplinary artist using textile and live performance to elevate the mundane and make the magical tangible. Her work moves across mediums to include: installation, dance production, wearable textile, performance, 2-D art, and soft-sculpture. Based in DC since 2014, career highlights include: co-founding the performance collective Area Woman, organizing and curating The Shed Gallery, performing as a company member with darlingdance, and regularly making costumes for Heart Stück Bernie and Extreme Lengths Productions. Additionally, Claire is a Fieldwork facilitator and is a recipient of multiple D.C. Commision for the Arts Individual Artist grants.
About the work:
This new work created specifically for the Dance Place Arts Park will continue my line of research on the materiality of the body and the corporeality of fabric — how human form, textile, and environment can collaborate. The choreography will be driven by the design elements; layering my background in dance with my work in costume design and visual art to equally emphasize the role of movement, costume, and set.
Collaboration is fundamental in all aspects of what I do: collaboration with materials, space, other artists, and audiences; a constant conversation between 2-D fabric, 3-D bodies, and 4-D space and time. With this project I am excited to collaborate with the Dance Place team, the Arts Park environment, musician Santiago Quintana, and dancers Jessica Denson, Emilia Kawashima, and Patricia Mullaney-Loss.
Kyoko Fujimoto
Kyoko Fujimoto, PhD is a choreographer based in Washington DC. She began her dance training in Japan and performed in ballet and musical theater productions in Boston and New York City. Kyoko then moved to Hawaii and began choreographing there. She completed a post-graduate program at the ICONS choreographic Institute in Washington DC. Her comedy contemporary ballet Flavorland was reviewed by Critical Dance as “Fujimoto expertly captures the joyful experience of devouring a chocolate truffle” and “it was very warmly received by the audience, with plenty of genuine laughter” (2018). The whimsical humor of “putting a smile on” became the audience’s favorite (2022). https://www.kyokofujimoto.com.
About the work:
Beautiful music is always here to inspire choreographers and dancers; however, we don’t often see “musician-centered” dance shows. In this piece, musicians and dancers will collaborate to express the musician’s aspirations and inspirations in their daily lives. Two dancers will express the music with contemporary movements along with the live music that a trumpet player and a piano player will play on the same stage.
Gerson Lanza
Originally from La Ceiba, Honduras, Gerson first encountered the art form of tap dance after moving to New York City in 2001. He immediately fell in love with the art form after his first exposure. He began his tap dance training at Wadleigh Secondary School for the Visual and Performing Arts and Harlem School of the Arts in the heart of New York’s Harlem neighborhood.
After nearly two decades of a fruitful career as an educator, performer, and choreographer, Gerson continues to find new ground to explore. He has been chosen as one of six Strathmore Artists in Residence and company members of the tap troupe Music From The Sole featured in Jacob’s Pillow 2022 Summer Festival and the Guggenheim Work and Progress Series, and Fall For Dance at New York City Center. Lastly, Gerson has headlined the Millenium Stage at The Kennedy Center with his jazz quartet and choreographed and performed at Artist at the Center at the New York City Center where his work has been recognized and reviewed by New York Times.
ReVision Dance Company
ReVision is a contemporary modern dance company committed to artistic excellence and community building. Through performances, workshops and teaching residencies, ReVision works with diverse populations of professional dancers and novice movers. A unique aspect of our work is our dedication to engaging people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
ReVision is a Resident Company of Dance Place in Washington, DC, teaching and performing both locally throughout the Greater Metropolitan area and internationally.
About the work:
ReVision’s new site specific work created specifically for Dance Place’s DC Dance Festival, engages with audience members from new heights and distances. Playing with space, this new creation is fast paced, exploratory, and playful.
Orange Grove Dance
Orange Grove Dance (OGD) is a dance, design, and film company that exists at the intersection of dance and immersive, performer-operated design. Under the direction of Artistic Directors Colette Krogol and Matt Reeves, OGD is recognized for its powerful imagery and choreography, which engages audiences within time elusive performance landscapes where mythopoetic tropes and reality collide.
Over the past decade, Orange Grove Dance has been produced and presented worldwide in concert stages, museums, film festivals, underground tunnels, city streets, black box theaters, public parks, botanic gardens, and high-end hotels. Major commissions and awards include The Helen Hayes Award, The Ruby Award, IN Series Opera, Flying V, RaumaArs AIR, National Sawdust, The Maryland Theater for the Performing Arts, U.S. Botanic Garden, The Kennedy Center, Dance Place, Museum of Zhang Zhidong, City of Alexandria’s Waterfront Park, CulturalDC, Dupont Underground, and The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.
About the work:
Orange Grove Dance, under the direction of Colette Krogol and Matt Reeves, transforms the offices of Dance Place with its trademark virtuosic athleticism and evocative site-specific choreography. This presentation awakens the visceral desires of our nature-derived humanity against the encapsulated architecture of the modern office space.
Malik Burnett
Malik Burnett, a Washington, DC native, is an arts manager, dancer, and currently the Assistant Manager of Dance Programming at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Burnett previously served as a Dance Coordinator for the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission—in which he developed a dance program for youth ages two through twelve. His dance career has spanned from performing in the Merce Cunningham Trust’s MinEvent as a part of the Cunningham Centennial Celebration, in addition to being a member of Maurya Kerr’s tinypistol. He has worked with and performed works by Tariq O’Meally, Britta Joy Peterson, Juel D. Lane, Twyla Tharp, Shen Wei, Helen Pickett, Robyn Mineko Williams, just to name a few. He has studied at The Washington School of Ballet, The Ailey School, Alonzo King Lines Ballet, and Sidra Bell Module. Burnett holds a BFA in Dance from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and an MA in Arts Management from American University.
About the work:
Jeremiah 29:11
I welcome you to bear witness to my quest in rediscovery of self.
This experience will not only be a love letter to my heart but will also be a manifestation of my ancestor’s dreams…
Within this quest, I offer you to reflect… What is in your heart?
Daché Green graduated from Coker University in June 2014 with a Bachelor’s of Arts, Performance & Choreography emphasis. He received formal training in Dance and Stage Combat from Lees-McRae College and has trained with notable choreographers throughout the country. He has been performing with 4thrightdance repertory, a contemporary dance company based in North Carolina since 2011.
He began an internship with Dance Place in August 2014 working immediately with the youth in the Creative Education Center for about 2 years. He then went on to teach full time for both in-reach and outreach programs for Dance Place and all through the surrounding communities.
Daché is the Artistic Director of the Dance Place Youth Performance Company and teaches the adult heels class on Friday evenings at Dance Place. He serves as the Teen Leadership Program Coordinator at Dance Place and seeks to build the community in great, new, innovative ways. He enjoys eclectic, beautiful and challenging art that caters to self fulfillment and development.
About the work:
“Evolutionary” focuses on the many years of hurt, pain, joy, and love that has transpired since my last performance. I remember literally looking in the mirror and wanting to scream out literally “just dance!” This work showcases different avenues of my life, my feminine side, my roots, my first love (dance) and all of my feelings. I want the audience to experience my vulnerable side, connect with me, experience me as if I were in a room all alone… my room. I want my integrity to show in the brightest way possible. Giving the audience all of me artistically and emotionally is my mission.
This presentation is generously supported by:
Update: This presentation will not have ASL interpretation
Contact Us
Quick Links
©DancePlace 2019. All Rights Reserved. Designed by RINU
Privacy Policy / Terms of Use