Diane Coburn Bruning’s “Ramblin’ Suite.” Photo by Rachel Malehorn.
Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company has been producing original theatrical work in DC for over 40 years. However, in recent years, fueled in part by the exodus of performers from the Kennedy Center, their spacious but intimate home on D Street is rapidly becoming a go-to venue for DC’s legacy dance companies. Chamber Dance Project (CDP) packed the house, both in the audience and on the stage, with 14 dancers and a host of musicians including The Red Clay Ramblers, Washington Men’s Camerata, and The Chamber Dance Project’s own String Quartet.
…the evening was a banquet of technique and first class choreography.
This performance was also a celebration of the legacy of retiring Founding Artistic Director, Diane Coburn Bruning. When I spoke to Bruning earlier this month, she said, “I didn’t consciously do it, but this covers the spectrum of my career and what I believe in with Chamber Dance and in general.” With a world premiere from William Moore and work from Andile Ndlovu and Christian Denice, as well as a sampling of Bruning’s own work spanning three decades, the evening was a banquet of technique and first class choreography.
The evening opened with Moore’s “Murmur,” a three movement expansion of a work originally staged by CDP last June. If you saw the first iteration of “Murmur,” it felt like it had picked up where it left off as Gilles Delellio, Cecilly Khuner, Sophie Miklosovic, and Marius Morawski (in green tights and seafoam unitards) held each other with arms in the air, swaying as if washed in a gentle breeze. The same image closed the third and original movement. While the first movement seemed to prepare the third, the second movement was a solo for Lope Lim (danced on Thursday and Saturday afternoon by Armando Brydson). Lim, in dark red under low lights, was angular and intense in a sharp contrast to the long lines and smooth partnering of the first and third sections. Set to music from Phillip Glass and music from Mario Galeano Toro and Garth Knox, originally commissioned for the Kronos String Quartet, the first and third sections of “Murmur” were the most motivated by classical vocabulary of any work on the program. However, it felt like Moore found his most original choreographic voice in the jagged contortions of the solo.
Bruning’s “Berceuse” was originally choreographed in 1994 for students at Julliard. It is, quite simply, a masterpiece. A single cone of light rose, threw Lim and Jessy Fitzpatrick into shadow. As Fitzpatrick hung motionless from Lim’s body, one leg in arabesque, the other wrapped around Lim’s leg. For the next five minutes, they did not make eye contact. “Berceuse” was also the most emotionally intense work of the evening. Like Orpheus and Eurydice, the dancers ached to make that connection but never could. Lim rocked Fitzpatrick in his arms as she held up her hands, blocking his gaze, before she reached over his back to be carried by one arm in a spectacular lift that appeared simple but required incredible strength from both partners. While Lim faced the black backdrop and carried Fitzpatrick into the fading darkness as she looked towards the audience, everyone held their breath. There is no surprise “Berceuse” became one of Bruning’s signature works.
“Chant,” a collaboration between Bruning and Ndlovu, closed the first act. Sitting in the dark after the emotional live wire of “Berceuse,” we heard the Camerata first. They began backstage, before the ethereal harmonies of Gregorian Chant wove their way through the building and the singers entered through the main house doors. Still singing, they filed through the audience to take their place in the small gap between the front row and the stage. A single, red light, high in the upstage right corner, hit the backdrop and landed on four dancers keeling in the opposite corner clad in short gray robes with long hoods. The hoods and wide sleeves were lined in crimson. Choreographed by Bruning, the first of the three movements, with their ritualistic sensibility, was a masterclass in choreographic musicality. The kaleidoscopic treatment of movement, just out of unison, perfectly paralleled the vocal polyphony, with individual dancers leading the visual sustain of the group as individual vocal lines moved to the front of the score.
The second movement, choreographed by Ndlovu, brought the men on stage with the drum. In long skirts, they piled into tall tableaux that slowly collapsed with a geological ebb and flow. The second movement also featured some of the best, all-male pas de deux of the evening as tossed lifts, with long legs, flared the skirts, and promenades were driven from the waistbands of the skirts like tender, suspended judo.
Act Two opened with Denice’s “Book of Stones” set to original music commissioned by Chamber Dance Project from the Red Clay Ramblers. In “Book of Stones,” vocalist Skyler Herrick stole the show. The back curtain parted a few feet revealing a column of white light. The dancers stood in silhouette in three couples, the women lifted and upside down over the men’s heads. Herrick walked slowly out of silhouette, her face lit like a childlike eldritch in white, barefoot, and wandering wild and wide-eyed from the Celtic twilight into the misty dawn of a primeval Americana and calling the dancers into being with a high-pitched and upward-lilting “OoooooEeeh.”
The evening closed with Bruning’s 2001 “Ramblin’ Suite,” also with music from The Red Clay Ramblers, now joined by Herrick. In the upstairs gallery of the Woolly Mammoth lobby, there was a casual exhibit of posters and major press coverage of Chamber Dance Project’s last 26 years. In a 2002 New York Times article, Bruning was quoted as saying, ”Ballet people consider me more modern and modern people consider me more ballet… ‘I say who are you arguing with? I’m not arguing with Martha Graham. I’m arguing with Petipa. I’m arguing with Balanchine.” However there were more than a few moments in “Ramblin’ Suite” that felt like a conversation with Agnes de Mille. Although “Ramblin’ Suite” is certainly more abstracted than “Rodeo” and the choreographic parallels mostly are superficial, there was a similarity between what felt like archetypal characters and the way they existed in movement within the hoedown vibe. Lim was again featured in a stunningly athletic solo filled with massive double tours and one arm pushups. It would have been impressive enough at the beginning of the evening, but coming at the end of a nearly two hour performance, it made a serious statement.
Since their inception, part of Chamber Dance Project’s mission has been the collaboration with live musicians. “Live music only became expensive when recordings became so cheap,” Bruning told me. Not only was every work on the program performed with live music, there were several performances by the musicians without the dancers. The Chamber Dance Place String Quartet, featuring Sally McLaine, Karen Kelleher, Jerome Gordon, and Steven Honigberg, played Russell Peck’s “Don’t Tread on Me or My String Quartet.” It was a delightful piece, blending a satirical, proper classical theme, a more contemporary idea, and a bluegrass-flavored fiddle tune foreshadowed what was to come from the Red Clay Ramblers later in the evening. In addition to jamming on the traditional tune, “The Cat Came Back,” The Ramblers joined forces with the Quartet for “Yonder” from the musical,“Kudzu,” for a more comedic turn.
As Bruning steps back, former Chamber Dance Project dancer and current rehearsal director, Patric Palkins, will be taking the reins as Interim Artistic Director for the 2026-27 season. Palkins was a consummate performer, and it will be exciting to see Palkins continue to carry Chamber Dance Project’s legacy forward.
Running Time: Approximately one hour and 45 minutes with one 20-minute intermission.
“Iconic Works” ran June 25-28, 2026 presented by Chamber Dance Project at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, 641 D Street NW, Washington, DC 20004. Fore information about upcoming events by Chamber Dance Project, please go online. For tickets and more information about Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company go online.
