Anna Thérèse WitenberG Choreography & Direction
TUXEDO
Seven live performances across the 8+9th of November, 2025
at Iowa
Over the past year, I have been developing a series of dances choreographed specifically for domestic spaces. This body of work began with TUXEDO, created for Iowa, a gallery that operates out of an empty bedroom in an apartment in Brooklyn. The room is small, narrow, and visually unremarkable. I chose to work directly with these conditions, limiting the audience to fourteen people seated on either side of a one-foot-wide runway. The choreography was shaped by this architecture from the outset.
I approached Tuxedo as an object to be exquisitely refined, something so polished that it could transform the starkness of the space. I turned to ballet dancers for this reason, drawn to a kind of technical precision that could withstand extreme proximity. I worked with Ethan Huffman and Kieran McBride, who share a decade-long relationship, alongside my longtime collaborators Josie Bettman and Aimee Grumbach. These relationships became the emotional foundation of the work.
The choreography is structured around the pas de deux, including classical lifts and partnering gestures, but slowed down and placed under sustained tension. I became interested in the micro-movements within this form: weight shifts, breath, and points of contact that are often absorbed into a larger image. In this configuration, the audience encounters these details at close range. The dance functions as a kind of prolonged close-up, where intimacy is not only visible, but viscerally felt.
Costume was central to the choreographic process. I worked closely with stylist Natasha Simchowitz, allowing fabric, silhouette, and texture to generate choreography. A silk chiffon dress with mesh netting, for example, shaped how I imagined the extension of a dancer’s body. The way a seam contours the ankle or the way light passes through fabric informed gesture and timing. Clothing became an extension of the body’s emotional architecture, a final layer through which an internal life could be perceived.
The sound score consists entirely of the diegetic noises of the space: breath, the friction of pointe shoes against the floor, and the crinkle of fabric. I collaborated with architect Le Xie on the set design, placing a glowing orb behind each chair, covered with interlocking men’s dress shirts whose pinned sleeves echo the arm formations of the “Dance of the Little Swans” from Swan Lake. These references situate the work within a lineage of ballet while subtly reconfiguring its structures.
Choreography and Creative Direction: Anna Thérèse Witenberg
Set Design: Le Xie
Dancers: Kieran McBride, Aimee Grumbach, Ethan Huffman, Josie Bettman
Costume Design: Natasha Simchowitz with custom garment by Ilana Blumberg
Video by Kayhl Cooper
Press: Bomb Magazine
Link to full-length show documentation