A row of mirror ball trophies sat on a table beside the stage all evening, catching the light while eleven Washingtonians danced underneath an illuminated model of the U.S. Capitol dome. The trophies were the point. Every dancer at the ninth DC’s Dancing Stars Gala, held Saturday, October 24, at The Ritz-Carlton, Pentagon City, was competing to send prize money home to a charity.
The gala is Washington’s local answer to the television format it borrows. Community figures train for weeks with professional ballroom dancers, perform one choreographed routine in black tie, and submit to a judges’ panel and a room full of donors who vote with their wallets. This year’s edition carried a $60,000 prize pool, and the organization reports $2,553,800 donated to more than 35 charities across its nine seasons. One hundred percent of the prize awards go to the charities.
Jessica Kreiser, a Northern Virginia homebuilder competing in the Corporate Challenge, took home the mirror ball with her professional partner, Vladislavs Pecens of DC DanceSport Academy. Kreiser had never danced before this season. The academy’s own recap of her routine ends with the pair announced as winners, trophy and flowers in hand. Emily Giovinazzo, dancing a Pink Panther routine with Javier Buentello, placed third in the Corporate Challenge, a result engraved on her trophy. Corporate dancer Kathy Phuong Luu also carried a trophy off the stage before the night ended.
The celebrity field brought the evening’s widest range. Rachelle Barimany Dove danced a salsa to “Hips Don’t Lie.” Jeff Virchow performed a samba built on a mashup of the “Mission: Impossible” theme and “Gasolina.” Carmen Felder danced an East Coast swing, and Lizeth Alvarado, in a gold fringe dress, danced a swing and Lindy hop number to “Hey Pachuco” and finished fourth among the celebrity dancers. Alumni dancers Barbara Hamilton and Janaki Kates returned to the floor as well.
The routine the room will remember longest belonged to Bob Gray. Gray spent 32 years in fire and EMS, retired as a battalion chief with the Arlington County Fire Department, and was among the first responders at the Pentagon on September 11. He later survived a severe traumatic brain injury. On Saturday he danced a foxtrot to “World on a String” with professional Alina Kupriianova, competing for the Raymond A. Wood Foundation, which supports survivors of hypothalamic-pituitary brain tumors. A man who rebuilt his own life after a brain injury, dancing to raise money for people living with brain tumors, needed no judge’s paddle to make his case.
The judging panel had its own ballroom credentials. Anna Trebunskaya, a ten-season professional on “Dancing with the Stars,” sat alongside Vernon Davis, the Super Bowl champion tight end who competed on the television show in 2020, and Jason Cerda, a Latin pop recording artist and choreographer with three Billboard Top 20 singles. Photographs from the floor show the panel’s paddles raised at 10. Julie Donaldson, the FOX5 DC anchor who spent four seasons in the Washington Commanders’ broadcast booth, emceed with Kyle Arrington, a Super Bowl champion cornerback with the New England Patriots.
Four charities stood behind this year’s competition: Make-A-Wish Mid-Atlantic, the Raymond A. Wood Foundation, the Jennifer Bush-Lawson Foundation, which supports low-income mothers in the Washington area, and Operation Renewed Hope Foundation, which houses homeless veterans. The season opened on September 10 with a launch party at the Tower Club in Vienna, where founder and chair Maria Coakley David, who owns Fred Astaire Dance Studios in Fairfax with her husband, Jim David, introduced the cast and the causes they would represent.
As of publication, the gala had not posted its complete 2026 results, including the Celebrity Challenge winner and the final total raised on the night. What is already on the record is the larger number: nine seasons in, a Fairfax dance studio’s idea has moved $2,553,800 into Washington-area charities, one foxtrot at a time.
The Social Register’s event directory tracks the season’s galas, benefits, and society evenings. Plan your next evening there.
