Dana Tai Soon Burgess Dance Company will return to the National Portrait Gallery on August 9 with ‘A Study in Form: Asawa, Noguchi & Frankenthaler’, a one-hour in-person program in McEvoy Auditorium. The performance is scheduled for 4 to 5 p.m. and is free, though registration is required.
The gallery’s Eventbrite listing says the program brings together three dances celebrating iconic American artists: Isamu Noguchi, Ruth Asawa and Helen Frankenthaler. The company is described as “triumphantly” returning to the museum, and the evening is framed as a set of visually arresting works shaped around sculpture, abstraction and artistic process.
The centerpiece is the world premiere of ‘Light Against the Earth’, a National Portrait Gallery commission and a tribute to sculptor Isamu Noguchi. The program also includes ‘Drawing in Space’, described as an exploration of Ruth Asawa’s world, and ‘Sudden Snow’ (2025), a dance inspired by Helen Frankenthaler. According to the event description, Frankenthaler’s canvases were influenced by Asian calligraphy.
All three dances are collaborations between Dana Tai Soon Burgess and Felipe Moltedo, identified in the listing as the company’s associate director. The event page also notes support from Raymond L. Ocampo Jr. and Sandra Oleksy Ocampo. Accessibility requests, including real-time captioning, sign language interpretation and other accommodations, are directed to National Portrait Gallery staff by email, with two weeks’ advance notice requested.
The National Portrait Gallery’s newsletter places the performance within a broader season of public programming. The same message also highlighted other upcoming events, including ‘Analog Nights’ and ‘Portrait Gallery Reading Rhythms’, but those are separate offerings from the Burgess program. For ‘A Study in Form: Asawa, Noguchi & Frankenthaler’, the key details remain the August 9 date, the McEvoy Auditorium setting, and the focus on three major artists whose work has shaped American modern art and dance collaborations alike.
