Our Story
Hi I’m David! I founded Dancing in the District in 2013 by as a dance film venture with the goal of humanizing the dancers in the modern dance community. A strange thing to say, but the reality is, modern dance has a bit of a reputation as strange and hard to digest medium. Modern dance is a highly expressive, experimental, and thought-provoking art form that does not spoon feed its patrons, and I appreciate that. Sometimes you won’t get it, and just as much of the time, there’s nothing to get. -and both are ok! However, because of this, it can be challenging to attract new audiences to it. DiTD brings to the foreground the dedication, hard work and humanization of the art form and its artists by hearing their stories, processes and journeys in their own words. Since its founding, it has expanded to include more mediums of dance, as well as Artist Talks, Dance News, Dance Media and Dance Reviews! Our two main focuses are Artist Talks and Dance Reviews. Our mission is to give Dancers in the DMV area exposure and a platform to talk about their art, and a space where show reviews can live. Dance, as part of the Arts community, is a medium that is currently under attack. It is starved for reviews and its spotlight has been halved. Everyone needs the Arts. We are here to do our part!
Dancing in the District originally began as a Dance Film project under my Video Production venture, “IsItModern?”. The second, and largest scale film of DiTD would capture the essence of what would later become the “Artist Talk” segments, while the first, smaller project, (Silent Amanda) would gain some small recognition in the December 2013 edition of Dance Magazine. While the films of DiTD were fun, I ultimately decided that the film genre wasn’t the way to reach a new audience. The amount of time, money and planning that went into producing a good dance film was not worth the shelf life and reach. On top of this, the goal was to get people to see dance in person, learn about dance and support dancers, but I eventually concluded that the dance film medium proved too niche a genre to invest my time into. It just wasn’t lifting up the dancers like I wanted it to.
At the turn of the 2020’s, Dancing in the District moved into the position to offer more of what I believe dance needs right now. The voices and documentation of dance and its performers.
People sometimes ask me why DiTD became a passion of mine, and I say it’s because of the dance community. It’s a highly progressive and welcoming art form. You can be who you want to be here. Dancers are a group that will stand up to injustice and are unafraid to be opinionated and political. That is something worth every effort.
DiTD is currently publishing the most reviews it has in its history, and thrives with the help of its reviewers and collaborators.
I couldn’t be happier with where we are right now. Thank you for reading, and following our still evolving story!
-David, DiTD