Thursday, May 15, 2025
As the National Portrait Gallery’s second choreographer-in-residence — Dana Tai Soon Burgess was the first — Diana Movius creates dance pieces inspired by the works on view at the gallery, which shares the gorgeously restored Patent Office building with the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Early next month, audiences will get a taste of a Movius work-in-progress linked to the special exhibition “Star Power: Photographs from Hollywood’s Golden Age by George Hurrell.” The solo excerpt will be danced at “Muse: A Journey Through Memory, Madness and Music,” the season-finale program of Movius’s 14-member company, Moveius [with an e to spell “move”] Contemporary Ballet, at Dance Loft on 14 in Petworth. Note: The complete “Star Power” work will be premiered on Sunday, Aug. 10, in the Portrait Gallery’s Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard.
“Muse” will be presented on Saturday, June 7, at 7:30 p.m. and on Sunday, June 8, at 4 p.m. Tickets to either performance are $40; tickets to the Sunday performance and the post-performance Soirée — a cocktail reception, dance party and fundraiser — start at $85. Located at 4616 14th St. NW, the company’s Dance Loft on 14 home was originally the Park movie theater.
Along with the preview of Movius’s new work, “Muse” will feature three world premieres: “Sketching Gibraltar – So Close, Yet So Far” by Miriana Lausic, “Cascade” by Adam Chavis and “Asylum” by Royce Zackery. Also on the program is a duet from “Bach’s Passion” by famed Armenian dancer and choreographer Roudolf Kharatian.
“This season’s ‘Muse’ program is especially exciting because each piece is so distinct, revealing the full spectrum of what contemporary ballet can be,” said Movius, who trained under former New York City Ballet principal Patricia McBride in Charlotte, North Carolina, and minored in dance at Stanford University, where she did graduate work in anthropology. “It’s also an honor to bring works from storied choreographers like Roudolf Kharatian into the repertory. These voices enrich our company and deepen our artistic legacy.”
“Sketching Gibraltar” — infused with flamenco and poetry by Spanish poet Federico García Lorca — “explores the act of crossing,” drawing on images from the paintings of Velázquez and Goya. Born in Punta Arenas, Chile, Lausic trained at the Croatian National Theatre in Split, danced with ballet companies in Santiago and earned degrees from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and York University in Toronto. She currently lives in Washington, D.C.
In Chavis’s “Cascade,” set to music by Philip Glass, “wildfires, wind and blossoming life [are] metaphors for the rapid spread of ideas, emotions and information.” The Moveius company’s ballet master, Chavis, who trained at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem and the School of American Ballet, danced for eight years with Carolina Ballet.
The dancers in Zackery’s “Asylum” “encounter one another in fleeting moments of vulnerability … exposing both hesitation and resilience, as the journey unfolds toward self-acceptance in a world that often feels unwelcoming.” Head coordinator of dance arts at Howard University, where he is an associate professor, Zackery has set the work to Bach’s Concerto in D Minor and “Painted Staircase” by singer Active Child (“Upon the edge, you rest your head/In hope, in love, in light”). He holds a BFA from Southern Methodist University and an M.A. in dance education from NYU Steinhardt/American Ballet Theatre.
Also set to Bach is the lovers’ duet from Kharatian’s one-act ballet of 2002, which was performed by Moveius as part of this year’s Atlas Intersections Festival. A classmate of Mikhail Baryshnikov at the Vaganova Academy in St. Petersburg, Russia, Kharatian studied at Yerevan College of Choreography in Armenia and Moscow’s Institute of Theater Arts.
“The feedback from choreographers has been incredible,” said Movius. “They consistently praise our dancers for their versatility and depth.”
More information about the “Muse” performances and the post-performance Soirée is available at danceloft14.org.