The Holiday Show 2025 by The GMCW at Lincoln Theatre by Audrey Brown

The Holiday Show 2025 by the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, D.C. (Instagram)
December 20, 2025, 8PM
Lincoln Theatre
Written by Audrey Brown for DITD

Arriving to the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington’s Holiday Show 2025, performed at the Lincoln Theatre on U Street, I was greeted by two enormous, buzzing lines wrapped around the building. Was I in the right place? Was I mistaking the line for some highly-anticipated A-list singer-songwriter who forced fans to camp around the block in hopes of a ticket? No—this was the energy that the GMCW, now in its 44^th season, drew to a cold D.C. night; and the selfsame energy was sustained throughout the performance, rife with caroling, dancing, and holiday cheer.

Though not a dance show per se, in the spirit of Dancing in the District, I’ll focus on the five songs that featured downstage performances by 17^th Street Dance, the dancing subset of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington (GMCW), which “performs both independently and alongside our main Chorus” in Broadway and jazz styles. This is not to say, however, that each of the other songs did not generate the performers’ dancerly instincts to sway and emote onstage, or that some didn’t inspire mirrored movements by the audience as well. The concert was rife with holiday classics as well as new-to-me festive music, including songs in a Sephardic Jewish-Spanish hybrid language and Japanese.

As in any good holiday show performed by hundreds of members of the LGBTQ+ community, the concert kicked off with a joyous “Holiday Road of Carols”…and twenty or so scantily clad dancers approximating a Rockettes routine. Wearing black booty shorts and candy-striped vests, the 17^th Street Dancers, founded in 2016 to perform alongside the GMCW, beveled their toes and kicked to the heavens. While the troupe did not have quite the precision of a kickline of Rockettes, they danced with just as much heart, true joy beaming on their faces.

I was most drawn to the danced piece set to the song “Favorite One,” which featured a line of seated dancers dressed alternately in red or green stockings, elf hats, and white gloves. The gloves made for the visual experience of the ensuing hand dance to be all the more appealing. For all the lack of precision in the opening piece, this dance made up for it: with ever-increasing levels of difficulty, from tapping the knees of dancers two seats away to snapping back in time to clap under one’s raised knee, not a beat was missed.

“We Wish You the Merriest” brought out a smaller cadre of the 17^th Street Dancers, each dressed in brightly colored button-downs, pants, or skirts. The ensuing tap number conjured memories of old Hollywood Technicolor Christmas films—the dancing was beautiful in its simplicity, tastefully done and accented by nonchalant tosses of the hips. In their dances, I felt my own childhood evocations of Bing Crosby or Rosemary Clooney as I might have stood by the television enamored by the shimmering big band numbers in White Christmas. The dancers reminded me of dinner party guests in perhaps a reimagining of The Nutcracker: infused with nothing but jollity, I felt the rhythm of the song, their wishing me the merriest holiday, in their movements.

Throughout the show, a gospel-style thread was woven, performed both expertly by the gospel affinity group “Seasons of Love” and the choir as a whole. Dr. Thea Kano, artistic director of GMCW, explained to the audience at the concert’s outset that we would be hearing a lot of gospel music in almost the same breath as lauding the performing arts as a method of advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion. Closing out a week in which D.C. residents had been unsettled by the sudden decision to “rename” the longstanding memorial to President John F. Kennedy to the “Trump and Kennedy Center”—and the even more sudden, immediate move to realize this change on the side of the building—both Kano’s statement about inclusion and the GMCW’s intention to sing a range of songs from diverse and often marginalized communities seemed all the more poignant. 

Indeed, the choir did not shy away from acknowledging the realities of today’s world, illustrating each through beautiful song. Simon Regenold, speaking ahead of the aforementioned “Ocho Kandelikas,” written in Ladino by D.C. native Flory Jagoda, affirmed that he is resigned to continuing to be openly proud of both his gay and Jewish identities, even when both communities are often under attack—in this case, audiences were reminded of the gun-based tragedy that broke out at a Hannukah celebration in Australia, another headline that had kicked off a week of history-defining news. Before breaking into his beautifully executed solo backed by the choir in “Ocho Kandelikas,” Regenold assured audiences that he would continue sporting rainbow apparel and celebrating his Jewish identity for those who could not safely do so, because embracing both of those identities, to him, was about having pride.

I was hushed into reflection, too, by “The Work of the Holidays,” which was adapted from the words of civil rights leader Howard Thurman, a man whose writing and thinking vastly inspired Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others. The message was simple: love thy neighbor; feed the hungry; and “make music in the heart,” and its musical adaptation was equally pared back, becoming a repetitive chant. Coming near the close of the concert, “The Work of the Holidays” served as a takeaway for the feeling of the evening: one of community coming together (around the block of Lincoln Theatre!) and supporting communities that, just through the past week of news alone, had been scrutinized and been forced to mourn.

The 17^th Street Dancers appeared once more to close out the performance, but my takeaway from the concert, filled with both reflective moments and joyous requests from the singers that the audience clap their hands in time to the music, was that the show overall was filled with dance. Even when not outwardly expressed by bodies intended only to dance, the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington Holiday Show 2025 was infused by the same emotions that inspire impassioned dance.

Audrey Brown (she/her) (@audrey.e.brown) is a mover and writer native to the D.C. region. While currently working in communications at a nonprofit in D.C., she gained experience in the nonprofit sphere from CityStep, a dance and community engagement organization based in New York City. Audrey spent much of her early life exploring the Washington performance scene, from small dance shows to the National Opera.