Dance

Race & Identity

Step sisters: The dance team that stood up for Black Lives Matter

Darnesha Weary describes step dancing as “creating music and rhythms and beats with every part of your body.” She directs the Northside Step Dance Team in Shoreline, and last year, her team used their dance routine to protest the police shootings of unarmed black people.

Arts & Life

Transforming Black pain into beauty: The story of an Alvin Ailey protégé in Seattle

When Donald Byrd arrived at Seattle’s Spectrum Dance Theater in 2002, he was an emigrant from New York’s high-octane contemporary art world, a scene that demanded all of his energy but provided little financial or emotional security.

Arts & Life

How one transgender dancer challenges the Bollywood binary

Everyone longs to be their truest self. But what if being your true self means you have to give up the thing you love most?

PNB launches program to foster female choreographers

Many ballet dancers are women, but far fewer women actually create the dances we see onstage. Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Ballet school wants to help...

In South Park, these kids learn the dances of Mexico

Drive south on Highway 99 and you’ll go straight through the middle of Seattle’s South Park neighborhood.

Hula is way more than grass skirts, as these dancers will show you

When Kamaile Hamada found out last June that his group had been accepted into the world’s most prestigious hula competition, the first person he wanted...

In hula, the clothes tell a story

There’s a rule to watching hula: Pay attention to the dancer’s hands to understand the story. But Kumu Hula `Iwalani Christian said the hands alone won...

Seattle tap studio blends dance with social justice

The Northwest Tap Connection dance studio is tucked away in Seattle’s Rainier Beach neighborhood. But it’s more than just a dance studio; it’s also a...

Choreographer Bill T. Jones on dance, life and 'a space that is a memory space'

"Art is going to save us, right?" Choreographer Bill T. Jones opens his talk. He says it’s not a laugh line. His answer is sobering. In the iconoclastic...