Music + Motion
This issue’s “Front Row Seat” is Portrait magazine’s look at the people and companies shaping our art scene on stages large and small. Here, we spotlight three of Portland’s distinctive talents, plus a directory of nine organizations throughout the state worth watching, spanning orchestra, opera, ballet, theater, and dance.
BodyVox
Serious Sense of Humor
Led by Emmy Award-winning choreographers Jamey Hampton and Ashley Roland, BodyVox fuses dance, theater, and film into visually inventive, athletic, and wickedly witty productions. Founded in 1997, the Portland-based company has built a reputation for blending razor-sharp physical comedy with genuine emotional depth, drawing on backgrounds in circus, mime, and modern dance to create work that feels both accessible and utterly original.
Hampton and Roland met while touring internationally with the influential dance companies Pilobolus and MOMIX, before returning home to Portland, where a commission to choreograph for Portland Opera sparked BodyVox itself. That pedigree still shows in the company’s DNA: rigorous technique paired with an irreverence that never takes itself too seriously.
The company’s reach has not gone unnoticed nationally. The New York Times has praised BodyVox’s work as dancing with a breezy freshness all its own, noting that despite its founders’ roots in Pilobolus, the company forged a distinctive identity of its own. That recognition from one of the country’s most influential arts pages speaks to what Portland audiences have known for decades: BodyVox belongs in the same conversation as any major dance company in America today.
Nearly three decades in, BodyVox remains a defining Portland institution that treats craftsmanship and playfulness as inseparable. It remains, in every sense, homegrown, and one of the city’s most distinctive exports.
UPCOMING SHOW: Creepy Cupcakes Oct 8–10 and 15–17 at BodyVox Dance Center 1201 NW 17th Ave, Portland, OR 97209
www.bodyvox.org | 503.229.0627
Oregon Ballet Theatre
Pointe Well-Taken
Founded in 1989, Oregon Ballet Theatre (OBT) is Oregon’s largest professional dance company and the region’s primary showcase for classical and contemporary ballet. Under Artistic Director Dani Rowe, the company builds on a tradition of rigorous technique paired with a hunger to push the art form forward, staging full-length story ballets alongside bold new commissions.
That balance of tradition and innovation runs through everything OBT does. Beyond the mainstage, the company operates OBT School, which has trained dancers in the Pacific Northwest for more than 35 years, and OBT2, a pre-professional division mentoring the next generation before they enter professional careers. In 2024 alone, the organization awarded $90,000 in scholarships.
Company leadership discusses dance as a shared language, connecting audiences, students, and dancers across generations and backgrounds. That philosophy shows up on stage and in the classroom alike, in performances built to welcome newcomers and lifelong balletomanes with equal warmth.
Nearly four decades since its founding, Oregon Ballet Theatre remains a cultural anchor for Portland, a company as committed to training tomorrow’s dancers as it is to delivering performances that keep audiences returning season after season.
OREGON BALLET THEATRE Oct 10–17: Swan Lake, performed at Keller Auditorium
www.obt.org | 503.222.5538
Pink Martini
Twenty-Five Languages One Groove
Portland’s globe-trotting “little orchestra,” Pink Martini weaves classical, jazz, Latin, and old-fashioned pop from more than 25 languages into a sound Washington Post called “utterly cosmopolitan”. Founded in 1994 by pianist and bandleader Thomas Lauderdale, who was inspired to create more engaging, danceable music for events while working in local politics. Soon after, fellow Harvard classmate China Forbes joined as the lead singer. Currently fronted by longtime co-lead singer Storm Large, as well as a cavalcade of other talented vocalists as the Pink Martini All-Stars the group has grown from a scrappy local act into a genre-defying ensemble beloved on concert stages worldwide.
The group has shared stages with major symphony orchestras across North America and Europe, bringing lush arrangements to audiences who might hear a dozen languages in a single set. Rooted firmly in Portland, Pink Martini remains one of the city’s most recognizable cultural exports.
Pink Martini www.pinkmartini.com (check website for tour dates) 728 SW 1st Avenue, Portland, OR 97204
Oregon’s performing arts scene runs deep, spanning orchestra, opera, ballet, theater, dance and music. Below offers a glimpse of the many voices shaping the artistry playing out across the state, from Portland to Ashland to Eugene, on every kind of budget and stage.
Oregon Symphony Orchestra
(Portland)
One of America’s major orchestras and the oldest west of the Mississippi, the Oregon Symphony blends beloved classical masterworks with inventive, genre-crossing programming under famed music director David Danzmayr.
• Sept 17–18: Gregory Alan Isakov with the Oregon Symphony
• Sept 19–20: Piazzolla and Edna Vazquez
• Sept 27: Wild Symphony
• Oct 2–4: Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5
• Oct 8, 10 & 11: Holst’s The Planets
• Oct 15: Jeff Goldblum and The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra
www.orsymphony.org | 503.228.1353
Nw Dance Project
(Portland)
One of the top contemporary dance companies in the country, NW Dance Project has premiered more than 370 original works since 2004 — a mid-size company with an outsized international touring footprint.
• Fall program typically opens in October at the Newmark Theatre — check website for confirmed 2026 dates.
www.nwdanceproject.org | 503.421.7434
Britt Music & Arts Festival
(Medford)
The Pacific Northwest’s premier outdoor summer performing arts festival, Britt presents world-class orchestral, jazz, folk, and pop acts on a natural hillside amphitheater in the historic gold rush town of Jacksonville, Oregon with modest overhead and big-name talent under the stars.
• Music & Comedy series continues into September, check website for confirmed Aug–Nov 2026 lineup.
www.britt.org | 800.882.7488
Portland Opera
(Portland)
For six decades, Portland’s opera company pairs classic repertoire with bold new work, presenting its 62nd season — DRIVEN BY VISION — with high artistic quality and community reach.
• Nov 6 & 8: La Traviata, performed at Keller Auditorium
www.portlandopera.org | 503.241.1802 (Patron Services)
Portland Taiko
(Portland)
An award-winning Asian American drumming ensemble, Portland Taiko weaves rhythm, melody, and movement into performances that take traditional Japanese taiko into new territory, an all-volunteer nonprofit born from a single homemade drum in 1994 that has since performed at Carnegie Hall.
• Portland Taiko performs frequently at community festivals and free public events throughout the region. Check website for the current schedule.
www.portlandtaiko.org | 503.288.2456
Oregon Shakespeare Festival
(Ashland)
Founded in 1935 and among the oldest and largest nonprofit theatres in the nation, the Tony Award-winning OSF presents Shakespeare in rotating repertory alongside contemporary dramas and musicals in Ashland’s three theatres.
• Now through Oct 9: Emma, Allen Elizabethan Theatre
• Now through Oct 10: Henry IV, Part One, Allen Elizabethan Theatre
• Now through Oct 11: The Taming of the Shrew, Allen Elizabethan Theatre
• Aug 27–Oct 24: Smote This, a solo comedy, Thomas Theatre
• Now through Oct 24–25: Come From Away and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Angus Bowmer Theatre
www.osfashland.org | 800.219.8161 (Box Office)
Portland Center Stage
(Portland)
The largest theater company in Portland and among the top 20 regional theaters in the country, Portland Center Stage marks its 20th year at The Armory with a season of revivals, co-productions, and new works.
• Sept 27–Oct 25: Pride and Prejudice, Kate Hamill’s adaptation
• Nov 15–Dec 24: Little Shop of Horrors (opens within this timeframe)
www.pcs.org | 503.445.3700
Ballet Fantastique
(Eugene)
A boutique contemporary ballet company founded by mother-daughter team Donna and Hannah Bontrager, Ballet Fantastique creates original, cross-disciplinary dance theater with live music — a small troupe with outsized inventiveness, resident at Eugene’s Hult Center.
• Oct 15–18: Nevermore, Soreng Theater
• Nov 28–29: The Night Before Nutcracker, Silva Concert Hall
www.balletfantastique.org | 541.342.4611
Cappella Romana
(Portland)
A small but internationally acclaimed professional vocal ensemble, Cappella Romana specializes in Byzantine, Slavic, and early Christian choral traditions rarely heard elsewhere in the U.S. — a modest budget producing a “sound world of unique beauty” (Gramophone).
• Oct 16–17: Rachmaninoff’s All-Night Vigil
• Nov 13–14: These Stones Remain, with guest ensemble The Tudor Choir
www.cappellaromana.org | 503.236.8202
NOTE: Correct at time of printing, check websites for current dates and information.
