Contemporary Dance / Fort Worth

04/17/2026

HEY OH! As of this moment there are actually still matching funds available in the North Texas Gives to the Arts campaign that started yesterday! Their new policy to help spread the funds across more organizations is something to take advantage of --

Thanks to the generosity of The Giana Foundation Fund, along with sponsors the Robert B. and Virginia Payne Fund for Arts & Culture, and Communities Foundation of Texas, the first $100,000 in online donations will be matched dollar‑for‑dollar. Matching applies to the first $100 per donor per organization, helping ensure these funds benefit as many Arts & Humanities organizations as possible.

You can get to the donation platform here, and it is easy to use. There is a countdown total on the page showing you how many matching funds are left:

Institutions that explore and preserve human culture, history, and thought through research, education, and public programs.

09/19/2025

The arts address all aspects of life and culture, and can provide new ways of seeing and thinking about even the most grave subject matter.

It is not that any one medium or style of visual or performing art is more important than another. It is not that any one exhibition or performance is more important than another. It is not that there needs to be any kind of competition or comparison or ranking or critique.

EACH work, EACH performance, and EACH experience of any work is its own little universe packed with a density of information for the audience in terms of how it might communicate to the physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual realms of existence.... and what it might bring to your awareness on any particular day.

Is it a good idea to dance about despair and destruction?
Is it a good idea NOT to dance about despair and destruction?
Dance as an expressive art form goes far beyond the celebrations of a wedding or an end zone dance. It is a deeply human connection with the mysteries of existence.

©Kimbell Art Museum. Photo by Robert LaPrelle

This photo from “Movement Imprints” with Contemporary Dance/Fort Worth was a Second Saturday free performance on June 14, 2025, in conjunction with the special exhibition Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910–1945: Masterworks from the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin. CD/FW’s lecture-performance was inspired by works in the exhibition and explored how German expressionism impacted theatrical dance in the 20th century and continues to inform contemporary choreography.

09/19/2025

L to R, Claudia P. Orcasitas, Breanna Kimbley, and Courtney Mulcahy perform a movement study inspired by Oskar Schlemmer's 1925 painting "N**e, Woman, and Approaching Figure"

©Kimbell Art Museum. Photos by Robert LaPrelle

“Movement Imprints” with Contemporary Dance/Fort Worth was a Second Saturday free performance on June 14, 2025, in conjunction with the special exhibition Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910–1945: Masterworks from the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin. CD/FW’s lecture-performance was inspired by works in the exhibition and explored how German expressionism impacted theatrical dance in the 20th century and continues to inform contemporary choreography.

CD/FW has collaborated with North Texas museums and institutions for decades to create special events highlighting ideas from the arts and sciences in educational and community outreach programming.

Your tax-deductible donation for North Texas Giving Day can help bring future projects to life: https://www.northtexasgivingday.org/organization/contemporary-dancefort-worth

09/19/2025

Many thanks to all who have already made a donation today on North Texas Giving Day, and to to those who donated during the spring campaign, or spontaneously during the summer, etc.!

Every bit counts in bringing the dance to life, and is truly and greatly appreciated! If you're still thinking about making a donation yet today, you can find the CD/FW listing here: https://www.northtexasgivingday.org/organization/contemporary-dancefort-worth

09/18/2025

Volunteers from the audience are some of the most honest and precious performers who step on the stage to become our dancing partners :)

©Kimbell Art Museum. Photo by Robert LaPrelle
Photo from June lecture-performance in the Piano Pavilion Auditorium of the Kimbell Art Museum

“Movement Imprints” with Contemporary Dance/Fort Worth was a Second Saturday free performance on June 14, 2025, in conjunction with the special exhibition Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910–1945: Masterworks from the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin. CD/FW’s lecture-performance was inspired by works in the exhibition and explored how German expressionism impacted theatrical dance in the 20th century and continues to inform contemporary choreography.

CD/FW has collaborated with North Texas museums and institutions for decades to create special events highlighting ideas from the arts and sciences in educational and community outreach programming.

You can help bring future projects to life by making a tax-deductible donation today as part of North Texas Giving Day:https://www.northtexasgivingday.org/organization/contemporary-dancefort-worth

09/18/2025

The dance of life is something to celebrate with others every day. Experimenting and experiencing movement conversations with each other, and the world around us. We bring the arts to life through our imagination, interactions, and explorations.

And it isn't just the arts we are bringing to life. We are bringing LIFE to life!

A special thanks to all the audience volunteers who have ever stepped up to the stage or out into any "performing space" with us. And a huge thanks to all of the audience members who have ever honored us with their time and attention by witnessing what unfolds.

This photo is from June at the Kimbell Art Museum.

©Kimbell Art Museum. Photo by Robert LaPrelle

There are many ways to be a dancing partner. One way is through a tax-deductible donation today on North Texas Giving Day: https://www.northtexasgivingday.org/organization/contemporary-dancefort-worth

“Movement Imprints” with Contemporary Dance/Fort Worth was a Second Saturday free performance on June 14, 2025, in conjunction with the special exhibition Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910–1945: Masterworks from the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin. CD/FW’s lecture-performance was inspired by works in the exhibition and explored how German expressionism impacted theatrical dance in the 20th century and continues to inform contemporary choreography.

CD/FW has collaborated with North Texas museums and institutions for decades to create special events highlighting ideas from the arts and sciences in educational and community outreach programming.

09/18/2025

An improvisation in honor of ideas from Oskar Schlemmer's "The Triadic Ballet," the Bauhaus art movement, and experimentations in the abstraction of the human body in theatrical dance, which became part of a lineage of choreographers such as Mary Wigman, Hanya Holm, and Alwin Nikolais.

From a lecture-performance at the Kimbell Art Museum in June.

©Kimbell Art Museum. Photo by Robert LaPrelle
Dancers L to R: Tina Mullone, Courtney Mulcahy, Breanna Kimbley, background Anna Chavez.
Costume pieces by Colleen PowerGriffin, combining costume elements from two sections of the work "Inside Out" which was a site-specific piece performed at the The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

CD/FW has collaborated with North Texas museums and institutions for decades to create special events highlighting ideas from the arts and sciences in educational and community outreach programming.

“Movement Imprints” with Contemporary Dance/Fort Worth was a Second Saturday free performance on June 14, 2025, in conjunction with the special exhibition Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910–1945: Masterworks from the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin. CD/FW’s lecture-performance was inspired by works in the exhibition and explored how German expressionism impacted theatrical dance in the 20th century and continues to inform contemporary choreography.

Please consider being one of our dancing partners by making a tax-deductible donation through the 2025 North Texas Giving Day platform to help bring future projects to life: https://www.northtexasgivingday.org/organization/contemporary-dancefort-worth

09/17/2025

Your contributions to non-profits throughout North Texas can make a huge difference in the quality of life for everyone! Whether you're able to donate to CD/FW or not, please consider supporting any number of charities in any way that is viable for you. It takes a village to support a village! If you're able to donate to CD/FW, here's the page: https://www.northtexasgivingday.org/organization/contemporary-dancefort-worth

09/17/2025

Anna Chavez performing a movement study inspired by Isadora Duncan's solo work in the Piano Pavilion Auditorium at the Kimbell Art Museum in June. Costume pieces by Crickett Pettigrew.

©Kimbell Art Museum. Photo by Robert LaPrelle
John Hopkins in the background, providing musical accompaniment.

“Movement Imprints” with Contemporary Dance/Fort Worth was a Second Saturday free performance on June 14, 2025, in conjunction with the special exhibition Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910–1945: Masterworks from the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin.

CD/FW’s lecture-performance was inspired by works in the exhibition and explored how German expressionism impacted theatrical dance in the 20th century and continues to inform contemporary choreography.

Isadora Duncan had a profound influence on the development of modern dance, expressionist dance, and danz theatre traditions in Germany.

In 1900, a young Rudolf von Laban traveled to the Paris International Exhibition where he first saw Isadora Duncan perform. She was an American who went to Europe to find better audiences who might appreciate her work. A proponent of freedom of expression, Isadora’s ideas were seen as radical by many – she tossed away corsets, danced barefoot, developed her own movement vocabulary. Duncan set a new standard for a solo artist to be both the choreographer and the performer, and to have their own unique voice. She took inspiration from Greek vases she saw in museums, and had the audacity to choreograph solos and group works to widely recognized pieces of music by composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Schubert, Schumann, Strauss, and even Wagner.

By 1904 the city of Berlin was Isadora’s hometown, where she ran a German state-sponsored school for dance. Notably, her first real public success was in Germany, even though she was an American.

CD/FW has collaborated with North Texas museums and institutions for decades to create special events highlighting ideas from the arts and sciences in educational and community outreach programming.

Please consider being one of our dancing partners by making a tax-deductible donation through the 2025 North Texas Giving Day platform, which is already open for early donations! https://www.northtexasgivingday.org/organization/contemporary-dancefort-worth

08/29/2025

©Kimbell Art Museum. Photo by Robert LaPrelle

Claudia P. Orcasitas performing a movement study inspired by Mary Wigman’s “Witch Dance” at the Kimbell Art Museum, Piano Pavilion Auditorium. Composer/musician John Hopkins is in the background.

Excerpts from Mary Wigman writing about the use of Masks:
“Why should a dancer use a mask?
Always when his creative urge causes a split process in him, when his imagination reveals the image of an apparently alien figure which, as part of his totality, compels the dancer to a certain kind of metamorphosis.
The mask which emerged from the vision of a dance constantly changes during the dance.
It breathes and lives like a living face within its frozen form.
The mask can hide and reveal, even erase the dancer’s s*x or underline it. The mask tries to blur the demarcation between the realistic and irrational levels. It can wipe out the shape of a human face and turn it into ghostlike features through schematic interpretations, or it can conjure up demonic features of man’s darkest fantasy in its exaggeration of any meaningful form. The mask knows transfiguration and horror, the inexhaustible theme of its devices embraces everything human and everything demonic.”

“Movement Imprints” with Contemporary Dance/Fort Worth was a Second Saturday free performance on June 14, 2025, in conjunction with the special exhibition Modern Art and Politics in Germany 1910–1945: Masterworks from the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin. CD/FW’s lecture-performance was inspired by works in the exhibition and explored how German expressionism impacted theatrical dance in the 20th century and continues to inform contemporary choreography.

CD/FW has collaborated with North Texas museums and institutions for decades to create special events highlighting ideas from the arts and sciences in educational and community outreach programming.

Please consider being one of our dancing partners by making a tax-deductible donation through the 2025 North Texas Giving Day platform, which is already open for early donations!

https://www.northtexasgivingday.org/organization/contemporary-dancefort-worth