Cultural Leadership Breakfast: Diana Movius

Artistic director of Moveius Contemporary Ballet, Diana Movius founded and runs Dance Loft on 14, a center for dance and theater rehearsal, performance and training in D.C.’s Petworth neighborhood. She began her 18-month National Portrait Gallery residency, in which she creates works that are performed in the museum’s Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard, with a program in July of dances inspired by biologists Rachel Carson, author of “Silent Spring,” and E. O. Wilson, author of “The Ants.” The Portrait Gallery’s first choreographer-in-residence, from 2016 to 2023, was Dana Tai Soon Burgess.

Movius trained with Patricia McBride and Melissa Hale Coyle in her home city of Charlotte, North Carolina, spending summers at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Charlotte Ballet and Ballet Chicago. Also an expert on environmental issues, she did fieldwork in the Peruvian Amazon while earning an M.A. in environmental anthropology from Stanford University, where she completed her B.A., then worked at Washington think tanks on climate change policy.

At the Nov. 21 breakfast, Movius will share how she translates the art on view at the Portrait Gallery — and the lives that inspired it — into contemporary ballet, as well as her view of the connections between science and the arts.

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