I came of age as a choreographer in Washington D.C., which meant that to me, the Kennedy Center was a teacher, a refuge, a studio, and a stage. My young company performed lots of new work at the Terrace, ranging in subject matter from memories of war and love, to Three Mile Island, to the mayhem young girls can cause in prom dresses.
It was at the Kennedy Center that, late in my artistic life, I filmed the extraordinary Paloma McGregor and Martha Wittman in a series of conjurings for “Wicked Bodies.” But some of my most favorite memories at the KC are from site-specific performances with Dance Exchange. We took our audiences beneath the Opera House where they could see and hear the breath of the dancers, down the corridor of offices where stage-hands performed Swan Lake, and into the bathrooms where the wonderful Andy Torres and the beautiful Bea Wattenberg, both dressed in bathrobes, danced a version of Gracie Allen and George Burns. Boris Willis danced a gorgeous duet with Mikhail Baryshnikov, who was projected onto a screen. An intergenerational cast spilled out of the elevators and danced beautiful patterns on the floor of the lobby while the audience watched in wonder from above. In one scene, a mother and her baby made their way across the hall while performers moved the potted trees around.
As I like to say, the world is in motion, and it certainly was at the Kennedy Center I know and love.
