thINKingDANCE

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  • News

Fifteen Years of Dance Writing at thINKingDANCE

Emilee Lord
  • Dive into the archive and move through the years with us!
  • Reviews

The Krakatuk is the Hardest Nut in the World!

E. Wallis Cain Carbonell

“It’s the last place that magic exists.”

A performance of Anh Vo: Possessed by… at The Rail Park. The work takes the form of a devotional dance to the spirits, continuing a performance Vo previously staged on June 14, 2025, in front of the Apple Store in Downtown Brooklyn. There, the artist worshipped the temple of capitalism, drawing out the religiosity embedded in the store's architecture. In this iteration, Vo applies a similar logic: animating the site through repetitive, abstract movement to explore how architecture can embody systems of belief.
Photo: Albert Yee, Courtesy of Asian Arts Initiative
  • thINKpieces

The Assurance of the Ecstatic: On Anh Vo’s Three Performances

Mang Su

Being possessed is not a state but a devotion.

Joan Myers Brown and eight fellow choreographers, dancers, and company leaders seated on a panel discussion on a blue-lit stage at the Perelman Theater, following the performance.
Photo: Lauren Berlin
  • Reviews

Philadanco: Then and Now

Lauren Berlin

Aunt Joan, Philadanco, and a Philadelphia Legacy: 65 Years and Counting

The Latest from thINKingDANCE

Matthew Neenan, a white man with light short-cut hair and bright blue eyes, stares forward. He wears a grey-ish blue casual button-down shirt.
Photo: Stephen K. Mack
  • Interviews

Quiet Loves and Potent Griefs: An Interview with Matthew Neenan

Caedra Scott-Flaherty
  • The beginning of a new chapter, a chance to connect with new people and find new voices.
A dancer (Gabriel Bruno Eng Gonzalez), wearing white pants and a sleeveless white top, is balanced on the ball of his right foot. His long arms are extended outwords, and both of his legs are bent. Another dancer (Aaron Loux), also wearing white, lunges on his right leg, and holds Gonzalez´s hand to help him suspend his balancing position. Behind the two of them, in front of a screen the color of deep blue, we can see other dancers standing in the distance, looking at them.
Photo: Maria Baranova, courtesy of New York Live Arts
  • Reviews

Artifacts of Thought from the Closeted Mind

Brendan McCall
  • Forty years on, Tere O’Connor’s dance visions remain personal, unpredictable, and provocative
  • Reviews

Shadow Cities: Weaving Histories Through Motion, Music, and Light

Emily “Lady Em” Culbreath
  • Ephrat Asherie Dance, Arturo O’Farrill, and Kathy Kaufmann take audiences on an exhilarating journey of blurring artistic boundaries.
A group of five individuals, dressed in business attire, all gather together for a selfie in the velvet-carpeted lobby of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Jane, at the front left, is a white, brunette woman with a medium pixie cut. Clad in a magenta blazer and black turtleneck, Jane dons a bright, bespectacled smile. Grinning behind Jane, Mallory, a white woman with dirty blonde hair, wears a black and white gingham dress and holds a silver clasp. Malik, a tawny-skinned Black man in a black button-down and trousers, stands beaming at Mallory’s left. Allison and Chloe, dressed in a white button-down and a floral dress respectively, lean into the photo, offering their smiles as well.
Photo courtesy of Ashayla Byrd
  • Interviews, thINKpieces

The Leaders Behind the Headlines: Conversations with the Kennedy Center’s [Terminated] Dance Programming Team

Ashayla Byrd
  • What happens when political agendas take precedence over a nation’s desire to feel seen and supported in artistic spaces?

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From the Archives

A collection of featured work from our archives across the years

Fanned out in a circle on a white surface are 12 booklets in a range of colors. Here and there are sections of text covered or obscured by other booklets. In the center of this circle is the title piece in a wash of brown darker at the bottom and lightening toward the top. The vague image of pine tree tops on its surface. It reads, Dance across the top and History(s) across the bottom with the subtitle Imagination as a Form of Study in the center. Underneath in smaller letters it reads edited by Thomas F. DeFrantz and Annie-B Parson.
Photo: Jack Lazar
  • Book Reviews

To Us/Because of Us

Emilee Lord
  • Dance is a Weed
Photo: Linda Johnson
  • Reviews

An Inquiry of Oz

Kat J. Sullivan
  • Quintessence Theatre’s imagining ends witQuintessence Theatre’s imagining ends without closure.hout closure.
Portrait of Alvin Ailey with Judith Jamison, Linda Kent, and Dudley Williams in dance studio, 1973. Photography by Jack Mitchell, © Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation, Inc. and Smithsonian Institution, All rights reserved.
© A. Ailey Dance Foundation and Smithsonian
  • Reviews

Parsing the Significance of a New Archive

Emma Cohen
  • A collection of Alvin Ailey photographs is made available to the public for the first time.
Photo: Mark Garvin
  • Reviews

Mayhem and Laughter at People’s Light

Kristen Shahverdian
  • A Christmas Panto created a community for an afternoon and a chance to celebrate each other.