Glade

Dance Collective

703-943-9308

We are dancemakers, story tellers, and thinkers, seeking to raise the profile of modern dance in D.C. Through collaboration and performance, we challenge our bodies and minds to create meaningful art that evokes emotion and makes audiences think. We value a collective process that draws together people from diverse artistic backgrounds. We are Glade Dance Collective.

nachmo DC 2024 Adjudicators

Meet our panel of local dance experts, who will provide feedback on the new works created in NACHMO DC!

 
Blythe has short-cropped dark hair and is wearing a navy blue workman's jumpsuit, hiding somewhat coyly behind a curtain of pink and gold streamers.

Blythe has short-cropped dark hair and is wearing a navy blue workman's jumpsuit, hiding somewhat coyly behind a curtain of pink and gold streamers.

 

AK Blythe

Blythe serves the Washington, DC creative community as a multidisciplinary artist and designer. Classically trained in ballet, Blythe first experienced modern dance and contact improvisation in college. She has worked with many DC-area dance companies and independent artists, including: Heart Stück Bernie, Taffety Punk, Spacetime Dance, Britta Joy Peterson, UpRooted Dance, Extreme Lengths Productions, RebollarDance, Human Landscape Dance, Nancy Havlik’s Dance Performance Group, ClancyWorks Dance Company, and DancEthos. Her dance films have been featured in the Dance Place Dance on Film Festival, 38th Annual Choreographer's Showcase, CAPITOL Dance & Cinema Festival, FROSTBITE International Indie Fest, and Dumbo Film Festival. Blythe’s photography has been featured in The Washington Post, Financial Times, Washingtonian, and East City Art.

Emily is mid-spin on a wooden floor, right arm across her body and left arm trailing behind. She is wearing tap shoes and a purple dress with gold trim. She has long blonde/brown hair and is smiling.

 

Emily Crews

Emily Crews (she/her) graduated from the College of William and Mary in 1991 and moved to the DC area. Since then, she has performed, choreographed, and taught various dance styles including tap, clogging, modern, and jazz, and since 2008 she has also been choreographing for musical theater productions. She had the opportunity to perform with many DMV-area dance companies including Deborah Riley Dance Projects, Carla & Company, Jane Franklin Dance, CityDance Ensemble, and many others. Emily joined Footworks Percussive Dance Ensemble as a principal dancer in 2000 and still enjoys performing with the company. From September 1991 to March 2023, she served as the Financial Director and COO at Dance Place. Emily is the Dance and Events Program Director at Glen Echo Park Partnership for Arts and Culture.

Dance choreographer Gabriel Mata stand in front of a light gray background. With a grin on his face, dark brown eyes, black hair, and an erect posture Mata faces the camera directly. 

Image by Bill Donovan

 

Gabriel Mata

Gabriel Mata (pronounced: gah-bryehl mah-tah) is a Mexican American dance choreographer, educator, and performer. Mata creates motion memoirs, which access histories of the moving body while tapping into memory and uses voice to work through present social consciousness. Mata’s dance works have been performed in California, New York, Minnesota, North Carolina, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Washington DC, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Mata was the inaugural Social Justice Commissioned Dance Artist at Dance Loft on 14th as well as the Arts Lab Fellow at the Atlas Performing Arts Center. Additionally, he has been awarded the Amplify Grant, DC Commission for the Arts and Humanities Fellowship Grant, DCCAH Performance, Events, and Festival Grant, and the Kennedy Center REACH Campus Office Hours Residency. Mata received his Masters in Fine Arts (Dance) from the University of Maryland - College Park.

 
 

Sarah is standing with her hands on her hips and smiling. She is wearing a purple dress and tan boots. She is in a room surrounded by a multitude of objects, including crayons, clothes pins, a clock, a string of glowing lights, a paper grocery bag, books, a cardboard grand piano, and colorful shapes and drawings on the wall behind her. Photo by Oliver Mertz

 

Sarah Beth Oppenheim

I come from: 38 dance studios, 4 particular kitchens, and 2 synagogues from the Wild Wild West, skyscrapered NYC, trampoline sidewalks of Berlin, and begrudgingly beautiful sunsets over the Potomac. I like to use scraps, abandoned tools, and painters tape to cut and paste curious inquisitions into everything from pelvis-motored site-specific choreography to burritos. I believe in deepest plie to bend traditions, antiracist pedagogy to bend academia, and dance as an everything salve. As a Teaching Artist Mom, I mine, swap, and alchemically mix choreographic research, community engagement, and arts & crafts between stage, studio, classroom, and nursery. Work/love finds me as a Teaching Artist at Dance Place, Adjunct Professor at American University and University of Maryland, Mentorship and Education Coordinator at BlackLight Summit, and Artistic Director of Heart Stück Bernie. I'm currently a 2022-2023 Fillmore Prize Winner for dance and social impact. I use my space at The Fillmore School to program think-and-move-tank events: luscious deep dives in partnership with rigorous curiosity, persevering connections, and heart-intensive dancers. In Summer 2023, I'll be a Parent Artist in Residence through GALLIM (NY) and Marble House Project (VT). My most recent project was the 40-person site-specific extravaganza Many Extra Only More at Extra Space Storage in Brookland. Find me @heartstuckbernie

There is a pink Kendra and a green Kendra and they are looking at each other in a dreamlike image.

 

Kendra Portier

Drawing from her visual arts practice, Kendra’s work lives in embodied study, tested and realized through choreographic processes that shape thought, emotion, and texture through movement. She has facilitated and promoted dance across the globe from San Diego to Salzburg, Dushanbe to Athens (Greece, Georgia, and Ohio). Her teaching and choreographic roster is extensive: over thirty academic-commissions, faculty positions at multiple NYC-based dance orgranizations, and multiple festivals, workshops, practices, and more. Portier collaborates and performs in a range of interdisciplinary projects - from a decade long tenure with David Dorfman Dance to more recent projects with Lisa Race/Race Dance, Jasmine Hearn Collaborates, Betsy Miller, Janessa Clark, and All Together Now - a new, intergenerational, trisection choreography by Tendayi Kuumba, Annie-B Parsons, and Donna Uchizono.

Portier holds a BFA with Honors from the Ohio State University and an MFA in dance with specialization in visual design from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. She is an Assistant Professor in the School of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she is awarded the Maya Brin Endowed Professorship in Dance.

Jane smiles widely at the camera wearing a white sweater, a jean jacket, and gold hoop earrings. Blurred in the background is a gray ledge overlooking colorful row houses of DC.

Jane Raleigh

Jane Raleigh (she/her) is the Director of Dance Programming at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.  In her role at the Kennedy Center, she curates and produces the Ballet and Dance subscription series as well as a variety of dance performances on the Center's Millennium Stage and in the Center’s REACH expansion spaces.  Locally, Jane is a co-chair of the Pola Nirenska Award jury and is a Board member for Dance Loft on 14. Nationally, she is an active member of the Presenters Council for Dance/USA. Jane also performs throughout the Washington region with a variety of project-based companies.

Da’Shown Rawl

Da’Shown Rawl studied Ballet and Modern at the Baltimore School of the Arts in Baltimore, Maryland. He graduated from the prestigious Dance Department of George Mason University (GMU). While at GMU, he had the opportunity to perform works by Alejandro Cerrudo, Andrea Miller, David Grenke, Doug Varone, Lar Lubovitch, Mark Morris, Robert Battle, and many more. Da’Shown teaches at The Washington School of Ballet, Baltimore School of Arts, Synergy Dance, and Unity Dance and Movement. He received his MFA from Wilson College in the spring of 2023. He has been teaching and choreographing in the DMV and New York City area since the age of 16. In 2015, he founded the RawArts Dance Company and Raw Practice in 2018. He has created works at the Baltimore School of the Arts, George Mason University, Bucknell University, Howard University, and various DMV area companies and festivals in New York City. His recent choreographic endeavors have included a dance for film Just A Thought, Works Conflict Within A Small Room, and Colors Without Colors: A Series of Emotions Collide, his third full-length work. Mr. Rawl’s passion for choreography was the catalyst for the establishment of the RawArts Dance Company.

 

Photo by Paul B. Goode: Robson performing in Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company's Analogy/Lance: Pretty aka The Escape Artist. 

Robson is wearing a white shirt and cream colored pants performing a skipping action in front of a metal desk with an apple laptop.

Christina Robson

Christina Robson is an educator, performer and dance maker from Boston, Massachusetts. She has performed with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, David Dorfman Dance, Monica Bill Barnes & Company, Sean Curran Company and the Bessie Award-winning immersive theater company, Third Rail Productions. She is currently collaborating on works with Heidi Henderson, Kendra Portier, and Lisa Race. Robson's most recent choreographic work, The Space Between Parts, premiered Fall 2023 on Mason Dance Company. She holds an MFA from University of Maryland, and is an assistant professor at George Mason University.