{"id":810,"date":"2025-09-19T15:10:36","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T15:10:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.voipez.com\/?p=810"},"modified":"2025-09-23T13:53:20","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T13:53:20","slug":"dance-artists-and-audiences-face-a-dilemma-to-go-or-not-to-go-to-the-kennedy-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.voipez.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/19\/dance-artists-and-audiences-face-a-dilemma-to-go-or-not-to-go-to-the-kennedy-center\/","title":{"rendered":"Dance Artists and Audiences Face a Dilemma: To Go or Not to Go to the Kennedy Center?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Diane DeFries, former executive director of the American College Dance Association, has been attending performances at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts since it opened in 1971. At ACDA\u2019s national festivals, she saw generations of students look awestruck upon walking into the imposing Washington, DC, performing arts center.<\/p>\n

But she has no plans to set foot in its red-carpeted halls now. And she\u2019s not alone. Since President Trump took over leadership of the venue in February\u2014and especially since the recent firing of the Center\u2019s dance programming team<\/a>, and the installation of the self-described \u201cMAGA former dancer\u201d Stephen Nakagawa<\/a> as the new director of dance programming\u2014the question of whether or not to go to the Kennedy Center has become politicized. Vociferous calls to boycott the Center have spread across social media, leading to huge drops in subscription and advance ticket sales<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cMuch to my despair, I feel like I cannot go to the Kennedy Center in good conscience at this point,\u201d DeFries says. \u201cThe intention of this administration is to transform our national monument to the performing arts into an institution with values\u2026that are counter to what the arts have been historically.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Kennedy Center is one of the largest performing arts centers in the U.S. Because of its capacity, reputation, and prominence as the country\u2019s national cultural center, its programming in dance and beyond has vast influence. \u201cIt\u2019s an important stage for America, and an important stage for the world,\u201d says Alicia Adams, who was vice president of international programming and dance until she was let go in May.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, President Trump decried the Center\u2019s programming as \u201cwoke,\u201d and in August, while announcing the latest class of Kennedy Center Honorees, he leaned in: \u201cWe reversed what was happening. We ended the woke political programming and we\u2019re restoring the Kennedy Center as the premier venue for performing arts anywhere in the country, anywhere in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Droves of dance and other performing artists, arts managers, and loyal Kennedy Center audience members appear to disagree. Many dancers and choreographers in the greater Washington, DC, metropolitan region, like DeFries, are weighing whether attending events there would be a tacit endorsement of President Trump\u2019s policies.<\/p>\n

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The cast of Project ChArma\u2019s Crates<\/i> at National Dance Day 2023. Photo courtesy Project ChArma.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Chris and Ama Law, co-directors of the Maryland-based dance theater company Project ChArma, grew up in the DC area but only recently began to feel like the Center was a place for them. In 2019, Jane Raleigh\u2014then the Kennedy Center\u2019s dance programming director, who made a concerted effort to broaden the representation of local dance companies across genres in Center programming\u2014invited Project ChArma to present their piece Rooted<\/em> at the Center\u2019s Millennium Stage. The Laws were later invited to help curate 2023\u2019s National Dance Day event dedicated to hip hop, and subsequently received a coveted Local Dance Commissioning Project award, which came with a $20,000 commission and a performance slot in the Center\u2019s Terrace Theater.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Project ChArma is scheduled to perform Saturday, September 20, at this year\u2019s National Dance Day. \u201cBut now I don\u2019t know about buying tickets,\u201d Ama Law says. \u201cI\u2019ll just do my damnedest to find comps, or wait for discounts\u2026anything that gives the institution less of my money.\u201d At the same time, the Laws are thinking about the impact of boycotts on dance artists. \u201cI would hate to be that artist who is performing to an empty crowd, knowing how hard I worked,\u201d Ama Law says.<\/p>\n

Absent from this Kennedy Center season is Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, a perennial favorite engagement at the Opera House. Ailey week at the Kennedy Center not only frequently sold out, but the opening night company benefit has been a major fundraiser for Ailey, bringing in over $1.2 million this past February. This year the company opted to perform instead at DC\u2019s Warner Theatre. It declined to comment on that decision.<\/p>\n

Without strong ticket sales, dance at the Kennedy Center may not be sustainable. \u201cIn 2021 the pandemic crashed everything in terms of ticket sales and subscriptions,\u201d Raleigh says. \u201cIn subsequent years we were seeing more robust subscriptions than many of our dance-presenting colleagues nationally. And our single tickets were selling in the 70-to-80-percent\u2013capacity range for most of our [dance] engagements, some much better. Houses were full, we were feeling good about it.\u201d She noted\u2014and Adams confirmed\u2014that the newly hired Trump-endorsed upper managers were very complimentary on dance programming earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Raleigh plans on attending the 2025\u201326 season, which she partially booked. \u201c\u00a0\u2018Come see dance\u2019 was my position when I was inside the Kennedy Center, and it remains my position now,\u201d she says. \u201cSupport the artists who are on those stages and my colleagues who remain working at the Kennedy Center.\u201d Adams, who spent three decades of her career in programming at the Center, says that she is also looking forward to supporting the dance companies she booked for the coming season. \u201cIf there\u2019s something there that you believe in and respect, a company whose work you have supported or want to see, then support them,\u201d she says. \u201cBe in that audience to cheer them on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTo go or not to go,\u201d however, remains the question. Vincent Thomas, a Baltimore-based dance artist and educator whose company, VTDance, has been presented on the Kennedy Center\u2019s Millennium Stage, last came to a performance at the Center in August\u2014one day after Raleigh and the rest of the dance programming team were fired. \u201cI felt for these artists and I felt an obligation, a need, to support them,\u201d he says. But Thomas, like many other formerly dedicated dance patrons, has yet to purchase tickets for the 2025\u201326 dance season.<\/p>\n

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The post Dance Artists and Audiences Face a Dilemma: To Go or Not to Go to the Kennedy Center?<\/a> appeared first on Dance Magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Diane DeFries, former executive director of the American College Dance Association, has been attending performances…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":812,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.voipez.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.voipez.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.voipez.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.voipez.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.voipez.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=810"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.voipez.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":813,"href":"http:\/\/www.voipez.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810\/revisions\/813"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.voipez.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.voipez.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.voipez.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.voipez.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}