W&L Repertory Dance Company Presents Winter Concert The award-winning ensemble’s performances will run April 9-11 and feature works created by nationally renowned choreographers.

Office of Communications and Public Affairs
April 2, 2025

The Department of Theater, Dance and Film Studies at Washington and Lee University presents the award-winning W&L Repertory Dance Company in concert on April 9-11 at 7:30 p.m. in the Keller Theater at the Lenfest Center for the Arts.

Tickets are required and available online or in person at the Lenfest Box Office.

The Repertory Dance Company will present a program of multifaceted dance works featuring the choreography of Katrina Atkin, Waeli Wang, Elizabeth Stich, Sarah Zehdner and Tara Mullins, who each spent five days on campus offering master classes for the W&L community and holding intensive choreographic rehearsals with student dancers. Following their respective residencies, the dance company continued to rehearse the works for an additional twelve weeks under the direction of Jenefer Davies, professor of dance and theater and artistic director of the W&L Repertory Dance Company.

“Bringing guest artists to campus gives the students the opportunity to experience a professional dance environment, learn innovative new works, engage with varied teaching methodologies and practice embodied learning,” said Davies. “It is a beautiful practice-as-research opportunity for them.”

Katarina Atkin, artist and educator, worked with nine W&L dancers to choreograph “Time is Fleeing – Time is Eternal.” Her goal was to create a powerful, meaningful and empowering rehearsal environment and to bring that community to the stage as a united force highlighting the individuality of the dancers. The dance explores loss and change from multiple viewpoints, but the collective story is ultimately one of shared experience and human beauty. Atkin is dedicated to exploring art’s capacity to be a powerful tool for healing and resistance, and her work embraces creativity and the act of making it a pathway to deeper connections with self, others and the planet. She has taught at the University for the Arts and Temple University in Philadelphia.

Waeli Wang describes her dance “Speak/Memory” as “stepping into the contours of memory, steeped in a sense of dreaming, nostalgia and longing, [and evoking] a thought from [Vladimir] Nabokov’s memoir: ‘Our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.’” Wang is a movement artist, filmmaker and educator who is driven to create work that fuses movement and imagery and the figurative and abstract, and makes the poetic personal. For “Speak/Memory,” she worked with a large group of W&L students to explore the overlap between critical dancemaking and identity, transforming and challenging unjust social relations while filling in the gaps of our collective memory.

Elizabeth Stich, assistant professor of dance at the University of Georgia, specializes in contemporary and aerial dance and created a solo for W&L aerialist Misha Lin ’25, showcasing the lyra apparatus. Stich’s scholarly research on aerial dance has been published in the Journal of Dance Education and Choreographic Practices and she has presented at numerous conferences. Her current research and forthcoming book focus on creative practice for aerialists and the intersection of aerial arts and dance improvisation.

Sara Zehnder’s “Enduring Disposition” is set to excerpts from speeches by Michelle Obama, Emma Watson and Hillary Clinton. Zehnder’s research is rooted in feminism and aims to cultivate community, inclusivity and equity by focusing on different relationships through trust. Her work has been shown at the internationally acclaimed Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out Festival, the American Dance Festival and numerous other national and international festivals. Zehnder currently serves as an associate professor and the director of dance at Springfield College in Massachusetts.

Tara Mullins, professor of dance at North Carolina State University, uses dance and the arts as a springboard to delve into topics such as the arts and public health, affirmative action and the arts and the intersection of STEM with dance. Her residency at W&L was spent working with five students to develop “Resume Normal Activities,” a response to the 2023 lockdown at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill caused by an active shooter on campus. Mullins took care to balance the sensitive nature of the content with the students’ experiences and viewpoints. The piece is meant to encourage conversation and consideration of the real problem of guns in schools.

The Repertory Dance Company will also perform Davies’ ongoing research choreography, “Wallflowers/Wildflowers.” This dance employs humor as a tool of feminist resistance and is a satirical look at the patriarchy, the marginalization of women and power dynamics. The piece challenges oppressive discourse and inequality and personifies the burden of oppression. Davies received the National Dance Education Organization 2021 Outstanding Dance Education Researcher Award for her work contextualizing curriculum and creating pedagogical paths for aerial dance in higher education. She is the author of “Writing the Body: The Art of Dance Composition.”

Order your tickets online today or call the Lenfest Center box office at 540-458-8000 for ticket purchase information. Box office hours are Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. The cost is $18 for adults, $16 for seniors, $14 for W&L faculty and staff and $8 for students.

For a full list of this season’s performances, visit the Lenfest Center’s website.

The Lenfest Center for the Arts, home of the Department of Theater, Dance, and Film Studies and the Department of Music and Department of Art and Art History is a multi-use facility designed and equipped to accommodate a broad spectrum of the performing arts, including theater, musical theater, opera and operetta, choral and band music, dance and performance art in one energizing complex.