Let go by embattled Kennedy Center, Attack Theatre’s new leader wants dance to be everywhere
Sarah Kramer is the new executive director of Attack Theatre. -Yassine El Mansouri | Attack Theatre
90.5 WESA | By Bill O'Driscoll - A former high-level administrator at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is the new executive director of long-running Pittsburgh dance troupe Attack Theatre, the group announced Monday.
Sarah Kramer’s decade at the Kennedy Center included a stint as senior director of artistic operations. That’s the No. 2 artistic post there. Each year, Kramer oversaw some 1,500 performances, festivals and nationally televised productions.
She also trained as a dancer and has danced professionally.
“I'm a dancer at heart. And this felt like a homecoming,” Kramer said. “It was a chance to bring my love of dance and then everything I've learned about arts leadership together.”
At Attack Theatre, Kramer will take leadership of a Pittsburgh institution, founded in 1994 by dancers Michele de la Reza and Peter Kope.
The group, based in Lawrenceville, typically employs a troupe of a half-dozen dancers including its founders. It is known for its lively, contemporary style and regular use of original live music (which is uncommon in dance).
Kramer will take over the role vacated by the group's prior executive director, Andrés Franco, who held the job for about a year before becoming executive director of Pittsburgh's City of Asylum.
Kramer “brings an incredible depth of experience, a genuine love and understanding of dance, and a collaborative spirit that deeply aligns with who we are as a company,” said Attack co-artistic director de la Reza in a statement.
‘A shared purpose’
Kramer’s former employer has frequently been in the news during the second Trump administration, for everything from President Donald Trump’s mass firing of board members and artists canceling performances to Trump’s contested attempt to rename the Center for himself.
While Kramer’s firing this past January made national news, she declined to discuss her final year at the Kennedy Center.
Attack Theatre dancers perform in the 2025 production "Rock, Paper, Sizzle: Mythical Masquerade." - Courtesy of Attack Theatre
“I think I really want to focus on, of course, the team that was there,” she told WESA. “We really focused on a shared purpose and making sure artists felt supported, and we did our best to make that happen and make them feel welcome while they were there.”
Kramer grew up in New Jersey and danced with a pre-professional company from ages 9 to 18. She earned a bachelor’s degree in dance from the University of Maryland in 2010, and has danced professionally in the Washington, D.C., region and internationally.
“I knew I wanted a life in the arts,” she said. “But I was also curious about what happened behind the scenes and what it took to make that actual art possible.”
Before joining the Kennedy Center, Kramer worked for six years at Dance Place, a performing-arts and education nonprofit in Washington, D.C. She served as artistic programming manager and development associate, and was company manager for ReVision, a resident troupe.
She began at the Kennedy Center in 2016, as assistant manager for special programming, and held several jobs there before becoming senior director of artistic operations in early 2025.
It was very much a behind-the-scenes role.
“I learned that great arts leadership is about creating those conditions for other people to do their best work,” she said. “I worked with remarkable artists and producers and technicians and colleagues across all of these different disciplines.”
“As I moved into that senior leadership role, the job became less about a single performance and more about teams and systems and relationships that make that work possible,” she added. “It was a lot of coordination, planning, budgets.”
‘Everywhere’
Attack Theatre has a decades-long track record of inventive performances several times each year, in recent years typically staged at its headquarters in Lawrenceville. The troupe also holds classes at the space and runs in- and out-of-school programs for students, as well as professional-development sessions for teachers. As for many arts groups, those education initiatives account for a big part of its revenue.
Speaking via video call last week, Kramer was still busy moving into her new home in Mount Lebanon, where she had just relocated from the D.C. area with her partner and young son.
But she said she has two big hopes for the group.
One is to explore creating an endowment to build “long-term financial security” so that Attack “can continue supporting artists and creating extraordinary work for generations to come.”
She also wants to both embed Attack — which is already known for its choreographic collaborations with groups including Quantum Theatre and Pittsburgh Opera — even further into the community while simultaneously raising its national profile, by means including touring.
She said the troupe is currently known mostly by “the dedicated arts audience” but less so by the community at large.
“I want Attack Theatre to be everywhere,” she said.
She believes the best way to do that is to bring the dance to the audiences: mounting site-specific performances, having dancers busk on city streets and bringing dance to local sporting events.
"I've even joked about creating like interpretive chair dances inspired by the very Pittsburgh tradition of putting your chair out in the street to save your freshly shoveled parking spot," she said. "I seriously want people to encounter dance in unexpected places.”