Corcoran Professor Brendan Drake Makes Dance Place Debut with Ceremonials

Brendan Drake, visiting assistant professor of dance at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at the George Washington University, will make their Dance Place debut with Ceremonials, premiering July 10 and 11 at Dance Place DC. Presented by DC Dance Network and co-presented with Dance Place, the hour-long performance work is intended for audiences and community members ages 18 and older. Tickets are on sale now.

Drake began the creative research for Ceremonials in collaboration with GW students for the Spring 2025 Dance Concert. Drawing inspiration from Catholic iconography, queer eroticism, and 14th-century Christian mystic Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love, the work explores the connections between sorrow, ecstasy, devotion, and surrender. Ceremonials unfolds as a vivid meditation on pleasure, pain and hope, bringing together movement, image, text, and sound in Drake's distinctive interdisciplinary style.

The performance was commissioned in part through the 2026 DC Dance Network Choreographer Commission, for which Drake was named the inaugural recipient. Drake was selected for their innovative approach to performance and their work's critical examination of gender, rage, vanity, and queer power dynamics.

Drake's work has been presented nationally at venues including Danspace Project, La MaMa, Joe's Pub, and the Fowler Museum, with support from organizations such as the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and Brooklyn Arts Fund.