Rena Butler to premiere 'Her Table' at La Femme Dance Festival in Chicago

Rena Butler will present a new evening-length work, Her Table, at the La Femme Dance Festival when the program opens at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance on March 28, 2026, organizers confirmed on March 25, 2026. The premiere is part of a biennial showcase produced by Red Clay Dance Company that spotlights choreography by Black women.

The festival lineup this year also features Kia Smith’s South Chicago Dance Theatre and Los Angeles-based tap ensemble Chloé Arnold’s Syncopated Ladies, and Red Clay will perform pieces by its founder, Vershawn Sanders-Ward. Rehearsals for Butler’s piece were held at Red Clay’s Woodlawn studio on the South Side on March 18, 2026, with dancers Amaya Arroyo, Taylor Jackson, Aniyah Wilkinson and Ngozi Mokwunye working on staging that places four performers on, under and around a single table. Butler drew inspiration from Carrie Mae Weems’ 1990 "The Kitchen Table Series," and the score for Her Table mixes rhythmic jazz with recorded dialogue and domestic sounds.

Butler, a Chicago Academy of the Arts alum who has presented work at the Lyric Opera House and performed with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, A.I.M by Kyle Abraham and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, has created commissions for Het Nationale Ballet, San Francisco Opera, Cincinnati Ballet and Ailey II. Sanders-Ward commissioned the new piece and said she was struck by Butler’s physicality and storytelling; Butler has said she hopes the work’s kitchen-table setting will make audiences feel at home.