Women First: Texas Ballet Theater Highlights Six Outstanding Female Choreographers

Texas Ballet Theater’s artistic director Tim O’Keefe has long wanted to present women choreographers. The time has come: the February/March 2025 performance series, “International Woman” at the Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth (Feb. 21-23) and at the Wyly Theater in Dallas (Feb. 28-March 2), spotlights six women choreographers.

O’Keefe’s search for female artists began in earnest upon his appointment as TBT’s artistic director in 2023.  He intended to create a retrospective event, and to his mind, Martha Graham’s work would be essential. “I said, let’s go with one of the first and most prominent modern women choreographers,” he recounts.

Through queries with the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance, O’Keefe reconnected with Joyce Herring, a close friend from his New York City dance days, and importantly, the current Director of Martha Graham Resources and Archives. “She was instrumental in helping me select choreography, and also, explaining how Lamentation Variations connected to the centennial anniversary of the Graham Company,” he notes.

O’Keefe continues, “The Graham section of the evening will be in the middle (of the performances).  It will start with film footage from Graham’s iconic solo, Lamentation. Then three choreographers will present three separate pieces inspired by the solo.” This combination of archival film footage along with the three distinct dances constitutes Lamentation Variations. In recognition of the Graham Company’s centennial, versions of this dance will be performed by companies worldwide in 2025-2026, and each company will impart its own unique flavor to its presentation.

While Graham’s original solo dates from 1930, Lamentations Variations first performance was in 2007 as “a commemoration for 9/11” according to O’Keefe. He describes the artistic stipulations to which the choreographers must adhere: “The dances will be up to four minutes long and they will be presented sequentially, they (the choreographers) must use music in the public domain, the work is set within ten hours of rehearsal, the lighting is minimal, and the costumes also must be minimal and from a color palette of predominantly mauves and greys.”

While there are creative stipulations, each company setting Variations chooses the choreographers for the four-minute sections. For TBT’s performances, O’Keefe selected three Dallas – Fort Worth dance luminaries: Joy Bollinger, artistic director of Bruce Wood Dance, Nycole Ray, artistic director of Dallas Black Dance Theatre: Encore!, and Alexandra Light, a TBT principal dancer with significant choreographic experience. “I was thinking about who we would use for Lamentation Variations and, of course, I wanted women choreographers, but I was also asking myself, who would understand what this work is? And I am convinced that all these women will understand and be inspired by this work (the original dance as well as the Variations process) and create something beautiful,” says O’Keefe.

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Joy Bollinger; Photo by Brian Guilliaux.

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Nycole Ray; Photo by Steven Ray.

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Alexandra F. Light; Photo by Paul DuBois.

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Alexander F. Light rehearsing Silken Kelly and Austin Powers. Photo by Samantha Zauscher.

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During discussions about Lamentation Variations, Joyce Herring suggested that TBT also mount Martha Graham’s last completed dance, Maple Leaf Rag. “Joyce said that Maple Leaf Rag would be a good complement to Lamentations Variations, and it is. It’s a fabulous, joyful piece—a complete change of pace” says O’Keefe.  Featuring a musical score of Scott Joplin’s ragtime music and opening with a voice recording of the late Graham plaintively asking, “Oh Louie, play me the Maple Leaf Rag,” the dance gently pokes fun at the seriousness of creative endeavors.  As O’Keefe claims, “It is a spoof of her (Graham’s) own choreographic process.” While of different tones, both dances are tributes to Graham’s genius, and they are programmed one after another.

Graham, along with Bollinger, Light, and Ray, are American women choreographers. The inclusion of dances by Belgian/Colombian choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa and Australian choreographer Natalie Weir moves the series focus from “Woman” to “International Woman.” Neither Lopez Ochoa nor Weir has worked with TBT before. “When I started investigating choreographers, I looked for ones who would be a ‘good fit’ for the company,” says O’Keefe.   But a “good fit” does not mean an accustomed approach to choreography. “These choreographers are going to push the dancers. And they are going to educate the audience too,” he claims.

Lopez Ochoa’s ballet, Shibuya Blues, premiered on the Tulsa Ballet in 2017, and has since been performed around the US to critical acclaim. The dance is inspired by Tokyo’s Shibuya district—one of the busiest and crowded pedestrian and transit hubs in the world. Images of personal connection and alienation are interwoven throughout this ensemble piece.

O’Keefe describes the work as, “contemporary dance on pointe that includes unusual and challenging lifts. The movement is angular and yet attractive; it is mechanical and yet it also flows.”  The music compilation by contemporary composers Michel Banabila, Radboud Mens, Manuel Wandji, and Rene Aubry provides percussive, electronic/techno and lyrical accompaniment that supports the ballet’s psychological themes.

In another vein, Weir’s ballet, Jubula, is “joyous and jubilant” O’Keefe declares. Since its premier in 2000, renowned companies such as Ballet West, Singapore Dance Theater, and American Ballet Theater have presented the dance that features alternately grounded and explosive movement. Hans Zimmer’s musical score combines percussion and African choral music in a manner evoking both traditional and contemporary celebrations. O’Keefe describes seeing the dance’s costumes and choreography together as though one were watching Weir “paint with a very broad stroke. You see big, bold colors of movement across the stage—her canvas.”

Company premiers by six different choreographers in one performance series is an ambitious undertaking. But O’Keefe is unfazed by the task; in fact, he and the company relish the challenge. “It is so exciting for the dancers to do works they have never done before and to express these choreographers’ voices. They (the dancers) are being pushed in so many directions. They are being strengthened artistically,” he says.  And while the dancers will grow artistically, he expects the same for the audience. “It is timely and pretty incredible to have these six different women’s voices in one performance, and to see where choreography has been, where it is today, and where it is going. Now that is exciting!”

-TARA MUNJEE