Kennedy Center's New Dance Director Criticized 'Woke' Ballet Culture and "radical leftist ideologies in ballet"

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

is he actually MAGA or did he pretend to be MAGA to get the job???

Kennedy Center’s New Dance Director Criticized ‘Woke’ Ballet Culture
Stephen Nakagawa, a former dancer with the Washington Ballet, wrote a letter to the leader of the arts center complaining about “radical leftist ideologies in ballet.”



The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts named Stephen Nakagawa, a former dancer with the Washington Ballet, as its director of dance programming on Monday, shortly after firing the department’s previous leader and declaring that its programming would be moving in a new direction.

Mr. Nakagawa had written a letter to the center’s president, Richard Grenell, in which he noted his support for the Trump administration and complained about “radical leftist ideologies in ballet,” according to a copy provided to The New York Times by a former employee who declined to be identified, fearing harassment or retribution.

Two other people who saw the letter confirmed its contents to The Times.

Mr. Nakagawa also wrote that he had grown “increasingly concerned about the direction the ballet world is taking in America” and had become distressed by the “rise of ‘woke’ culture” at the Washington Ballet and other companies.

-------------------

Last week the center fired its previous dance director, Jane Raleigh, and two other employees. In interviews, the three employees said Mr. Grenell had urged them to come up with programming that was more “broadly appealing,” providing as an example the TV show “So You Think You Can Dance.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/25/arts/dance/kennedy-center-stephen-nakagawa.html?unlocked_article_code=1.hE8.zBkn.0XwcZwLbfVDt&smid=url-share

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

1. more: It is unusual for someone without that kind of experience to ascend to a management position at such a high-profi

Neither Nakagawa's online professional biography nor the one sent as part of the Kennedy Center's announcement mentions any relevant experience he may have as a curator or as an arts administrator. It is unusual for someone without that kind of experience to ascend to a management position at such a high-profile organization.

https://www.npr.org/2025/08/25/nx-s1-5515594/kennedy-center-dance-programming

[choie]

7. Not in trump world it isn't!

[DavidDvorkin]

2. This sounds increasingly like the Soviet Union

Different terminology, but the same political control of the arts.

[Bayard]

5. I was just thinking,

He needs to watch the movie, 'White Nights."

"The movie tells the story of a Soviet ballet dancer who has defected to America and an American tap dancer who has defected to the Soviet Union. The Russian is on a flight to Japan when the jet is forced to crash-land in Siberia, and so he is once again in the hands of the society he has rejected. The Soviets do not imprison him, however; they hope to score a propaganda victory by re-programming him to accept his Russian homeland once again. And one of the ways they hope to do this is to send him to live with the American dancer and his Russian-born wife."

[Ocelot II]

3. What the actual f@ck is "radical left woke ballet"?

How might one choreograph Das Kapital?

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

13. Im sure there will be no more Dance Theater of Harlem bookings

[Ocelot II]

19. I guess it must mean Dancing While Black.

[muriel_volestrangler]

21. All pirouettes must be anti-clockwise, with the eyes wide open

Actually, it seems someone has tried:

In recent years, their activity has been focused on an intensive and challenging examination of the legacy of Modernism - in terms of aesthetics, content and politics. The Asparagus project - a Dada ballet par excellence - is their most ambitious yet, in its juxtaposition of the past, the present and the future - or more precisely futurism as it looked and sounded in the second and eighth decades of the twentieth century. The ballet is in fact an adaptation of a project conceived in the seventies by an esoteric minimal synth band xex, whose existence, alongside that of the surreal performance, has left little mark, even in the age of the internet. When the Kollectivs lost touch with the band's founding member Waw Pierogi, a space was created for free interpretation partly inspired by German Bauhaus artist Oskar Schlemmer's Triadic Ballet. Canadian post-punk trio Les Georges Leningrad were flown to London to compose a live electronic soundtrack for the ballet, which was structured as three acts for six dancers/art students deressed as asparagus to march in a variety of robotic, geometric, alienated and funny motions, with each act dedicated to a different key theme in Marx's Das Kapital: the commodity, labour and capital.

If all this sounds like an annoying, academic concoction, that's just because you weren't there. The aesthetic coherence and the aptness of the hypnotic score sufficed to produce a rich and entertaining experience that did not collapse under the weight of the references for a minute. Moreover, the humour and absurdity of staring at the ensemble of giant, charming and clumsy asparagi, functioned less as a parody of modern art, and more as a reminder of the Dadaist love of enlightened stupidity, not to mention Monty Python's "Ministry of Silly Walks". And this is precisely where the strength, effectiveness and relevance of the Kollectivs' work lies - the meeting point of a militant post-modern archeology and pure British (Jerusalem?) humour, enjoyed by the hundreds of audience members who filled the trade unionist Conway Hall (and there you have another layer of retro). More than anything, the ballet reminded me of my favourite Python sketch, "Confuse a Cat", in which a special task force is called in to shake a cat out of a state of shock in which it has been for weeks: it just sits in the back yard staring aimlessly. The team puts on a performance in front of the cat that is meant to be so bizarre and unrelated to anything that it will break the trance and make it return to its usual behaviour. You can imagine what happens when the Pythons, kings of genius bizarreness on any given day, try to portray this double absurdity. The result is tear-inducingly funny, moving, hypnotic and evocative of contemporary conceptual debates, just like Pil and Galia Kollectiv's Asparagus.

https://www.kollectiv.co.uk/Asparagus%20Studio%20Review.html

[msongs]

4. let's put on a show featuring all the sex workers donald trump has hired (stand ins allowed) nt

[choie]

6. Where do they dig up these assholes from?

[tanyev]

8. I don't see many MAGA trooping all the way to D.C. for ballet of any sort.

[no_hypocrisy]

9. IT'S EFFIN' ART ! ! !

As long as it doesn't incite violence (ballet??? modern dance???), it's art and constitutional.

[spanone]

10. Just shut it down.

[Paladin]

11. Oh, this ought to be entertaining.

Watching this trump puppet, teaching ballet personnel how to goose-step...

[Solly Mack]

12. The Producers, w/o talent, as a reality show

[Torchlight]

14. Word on the street is "radical woke" is getting overplayed and losing its punch

The three or four Very Serious Conservatives (one's truck has that very bumper-sticker) I work with have implied as much. I'm guessing another four weeks before the (New & Improved!!) replacement qualifier is found, and by Halloween, 'woke' will be as dated as Mugwump or Goldbug.

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

20. Woke is used so much by maga youtubers whi review movies

It seems to mean:

Woman lead in movie, particularly action movies
Non white lead in movies
Lgbt character

[Johonny]

15. Gene Gene the Dancing Machine...

[Buns_of_Fire]

16. I'm imagining "Swan Lake" performed in army boots. nt

[Aristus]

17. Woke? Ballet?

Gay men in tights, and women strong enough to spin-kick a heavyweight boxer in the face? Woke?

These assholes have gone around the bend…

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

26. I think he faked maga to get the job.. in 2022 he un-stereotyped a ballet

Magas would call this the very definition of woke

Stephen Nakagawa Represents Asian-American and Pacific Islander Culture in Ballet - WCP https://share.google/owSExTjgHSkC0ata8

The story ballets that feature non-European cultures tend to stereotype, appropriate, or fetishize. La Bayadère, for instance, portrays India as a place of golden idols, opium dens, and harem pants. Many companies no longer perform the Chinese dance in The Nutcracker’s second act for similar reasons.

As Asian-American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month concludes, Stephen Nakagawa offers a well-timed corrective in his new ballet, Rising Sun, set to music by Japanese composer Kiyoshi Yoshida. City Paper asked Nakagawa, who has danced with the Washington Ballet since 2015, about his choreography below.

[Kid Berwyn]

18. Guy appreciates Jeffrey Epstein, too.

Going by his writings, political leanings and patronage under the orange traitor.

[betsuni]

22. This year's "The Nutcracker" ballet now "Donald J. Trump's The Wokecracker."

After the wokecracker prince fights the DemoRats and transforms into his big beautiful human shape by donning a MAGA hat, he rescues little Clara from her radical leftist family and takes her to the Land of Mar-a-Lago. Unlike the Land of Sweets, there are no dances from around the world (except for the Russians) because ICE arrested everybody, and no Waltz of the Flowers because they've been paved over, only the Dance of the Bikini Girls set to the song "YMCA." Clara gets extensive plastic surgery and a boob job and lives happily ever after.

[sheshe2]

27. Oh Snap.

Perfection.

[Beringia]

23. Trump is set to be the host of the Kennedy Center honors on Dec 7, 2025

One of the winners is the band Kiss

https://people.com/2025-kennedy-center-honors-everything-to-know-11791728

[Vinca]

24. Is this generic racism (black ballet dancer perhaps) or something new? I have never heard of a ballet being "woke."

[electric_blue68]

25. I guess my sis Won't be Watching it This Dec! ....

She religiously watches, and DVR's it. There's always at least one, usually 2 - 3 nominees she likes to loves.

Then when I visit around The Holidays we watch it togther.

Another thing drumphf is ruining!
And is this guy part Asian-American? Shame, dude, shame!

[get the red out]

28. How about

Dancing in camo and tossing semi-automatics around at the same time?

[Initech]

29. Holy shit, do these assholes have to ruin everything?