Throughout his career, The Junkman has been involved with dance. His early commissions from Bella Lewitzky included sound sets in which the dancer's choreographed movements activated objects on the stage that were integrated into the musical score. His music has also been choreographed by Murray Louis and Ellen Sinopoli.

Recently, his work with Twyla Tharp has gained great critical acclaim. The first encounter was the inclusion of five selections of The Junkman's CD Junk Music in her critically acclaimed Known By Heart for the American Ballet Theatre. The second and most recent was the creation of Surfer at the River Styx, a joint commission from The Kennedy Center and The American Dance Festival.

New York Times
For Surfer, she has found a perfect collaborator in Donald Knaack, whose music she used so wittily in a now celebrated duet for Ethan Stiefel and Susan Jaffe in her Known by Heart for The American Ballet Theatre. Mr. Knaack meets Ms. Tharp on the same maverick level of energy and rhythm.

The Washington Post
Surfer has many stars-Knaack's music being one of them. He is Max Roach extended - the virtuoso drummer in the dumpster.

Dance Magazine
Knaack created an exceptional and beautifully textured percussion score, full of multicultural references, providing Tharp with the musical match for one of her finest works to date.

The Village Voice
Donald Knaack's startling score combines taped elements with percussion that Knaack creates in the pit on a battery of objects - pails, pots and pans, kitchen utensils, hubcaps, bowls of keys and more. The sounds can be terrifying or as gentle as a gamelan in lyrical mode.

New York Magazine Surfer at the River Styx matches its clamorous, foreboding score by Donald Knaack with an implied scenario of doing battle with overwhelming, perhaps cosmic forces.

The New Yorker
Surfer at the River Styx, performed to Donald Knaack's rambunctious score for percussion...