About

An arts journalist and critic since 1985, D.C. DanceWatcher, aka Lisa Traiger, wrote the dance column for The Washington Post Weekend section from 1999 to 2014, and edited From the Green Room, Dance/USA’s online eJournal, from 2008 to 2022. She was a freelance dance critic for The Washington Post Style section from 1997-2006. As arts correspondent, Traiger’s pieces on the cultural and performing arts appear regularly in the Washington Jewish Week, where she has reported on Jewish drum circles, Israeli folk dance, Holocaust survivors, Jewish Freedom Riders, and artists from Ben Shahn to Rodgers and Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim to Y Love, Anna Sokolow to Liz Lerman. She has written for Ballet Review, Dance Magazine, Washingtonian, The Forward, Moment, Pointe, Dance Studio Life, Stagebill, Sondheim Review, Asian Week, New Jersey Jewish News, Bethesda Magazine, and Washington Review.

The recipient of three Simon Rockower Awards for Excellence in Arts Criticism from the American Jewish Press Association, in 2009 Lisa also shared a Rockower for reporting on a story about a shooter at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. She received a 2021 award for religion reporting and a 2007 first-place award from the Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association. In 2003, Traiger was honored to participate as a New York Times Fellow in the Institute for Dance Criticism at the American Dance Festival in Durham, N.C. She earned an M.F.A. in choreography from the University of Maryland, College Park, and has taught dance appreciation at the University of Maryland and Montgomery College’s Rockville campus. Traiger served on the Dance Critics Association Board of Directors from 1991-93, returned to the board in 2005, and served as co-president in 2006-2007. She was a member of the advisory board of the Dance Notation Bureau from 2008-2009.