The DANA Movement Ensemble

10/19/2026

10/14/2026

Announcing our 2026 choreographers for Texture Choreography Project!✨

This exciting evening will feature original works by 17 incredible choreographers:

Nick M. Daniels
Olivia Emert
Nadine Fox
Jita the Believer
Nandini Mandal
Ezekiel Martinez
Brittany Nettles
Haley Nolan
Alan Obuzor
Emilee Pratt
Gabby Schafer
Genevieve Shultz
Mia Semieraro
Jillian Sinko
Damarion Thomas
Enrique Villacreses
Izzy Wolf

Join us for a celebration of creativity, collaboration, and new choreography on November 13 & 14 at 7:30 pm at the Greer Cabaret Theater!

10/09/2026

Tonight!!!!

✨ CHOREOGRAPHER SPOTLIGHT: NICK M. DANIELS ✨
We’re excited to welcome Nick M. Daniels to the 6th Annual Black Choreographers Festival! A Pittsburgh-based choreographer, multimedia artist, and founding Artistic Director of The D.A.N.A. Movement Ensemble, Nick has spent decades creating work that challenges convention and explores race, sexuality, identity, and the human experience.

Blending African, modern, contemporary, and Butoh influences with sound, video, and theater, Nick creates immersive work designed to make audiences feel, think, and engage.

Baltimore, get ready—we can’t wait for you to experience Nick’s work on the BCF stage! 🔥
📅 October 9–11, 2026
📍 Creative Alliance | Baltimore, MD
Come witness Black choreographic voices that challenge, question, celebrate, and move us.

09/17/2026

✨ CHOREOGRAPHER SPOTLIGHT: NICK M. DANIELS ✨
We’re excited to welcome Nick M. Daniels to the 6th Annual Black Choreographers Festival! A Pittsburgh-based choreographer, multimedia artist, and founding Artistic Director of The D.A.N.A. Movement Ensemble, Nick has spent decades creating work that challenges convention and explores race, sexuality, identity, and the human experience.

Blending African, modern, contemporary, and Butoh influences with sound, video, and theater, Nick creates immersive work designed to make audiences feel, think, and engage.

Baltimore, get ready—we can’t wait for you to experience Nick’s work on the BCF stage! 🔥
📅 October 9–11, 2026
📍 Creative Alliance | Baltimore, MD
Come witness Black choreographic voices that challenge, question, celebrate, and move us.

09/02/2026

The 6th Annual Baltimore Black Choreographers Festival is coming October 9–11. Get ready for a full weekend celebrating Black dance, creativity, and community in Baltimore!

Here’s what you can look forward to:

• Powerful performances
• Inspiring workshop classes
• Incredible artists
• Opportunities to connect with dancers and creatives from across the community

Join in the celebration of Black artistry! Tickets go on sale early September.

08/30/2026

08/23/2026

08/22/2026

When the police burst into 1114 F Street NW in Washington, DC on April 12, 1888, the man who met them at the door was wearing a torn cream satin gown. He looked at the lieutenant and said: "You is no gentleman."

His name was William Dorsey Swann. Born into slavery in Hancock, Maryland, around 1860, he moved to the capital after Emancipation and worked as a butler. By the 1880s he was hosting regular drag balls at his rented house - private dances where Black butlers, coachmen, and cooks, most of them former slaves, arrived in silk gowns and danced together.

That night he was the first man arrested. Seventeen others got out through the windows.

Eight years later, in 1896, he was convicted again and sentenced to ten months for "keeping a disorderly house." His answer was to file a pardon petition to President Grover Cleveland, signed by thirty supporters. Cleveland denied it on July 29.

It makes Swann the first known American to use the legal system to defend gay people's right to gather - and his story sat lost for nearly a century, until journalist Channing Gerard Joseph rebuilt it from court records, newspaper archives, and the National Archives pardon file.