For Grady Soapes, choreography isn’t just eight counts and clever footwork — it’s a lifelong language. A language that only comes fully alive when it integrates with the designers, directors, musicians, and storytellers shaping a production.

Long before he became the Denver Center for the Performing Arts’ (DCPA) Director of Casting and Associate Producer, he was a dancer “by trade,” someone who grew up with movement as his native tongue. “I didn’t get my degree in choreography, but that’s what I started to gravitate toward in college.”

In his early career, Soapes taught, choreographed, and spent summers at Perry-Mansfield’s New Works Festival, where he first connected with DCPA artists. His earliest Denver Center opportunities came through Off-Center, when the team tapped him to choreograph small seasonal projects. As his producing career at DCPA grew, so did the scale of his choreographic assignments, including DCPA’s annual A Christmas Carol, which he’s choreographed since its 2022 reimagining.

This dual path has made Soapes a rare hybrid artist. He not only creates movement onstage; he advocates for  movement-makers behind the scenes.

Soapes’s administrative role makes him an unexpected but invaluable ally for visiting choreographers. His shared vocabulary helps choreographers navigate auditions, production expectations, rehearsals, and communication.

“There’s usually not another dancer brain on staff. Directors talk to the artistic director. Costume designers talk to the dressers. Lighting designers have their team. But who does the choreographer have? Usually, no one.” — Grady Soapes, DCPA Director of Casting, Associate Producer, and Choreographer

At DCPA, they have him.

It’s an uncommon support system in a regional theater, and one Soapes loves providing. “It’s fun to bring my dance world into my theater job,” he says. “Those two worlds colliding is the best.”

When Soapes steps into the rehearsal room as a choreographer, he carries not just dance technique but a deep belief in choreography’s narrative power. “I’m trying to tell the story for the visual learners,” he says. “Some people take in a story visually. Movement is how they connect.”

That belief began when he was a kid in a small town with only three VHS musicals: Cats, Oklahoma!, and Into the Woods. The “dream ballet” in Oklahoma! sparked his understanding of storytelling through movement. “It told a whole story, and not a word was spoken,” he recalls. “Those moments of visual storytelling were so ingrained in my memory.”

The 2024 Cast of A Christmas Carol. Photo by Jamie Kraus Photography.

This inspiration shows up in his work on A Christmas Carol, where Director Anthony Powell asked him to intentionally break period style in the Fezziwig dance with surprise bursts of contemporary movement popular on TikTok. Young audiences immediately respond. “They lose their minds,” Soapes says with a grin. “And that moment only works because all the elements are speaking the same language.”

Collaboration remains Soapes’ guiding principle across all his work. He never arrives with choreography so set in stone that it can’t evolve. Instead, he brings a “skeleton” of ideas and builds the final sequence with actors, directors, and designers. “If it’s not working, I can easily throw things away,” he says. “You never want your work to be hindering anyone else’s.”

That flexibility comes from his background in producing. “Because I’ve seen processes where collaboration is missing,” he says, “I’m not precious about my own work. If there’s a better solution, let’s find it.”

The result is choreography that feels integrated rather than isolated, flowing seamlessly into staging, music, and design. For Soapes, the magic of choreography isn’t just in the counts or the steps. It’s what happens when many artistic voices work together to create something neither could achieve alone.

“The best choreography doesn’t stand alone,” he says. “It dances in step with everyone else’s artistry.”