Marc Kenison is a dancer, actor, choreographer, director, devised theater maker, and educator whose career spans concert dance, theatre, and interdisciplinary performance.

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He began his formal dance training at Interlochen Arts Academy before earning his BFA from The Juilliard School, where he performed repertory by Gerald Arpino, George Balanchine, José Limón, Anna Sokolow, Paul Taylor, Doug Varone, and others. He joined the José Limón Dance Company, performing leading roles on national and international tours, including performances in war-torn Sarajevo and El Salvador, and at The White House for President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. With the company, he danced the role of the Moor’s Friend (Iago) in The Moor’s Pavane, a landmark of American modern dance, and performed works by Garth Fagan, Phyllis Lamhut, Ralph Lemon, Donald McKayle, and others.

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In 1996, Kenison joined Tere O’Connor Dance, collaborating on the creation of four new dance-theatre works that premiered in New York and toured throughout the U.S. and abroad. This work, which integrated movement, text, and heightened character, led him to pursue deeper study in acting.

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In 2004, he earned his MFA in Acting from the University of Washington, training in Stanislavski, Linklater, Suzuki, and the Alexander Technique. He also studied the Viewpoints, which remain central to his pedagogy for dance composition, ensemble building, and improvisation. While at UW, he performed in works by Shakespeare, Chekhov, Pinter, and contemporary playwrights.

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That same year, he co-founded Washington Ensemble Theatre (WET) in Seattle, serving as co-artistic director while acting, directing, casting, and managing operations. During his co-leadership at WET, the company quickly established itself as a vital hub for innovative performance, producing acclaimed ensemble-driven new works and regional premieres by Adam Bock, Sarah Kane, Jane Martin, and Adam Rapp.

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In 2006, Kenison created the performance persona Waxie Moon, a long-term practice-as-research project in persona construction, queer embodiment, theatrical spectacle, dance-theatre hybridity, and the fusion of high-art conservatory training with lowbrow cabaret and nightlife performance. The work expanded into film and media, interdisciplinary collaborations, and performances throughout the United States and internationally.

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Over seventeen years, he created more than thirty solo works and collaborated on multiple evening-length productions, giving more than 1,500 performances across the U.S. and abroad. Highlights include headlining annual holiday productions such as Scott Shoemaker’s War on Christmas and Homo for the Holidays (with BenDeLaCreme); more than a dozen mainstage shows at The Triple Door, including Land of the Sweets: The Burlesque Nutcracker, House of Thee Unholy, Camptacular!, and Kings; and commissions and presentations by On the Boards (After the Funeral, Bolero, Trinity, and Waxie Moon: EXTREME Boylesque). The character also appeared at Bumbershoot, halftime shows at KeyArena with the Rat City Roller Girls, the Seattle Art Museum and Henry Art Gallery, and festivals in New York, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Helsinki, Vienna, Stockholm, and cities across Canada. Waxie Moon’s cultural impact is permanently honored in a large-scale mural at Seattle’s historic Pike Place Market.

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Kenison’s choreography, movement direction, and interdisciplinary performance work include Sarah Kane’s Crave (first staged in a water-filled box at Washington Ensemble Theatre and later reimagined at Intiman Theatre), Dan Savage’s radical reinterpretation of The Miracle Worker at Intiman Theatre, and The Winter’s Tale and The Comedy of Errors with Seattle Shakespeare Company. Recently, he reprised the role of Ambrogio in The Barber of Seville with both Seattle Opera and Des Moines Metro Opera, and appeared in a lead role in Spamalot at Columbia, South Carolina’s Town Theatre.

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His work has been recognized with numerous awards and honors. Highlights include a Seattle Repertory Theatre Commission Development Grant for Full Moon Suite; a feature on NPR (“Seattle’s Waxie Moon: Performer for a New Century”); a Webby Award nomination for Best Actor for Wes Hurley’s Capitol Hill; and a Gregory Award nomination for Excellence in Theater. As Waxie Moon, he was named among the “Top 50 in Burlesque Worldwide” by 21st Century Burlesque and voted “Best Performer” in the Seattle Weekly Readers’ Choice Awards. He was also featured in several award-winning films, including Wes Hurley’s documentary Waxie Moon (Audience Award, Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival; Jury Prize, International Queer Fruits Film Festival; Honorable Mention, CineKink New York).

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Teaching has been a central part of Kenison’s practice since 1994. He has taught modern and contemporary dance, acting, solo performance, physical characterization, devised theatre, stage presence, and burlesque performance at institutions such as Rutgers University and Cornish College of the Arts, as well as international performance festivals, and community programs. At Cornish, where he taught for more than a decade, he developed and taught courses in physical acting, solo performance, and neo-burlesque theory and performance, and directed four original devised works; the musicals James and the Giant Peach and Xanadu; and Mary Zimmerman’s The Secret in the Wings.

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He is currently an Adjunct Faculty member in the Betsy Blackmon Dance Program at the University of South Carolina, where he teaches Dance Improvisation & Composition and Choreography I. His pedagogy emphasizes embodied awareness, technical rigor, creativity, joy, and the cultivation of authentic artistic voices.