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

 

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, among others. He went on to join 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 also performed works by Garth Fagan, Phyllis Lamhut, Ralph Lemon, and Donald McKayle, among others.

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In 1996, Kenison joined Tere O’Connor Dance, where he collaborated on the creation of four new dance-theatre works that premiered in New York City and toured extensively across the United States and abroad. His work with O’Connor, which integrated movement, text, and heightened character, inspired him to pursue further study in acting.

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

That same year, he co-founded Washington Ensemble Theatre (WET) in Seattle, serving as co-artistic director while also 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, among others.

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In 2006, Kenison conceived the performance persona Waxie Moon, a long-term practice-as-research project in performance hybridity, gender exploration, and genre collision. Over seventeen years, he created more than thirty solo works for the persona and collaborated on ensemble and evening-length productions, giving over 1,500 performances in Seattle, across the U.S., and abroad. Waxie Moon headlined annual holiday productions including Scott Shoemaker’s War on Christmas and Homo for the Holidays (with BenDeLaCreme); appeared in over a dozen mainstage productions at The Triple Door such as Land of the Sweets: The Burlesque Nutcracker, House of Thee Unholy, Camptacular!, and Kings; and was commissioned and presented by On the Boards (After the Funeral, Bolero, Trinity, Waxie Moon: EXTREME Boylesque). The character was also featured at major cultural events, including Bumbershoot, halftime shows at KeyArena with Rat City Roller Girls, performances at Seattle Art Museum and Henry Art Gallery, and international festivals in New York, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Helsinki, Vienna, Stockholm, and cities across Canada. Waxie Moon’s cultural impact has been permanently celebrated in a large-scale mural at Seattle’s historic Pike Place Market.

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Kenison’s choreography and interdisciplinary work extend beyond Waxie Moon. Notable projects 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. He has also been featured as a physical theatre performer in The Barber of Seville at Seattle Opera’s McCaw Hall (2,900 seats) and with Des Moines Metro Opera, as well as in musical theatre, playing a lead in Spamalot at Columbia’s Town Theatre.

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Kenison’s work has been recognized with numerous awards and honors. Highlights include a Seattle Repertory Theatre Commission Development Grant for Full Moon Suite (2016–2018) and a feature on NPR (Seattle’s Waxie Moon: Performer for a New Century). He received a Webby Award nomination for Best Actor in Wes Hurley’s web series Capitol Hill (2014) and a Gregory Award nomination for Excellence in Theater (2010). 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 multiple 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).

 

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 at performance festivals worldwide. At Cornish, where he taught for over a decade, he developed and taught courses in physical acting, solo performance, and interdisciplinary practice, and directed four original devised works, the musicals James and the Giant Peach and Xanadu, and a production of Mary Zimmerman’s The Secret in the Wings.

 

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