Chamber Dance Project’s June Season; Bruning to Step Down
By • June 18, 2026 0 610
Whether or not you’ll be greeting astronomical summer in the Northern Hemisphere at 4:24 a.m. this Sunday, a convivial opportunity to celebrate the North Pole’s maximum Sun-ward tilt will arrive the following Saturday, June 27: Chamber Dance Project’s annual Summer Solstice Party. “In the spirit of light,” reads the webpage, “please wear white!”
The party follows the closing-night performance of the company’s June season, held at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, 641 D St. NW. This year event will also celebrate founder Diane Coburn Bruning, who is stepping down as Chamber Dance Project’s artistic director. Former Atlanta Ballet soloist Patric Palkens, principal rehearsal director, will serve as interim artistic director.
“What I’m most happy about is how D.C. has embraced us,” said Bruning, speaking at The Georgetowner’s April 2018 Cultural Leadership Breakfast at the George Town Club. At that point, Chamber Dance Project, founded in New York in 2000, had been based in the nation’s capital for four years.
Eight years later, Bruning’s vision of presenting her own choreography and that of others in intimate spaces with live music has flowered. The June program — to be performed on four evenings, Wednesday, June 24, through Saturday, June 27, at 7:30 p.m. and on Saturday afternoon at 1:30 p.m. — features five dance pieces and two solely musical works.
Two of the dance pieces, “Berceuse” and “Ramblin’ Suite,” are by Bruning, who has choreographed not only for ballet companies but for theater and opera companies — including Woolly Mammoth, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Studio Theatre Company and Washington National Opera — for four decades. Another, “Chant,” was choreographed by Bruning and Johannesburg-born Washington Ballet dancer Andile Ndlovu.
Dating to 1994, “Berceuse” (French for “lullaby”) is a pas de deux Bruning created for two Juilliard School dancers, set to music from Benjamin Godard’s 1888 opera “Jocelyn.” In “Ramblin’ Suite,” an Atlanta Ballet commission she later restaged for Milwaukee Ballet, a dozen dancers perform to music by the Red Clay Ramblers, a string band that appeared on Broadway in 1993 in David Shiner and Bill Irwin’s “Fool Moon.”
“Chant,” which premiered in 2018, was developed in collaboration with Michael McCarthy, Washington National Cathedral’s music director at the time. A quintet from Washington Men’s Camerata will sing, conducted by Artistic Director Scott Tucker.
Earlier this month, in a WETA interview with Bruning, Tucker explained: “The score consists largely of Gregorian chant, early polyphony and an interesting, primal-sounding chant with percussive effects.” Bruning called that section, danced by a male trio in skirts, “a nod to Andile’s South African roots.” Chamber Dance Project’s string quartet will also bow in, playing a work by English Renaissance composer William Byrd.
The other two dance pieces, “Book of Stones” and “Murmur,” a world premiere, were choreographed by Christian Denice and William Moore, respectively. The Red Clay Ramblers’ Jack Herrick and Bland Simpson wrote an original score for “Book of Stones,” which will feature Skyler Herrick’s Kulning (ancient Scandinavian) vocals. “Murmur” is set to three string quartet works from the San Francisco-based Kronos Quartet’s commissioning program “Fifty for the Future.”
Leading Chamber Dance Project’s quartet as principal musician is violinist Sally McLain. In addition to playing for the dancing, the quartet will perform “Don’t Tread on Me or on My String Quartet,” from the company’s early years in New York, and join the Ramblers on “Way Down Yonder.”
Chamber Dance Project dancers are in most cases members of other companies, including the Washington Ballet, Atlanta Ballet, the National Ballet of Canada, Ballet Memphis, BalletMet and Moveius Contemporary Ballet. One of Bruning’s goals was to provide “off-season” work for dancers with larger companies. As she recently told Maryland Theatre Guide: “I feel like we are the honeymoon company.”
On June 24, 25 and 26, there will be a pre-performance chat at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday’s chat will focus on “Murmur,” Thursday’s on “Chant” and Friday’s on the relationship between new works and live music. An onstage workshop will follow the Saturday matinée. Tickets are available at chamberdance.org.
