Carolyn Adams
Carolyn Adams joined the Paul Taylor Company in 1965. During her 17-year tenure, she created roles in such Taylor masterpieces as Esplanade, Airs, Cloven Kingdom and Big Bertha, and distinguished herself in Taylor’s classic Aureole. She is co-founder of Dancing Legacy and the Repertory Etudes Collection; founding artistic director of the New York State Summer School of the Arts School of Dance; and faculty emerita at the Juilliard School. She is also on the faculty at the Ailey and Taylor Schools and chairs the External Affairs Committee of the Taylor Board of Advisors. She earned a BA degree from Sarah Lawrence College and an MSW degree from Fordham University. Since 1998, she and her sister, Julie Adams Strandberg, have been developing dance initiatives that address the importance of access, education, and preservation, producing documentaries, Repertory Etudes, teaching guides, and curricular content. Carolyn is married to former Paul Taylor dancer, Robert Kahn.
Kenneth Archer
Millicent Hodson (choreographer/dance historian and graphic artist) and Kenneth Archer (scenic consultant and art historian) reconstruct lost ballets and create new productions through Ballets Old & New, London, staging work worldwide with major ballet companies. Hodson and Archer write articles and collaborate on films about their ballets and do lectures and workshops internationally. The Lost Rite (2014), their book with photographer Shira Klasmer, was translated into Russian (2015) by the Vaganova Academy, St Petersburg. Archer wrote Roerich East and West (Parkstone, English/French,1999) and Hodson her trilogy on reconstructing Nijinsky’s choreography (Pendragon, 1996, 2008). Currently, with Elizabeth Kiem and her Trapeze Press, they are publishing five bijoux books on reconstructing early Balanchine. They have received various grants and awards, including a fellowship at The Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU in 2017. Their critically anticipated revival of Skating Rink (1922) at Stockholm’s Royal Opera was cancelled due to the pandemic, but it may be staged for the ballet’s centenary next year.
Patricia Beaman
Patricia Beaman is Artist-in-Residence at Wesleyan University and on the faculty of the Open Arts department at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. As a member of the New York Baroque Dance Company, she appeared in numerous opéra-ballets, and as a Baroque, Neo-Baroque, and contemporary dancer, she has performed in the US, Europe, and beyond. Her research includes exploring the juxtaposition of 18th century French theatrical dance and analytic postmodern dances of the 1960s. She is the author of World Dance Cultures: From Ritual to Spectacle and was a recent Fellow at The Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU.
Kim Bears-Bailey
Kim Y. Bears-Bailey, Artistic Director/PHILADANCO, is a Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) graduate of The University of Arts. Ms. Bears-Bailey joined PHILADANCO in 1981. A 1992 Bessie Award recipient, (The New York Dance and Performance Award), she represented PHILADANCO at the 1988 American Dance Festival, performing works of Dr. Pearl Primus, and appeared in the movie Beloved. Ms. Bears-Bailey is an Associate Professor of Dance at the University of the Arts. She is one of few artists granted permission to remount the works of many world-renowned choreographers including Talley Beatty, Pearl Primus, Louis Johnson, and Gene Hill Sagan. She received the Mary Louise Beitzel Award for Distinguished Teaching and the Silver Star Alumni Award from UArts. Ms. Bears-Bailey is a member of the International Association of Blacks in Dance’s Next Generation of Leaders. She choreographs and directs an annual “Dancing with the Stars of Philadelphia” event. Ms. Bears-Bailey received the 2017 “Bring it to the Marley” Icon Award and the 2018 “Legacy Award” from DCNS Dance.
Diana Byer
Diana Byer trained with Antony Tudor and Margaret Craske and at the Juilliard School. She is the Founder and Artistic Director of New York Theatre Ballet and New York Theatre Ballet School. She is a répétiteur for The Antony Tudor Trust, a member of the Board of Directors of the Dance Notation Bureau, an Education Ambassador for The New York Pops, on the Dance Portal Advisory Board of The Children’s Museum of Manhattan, and on the Selection Committees of The Bessies and Clive Barnes Awards. She has staged the ballets of Antony Tudor for American Ballet Theatre and The Hartt School and the ballets of Agnes de Mille for the Alabama Ballet and American Ballet Theatre. She coached the principals for the Columbia Pictures film, Center Stage. Ms. Byer was named the 2018 Humanitarian Hero in Good Housekeeping Magazine.
Donald Byrd
Donald Byrd is the Artistic Director of Spectrum Dance Theater, a TONY nominated (The Color Purple) and Bessie Award winning (The Minstrel Show) choreographer. He has created works for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Dance Theater of Harlem, The Joffrey Ballet among others; and worked extensively in theater and opera including The NY Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater, The 5th Avenue Theater, Seattle Opera, Dutch National Opera, and San Francisco Opera. Awards, prizes, and fellowships includes Doris Duke Artist Award, James W. Ray Distinguished Artist Award, Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts (Cornish College of the Arts), Masters of Choreography Award (The Kennedy Center), Fellow at The American Academy of Jerusalem, James Baldwin Fellow of United States Artists, Resident Fellow of The Rockefeller Center Bellagio, Fellow at the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue (based at Harvard), and the Mayor’s Arts Award for his sustained contributions to the City of Seattle.
Pat Catterson
Pat Catterson has choreographed 114 works, receiving many accolades including a 2011 Solomon R. Guggenheim Choreography Fellowship and multiple Choreography Fellowships from the NEA, the CAPS Program, the Harkness Foundation, as well as a Fulbright Grant. She has been a guest artist all over the US and in Europe and on the faculties at Sarah Lawrence College, UCLA, the Juilliard School, and the Merce Cunningham Dance Studio, among many others. Her writing has been published in Ballet Review, JOPERD, Attitude Magazine, Dance Magazine Online, the Getty Iris, and Dance Research Journal. She first performed Yvonne Rainer’s work in 1969 and since 1999 has been her rehearsal assistant, the principal custodian of Rainer’s early works, and, until her retirement from performing in 2018, her dancer. Her most recent restagings were for the Bloodlines Project of the Stephen Petronio Company and for MoMA’s exhibit Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done.
Phil Chan
Phil Chan is a co-founder of Final Bow for Yellowface, and most recently served as the Director of Programming for IVY, connecting young professionals with leading American museums and performing arts institutions. He is a graduate of Carleton College and an alumnus of the Ailey School. As a writer, he served as the Executive Editor for FLATT Magazine and contributed to Dance Europe Magazine, Dance Magazine, Dance Business Weekly, and the Huffington Post. He was the founding General Manager of the Buck Hill Skytop Music Festival, and was the General Manager for Armitage Gone! Dance and Youth America Grand Prix. He served multiple years on the National Endowment for the Arts dance panel and the Jadin Wong Award panel presented by the Asian American Arts Alliance. He serves on the Leaders of Color steering committee at Americans for the Arts, the International Council for the Parsons Dance Company, and the Advisory Board of Dance Magazine. He is the author of Final Bow for Yellowface: Dancing Between Intention and Impact, and a 2020 New York Public Library Dance Research Fellow.
Seán Curran
Seán Curran’s career in the arts spans 30 years, beginning with traditional Irish step dancing as a child in Boston. Curran is known for his early performance work with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, receiving a Bessie award for his role in Secret Pastures, and as an original New York City cast member of STOMP! His 30 works for Seán Curran Company are characterized by collaborations across artistic genres and have toured to over 100 venues in the U.S., Europe and Asia. A sought-after choreographer and director for opera and theatre, notable projects include Salome (Opera Theatre of St. Louis, San Francisco Opera, Opera Montreal, San Diego Opera); Much Ado About Nothing, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream for The Shakespeare Theater; Shalimar the Clown, Ariadne on Naxos, Nixon in China, and Daughter of the Regiment at Opera Theater of St. Louis; NYC Opera productions of L’Etoile, Alcina, Turandot, Haroun, and the Sea of Stories, Capriccio, and Acis and Galetea; Shakespeare in the Park’s As You Like It; the Metropolitan Opera’s Romeo and Juliette; and Broadway’s James Joyce’s The Dead, Cymbeline, and The Rivals at Lincoln Center Theater. A graduate and faculty member of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Curran now serves as Arts Professor and Chair of the Department of Dance.
Nancy Dalva
Writer and documentarian Nancy Dalva is the Scholar-in-Residence of the Merce Cunningham Trust. The writer/producer of the Mondays with Merce webseries and Film Library, she continues her investigations and interviews within the Cunningham world, while also writing (and speaking) about dance and the visual arts for an enlivening variety of publications and venues. Her favorite format is the long form interview. You can write to her at dalva@mercecunningham.org; or find her at the Merce Cunningham Facebook Page, and on Twitter @MerceTrust and @NancyDalva.
Michael Dinwiddie
Michael D. Dinwiddie is a playwright and associate professor in the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University. A dramatist whose works have been produced in New York, regional, and educational theater, he has served as playwright-in-residence at Michigan State University, Florida A&M University, St. Louis University and La Universidad de Palermo in Buenos Aires, Argentina. His awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Playwriting and a Walt Disney Fellowship at Touchstone Pictures, among others. In 2018 Michael was inducted into the College of Fellows at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Writers Guild of America, the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, and the Black Theatre Network.
Janet Eilber
JANET EILBER has been Artistic Director of the Martha Graham Dance Company, School and Archives since 2005. Her direction has focused on creating new forms of audience access to the Graham legacy. These initiatives include contextual programming, educational and cultural partnerships, licensing of the Graham classics, use of new media and technology, commissions for today’s top choreographers and creative events such as the Lamentation Variations. Earlier in her career, Ms. Eilber worked closely with Martha Graham. She danced many of Graham’s greatest roles, had roles created for her by Graham, and was directed by Graham in most of the major roles of the repertory. She has since taught, lectured, and directed Graham ballets internationally. Apart from her work with Graham, Ms. Eilber has performed in films, on television, and on Broadway received four Lester Horton Awards for her reconstruction and performance of seminal American modern dance.
Kristen Foote
New York City–based dancer, performer, teacher, Limón reconstructor and coach, KRISTEN FOOTE is originally from Toronto, Canada. She joined the Limón Dance Company in 2000 where she was a principal dancer until 2017. Ms. Foote performs as a soloist and is a founding member of Dance Heginbotham, featuring in Peter and the Wolf, the Company’s annual Guggenheim Museum collaboration with Isaac Mizrahi. Foote was a Radio City Rockette, performed with Mark Morris Dance Group, was featured in Rashaun + Silas’ 3-D dance film Tesseract, directed by Charles Atlas, and appeared in Solange Knowles’ An Ode To. Foote received her M.F.A. from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. She has been highlighted in, and written for, Dance Magazine and presented reconstruction lectures at NYU, the German Consulate in NY, and the 2019 Il Corpo nel Suono conference. Foote is on faculty at LaGuardia High School, where she teaches the Limón technique.
Lise Friedman
Lise Friedman is on the arts faculty of the Gallatin School at NYU. Her teaching includes the examination and design of a wide variety of publications and the relationship of popular culture to visual media, performance, and fashion. She is co producer of the feature documentary If the Dancer Dances and is coauthor of Letters to Juliet, which inspired the idea behind the eponymous film. She was editor of the award-winning quarterly Dance Ink and is the author of several books, including two Children’s Book of the Month Club Selections. From 1977-1984, she was a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.
Jean-Pierre Frohlich
Born in New York, Mr. Frohlich trained at the School of American Ballet. As a child he danced the role of the Prince in George Balanchine’s Nutcracker, and performed in Don Quixote. In 1972, he joined the New York City Ballet and became soloist in 1979. Mr. Frohlich became a Repertory Director for NYCB in 1990 and assisted Jerome Robbins in staging his ballets and overseeing his repertoire at NYCB. Mr. Robbins appointed Mr. Frohlich to be a member for the Robbins Rights Trust. Mr. Frohlich has staged works for numerous companies including The Royal Ballet, American Ballet Theater, San Francisco Ballet, Bolshoi, and the Paris Opera Ballet, and is the recipient of three Isadora Duncan Dance Awards (1998, 2006, 2019). In 2011, Mr. Frohlich was appointed Artistic Administrator/Director of the newly formed NYCB’s “MOVES” touring company and has choreographed several works for SAB and NYCB workshops. In 2014, his Varied Trio (in four) had its New York premier at Lincoln Center and is currently in the NYCB repertory. He choreographed and directed HOME, a short dance narrative film. In 2015 Mr. Frohlich was awarded Officier des Arts et Lettres from the French Government’s Ministry of Culture.
Lynn Garafola
Lynn Garafola is Professor Emerita of Dance at Barnard College, Columbia University. A dance historian and critic, she is the author of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and Legacies of Twentieth-Century Dance, and the editor of several books, including The Diaries of Marius Petipa, André Levinson on Dance (with Joan Acocella), José Limón: An Unfinished Memoir, and The Ballets Russes and Its World. She has curated several exhibitions, including Dance for a City: Fifty Years of the New York City Ballet, New York Story: Jerome Robbins and His World, Diaghilev’s Theater of Marvels: The Ballets Russes and Its Aftermath, and, most recently, Arthur Mitchell: Harlem’s Ballet Trailblazer. A former Getty Scholar, she is a recipient of fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers as well as an SDHS 2017 Distinction in Dance Award. Editor for several years of the book series Studies in Dance History, she has written for Dance Magazine, Dance Research, The Nation, and many other publications. A member of Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, founder of the Columbia seminar “Studies in Dance,” and the organizer of conferences, symposia, and public programs on the history of ballet and twentieth-century dance. She has just finished a book about the choreographer Bronislava Nijinska that will be published by Oxford University Press.
Gino Grenek
GINO GRENEK (Dancer) is originally from Rochester, New York. He is a graduate of both Dartmouth College (Engineering Sciences and Studio Art, 1994) and New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts (M.F.A. in Dance, 1996). As a member of the original Broadway cast, Grenek performed in Matthew Bourne’s award-winning reinterpretation of Swan Lake (1998-1999). For eight years, he toured with the Stephen Petronio Company across five continents (1999-2007). He has assisted Petronio with the creation of new works for Norrdans (Sweden, 2004), Washington Ballet (United States, 2007), Ballet de Lorraine (France, 2009), and National Dance Company Wales (United Kingdom, 2010 and 2013). In 2007, Grenek was honored with a New York Dance and Performance Bessie Award for his body of work with Stephen Petronio. He returned to the company from 2009 through 2016 and also served as the Assistant to the Artistic Director during this period. In addition to teaching Petronio technique and restaging Petronio repertory around the world, he also performed in Punchdrunk’s Off-Broadway production Sleep No More at the McKittrick Hotel (2015-2018).
Mariah Heley-Wright
Mariah Heley-Wright joined New York Dance Project in 2020, dancing across genres in works such as Petipa’s Raymonda, Maleek Washington’s Word, Gerald Arpino’s Light Rain, and new work by Ephrat Asherie and Brittany Markle. She began her training with the Australian Ballet School’s interstate training program and in 2016 moved to New York City to train with the Joffrey Ballet School, dancing leading roles such as the Sugarplum Fairy in The Nutcracker and the principal in Balanchine’s Walpurgisnacht. In 2019 she was awarded gold at the New York World Grand Prix, along with a scholarship to attend the competition in Russia.
Millicent Hodson
Millicent Hodson (choreographer/dance historian and graphic artist) and Kenneth Archer (scenic consultant and art historian) reconstruct lost ballets and create new productions through Ballets Old & New, London, staging work worldwide with major ballet companies. Hodson and Archer write articles and collaborate on films about their ballets and do lectures and workshops internationally. The Lost Rite (2014), their book with photographer Shira Klasmer, was translated into Russian (2015) by the Vaganova Academy, St Petersburg. Archer wrote Roerich East and West (Parkstone, English/French,1999) and Hodson is author of a trilogy on reconstructing Nijinsky’s choreography (Pendragon, 1996, 2008). Currently, with Elizabeth Kiem and her Trapeze Press, they are publishing five bijoux books on reconstructing early Balanchine. They have received various grants and awards, including a fellowship at The Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU in 2017. Their critically anticipated revival of Skating Rink (1922) at Stockholm’s Royal Opera was cancelled due to the pandemic, but it may be staged for the ballet’s centenary next year.
Theresa Ruth Howard
Theresa Ruth Howard is a former ballet dancer and journalist, having performed with Dance Theater of Harlem and Armitage Gone! Dance. She has written for the Source, Pointe, and Tanz (Germany) Opera America (US), and is a contributing writer for Dance Magazine. Ms. Howard is the founder and curator of MoBBallet.org (Memoirs of Blacks in Ballet), the digital platform that preserves, presents, and promotes the contributions and stories of Black artists in the field of Ballet. Ms. Howard works as a diversity strategist and consultant assisting artistic and executive school directors and board members of ballet and opera organizations to better understand, design, and implement programs and initiatives. In addition to curating spaces of conversation and reflection, she is a sought-after speaker, lecturer, and panelist both in academia and the art world. She has presented at Dance USA, Dutch National Ballet, Collegium for African Diaspora Dance, The Museum at FIT, Royal Opera House, and Opera America.
Celia Ipiotis
Celia Ipiotis is the creator, producer and moderator of the education series EYE ON DANCE (EOD). Ms. Ipiotis has lectured and served on college faculties including Hunter College, Rutgers University, and Radcliffe; sat on local, state and national performing arts selection panels; advised WNET’s Dance In America, and led arts forums at major arts institutions. A dancer, choreographer, dance company director, and videographer, Ms. Ipiotis oversees restoration of the EOD Legacy Archive—recently designated “an irreplaceable national dance treasure.” Along with video dance artist Jeff Bush, she has created award-winning video dance titles and launched EOD to propel dance literacy. After having earned her BFA at Ohio State University and MA at The New School, Ipiotis secured choreography fellowships and held artist-in-residence positions throughout the USA. Invited to be a Bessie Awards Nominator and member of the Columbia University Dance Scholars Seminars, Ms. Ipiotis also manages the on-line cultural journal EYE ON THE ARTS. Eye On Dance Video Sampler (Vimeo). Contact: eyeonthearts@gmail.com
Deborah Jowitt
Deborah Jowitt wrote about dance for The Village Voice for 44 years and taught at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts for about 40 years. She currently writes for artsjournal.com. Her books include Time and the Dancing Image (1988) and Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance (2004). Her critical biography of Martha Graham is forthcoming.
Jonas Klabin
Jonas Klabin was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, and has a deep passion and commitment for the arts. Besides executive director of Stephen Petronio Company, he is founding director for oZ., an arts production company in Rio de Janeiro that since 2008 has produced over 25 projects in the performing arts, visual arts, and film, including licensed works. Among them are award-winning theatrical productions such as Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Red Light Winter, Grey Gardens – The Musical, The Elephant Vanishes, Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, Mondo Machete, Ophelia’s Shadow Theatre, and exhibits for artists such as Eija-Liisa Ahtila and Chantal Akerman. He worked as theatre director, playwright, and script and lyrics translator for several of the company’s projects, and was responsible for co-directing and co-programming the Glaucio Gill State Public Theatre and sequentially the Café Pequeno Municipal Public Theatre, both in Rio de Janeiro, under the very successful multidisciplinary Câmbio Artistic Residency Program, with over 160 different productions.
Hari Krishnan
Hari Krishnan is a Bessie and Dora Award nominee dance artist, scholar, and teacher. He is the Artistic Director of Toronto-based company inDANCE and Chair of the Department of Dance at Wesleyan University. He holds a PhD in Dance from Texas Woman’s University. Krishnan’s research areas include queer identities in dance performance, contemporary dance from global perspectives, colonialism, post-colonialism, and Indian dance, Bharatanatyam in Tamil cinema, and the history of courtesan dance traditions in South India. His new monograph, Celluloid Classicism: Early Tamil Cinema and the Making of Modern Bharatanatyam has been published by Wesleyan University Press. He continues to be commissioned internationally for his bold and transgressive choreography.
Patricia Lent
Patricia Lent was a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (1984-1993) and White Oak Dance Project (1994-1996). She later taught elementary school at P.S. 234 in Lower Manhattan (1998-2007). In 2009, Lent was named a trustee of the Merce Cunningham Trust, and currently serves as the Trust’s Director of Licensing. Lent began teaching technique and repertory workshops at the Merce Cunningham Studio in the late 1980s. In recent years, she has staged Cunningham’s work for numerous companies, conservatories, schools, and museums worldwide. Lent was the principal stager for Night of 100 Solos: A Centennial Event, presented at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in April 2019 in celebration of the 100th anniversary of Merce Cunningham’s birth.
Lauren Lovette
Lauren Lovette is a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet and an acclaimed independent choreographer. In her time with the company she has earned both the Janice Levin Award and the Clive Barnes Award for dance. She has created works for the New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre’s Studio Company, among others. In 2019 Ms. Lovette was named Artist-in-Residence for Damian Woetzel’s prestigious Vail Dance Festival. In 2018, she was awarded a Virginia B. Toulmin Fellowship for Women Leaders in Dance at The Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU. Since December 2018, Ms. Lovette has served as Artistic Chair of the Board of Groove With Me, an organization that offers hundreds of young women free dance and movement classes, with the goal of providing a safe and nurturing environment in which to practice self-expression and explore potential.
Alastair Macaulay
Alastair Macaulay is a critic and historian of the performing arts. In 2007-2018, he was chief dance critic of The New York Times; in 1994-2007, he was chief theatre critic of The Financial Times in London. In 2019, he was a director’s fellow at the The Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU; in 2020 and 2021, he has been curating and presenting New York City Center’s online series Studio 5 Live @ Home. He is preparing a critical biography of the choreographer Merce Cunningham.
Julie Malnig
Julie Malnig is a professor in The Gallatin School at NYU. She holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies and is the author of Dancing Till Dawn: A Century of Exhibition Ballroom Dance and editor of Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy Sham, Shake: A Social and Popular Dance Reader. A recent recipient of a fellowship from NYU’s Center for Ballet and the Arts, she also writes extensively on historical and contemporary dance and performance. Malnig is also a former editor of Dance Research Journal and former editorial board chair of The Congress on Research in Dance. She served for many years as the Arts Program Chair of The Gallatin School.
Rashaun Mitchell
Rashaun Mitchell is a choreographer, performer and teacher living and working in NY. He is a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of the 2012 NY Dance and Performance Award (Bessies) for Outstanding Emerging Choreographer. His choreography has been commissioned by New York Live Arts, Danspace Project, Baryshnikov Arts Center, REDCAT, ICA Boston/Summer Stages Dance, La Mama Moves Festival, Mount Tremper Arts, Skirball Center at NYU, the Museum of Arts and Design, The Lab, ODC, and at numerous site-specific venues and universities. Other awards include a 2007 Princess Grace Award: Dance Fellowship, a 2013 Foundation for Contemporary Art Grant to Artist, and a 2011 New York Dance and Performance (Bessie) Award for Sustained achievement in the work of Merce Cunningham, 2004-2012. Mitchell is a Cunningham Trustee and licensed stager of the repertory. He has taught master classes throughout the country and is currently on faculty at NYU Tisch School of the Arts.
Michael Novak
Michael Novak became the second Artistic Director in the history of the Paul Taylor Dance Foundation in September 2018, after being personally selected by Founder Paul Taylor to be the official successor of the title upon his passing. A critically acclaimed dancer of the Company from 2010 to 2019, Mr. Novak earned a nomination for the Clive Barnes Foundation Dance Award for his debut season. He is a proud alumni of Columbia University’s School of General Studies, where he received his BA in Dance, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude with Departmental Honors. Under Novak’s direction, the company continues its place as one of the world’s premiere modern dance companies. “I am determined to further Paul Taylor’s vision,” Mr. Novak said upon assuming the role of Artistic Director, “and to bring his gems to every part of the globe… to honor past dance makers and encourage future artists… and to make sure modern dance remains a transformative force for good in our lives long into the future.”
Mayu Oguri
Mayu Oguri is a principal dancer for commission projects of choreographer Christopher Caines. She has danced with New York Theatre Ballet for 6 years as a contract principal dancer. Ms. Oguri has performed at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Whitney Museum, and MoMA, and has appeared in the Netflix series “Pose”. Born in Japan, she has studied and performed dance internationally. After attending The School of Tokyo Ballet, Ms. Oguri moved to France, where she graduated from the Conservatoire Supérieur de Paris and the Conservatoire National Supérieur Musique et Danse de Lyon. She is the recipient of awards from Concours International de Danse de Biarritz in France and the Valentina Kozlova International Ballet Competition in New York. She has worked with Jeune Ballet de Lyon and is a member of the Ballet Association of Japan.
Susan Gluck Pappajohn
Susan Pappajohn’s first career began at age 17, when she joined the New York City Ballet. She danced for eight years under the leadership of George Balanchine, Peter Martins, and Jerome Robbins performing numerous leading roles nationally and internationally. After her performing career, Ms. Pappajohn received a BA from Harvard College and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business. Passionate about the emerging social and educational opportunities associated with digital media, she co-founded Time Warner Electronic Publishing, one of Time Warner’s first digital media groups. Her other positions include Director of IBM Corporate Marketing and VP of Marketing Management for IBM Global Services. Currently, Ms. Pappajohn serves as a strategy and leadership consultant for both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors, for organizations in fields such as technology and artificial intelligence, digital media, venture philanthropy, and arts and culture. She is deeply involved in NYC’s cultural sector and is currently a Trustee of the George Balanchine Trust and a board member of Dance/NYC, The Joyce Theater Foundation, and the Professional Children’s School.
Wendy Perron
Wendy Perron had a 30-year career as a dancer/choreographer. She danced with the Trisha Brown Company in the 1970s and choreographed more than 40 works for her own group. She has taught dance at Bennington, Princeton, and Purchase, and has lectured on contemporary dance across the country. In the early ’90s she was associate director of Jacob’s Pillow, for which she organized the International Improvisation Workshop. The Editor-in-Chief of Dance Magazine from 2004–2013, Ms. Perron has also written for The New York Times, The Village Voice, SoHo Weekly News, vanityfair.com, and publications in Europe and China. In 2011 she was the first dance artist to be inducted into the New York Foundation for the Arts’ Hall of Fame. Her acclaimed book, The Grand Union: Accidental Anarchists of Downtown Dance,1970–1976, was published by Wesleyan University Press last fall. Currently she teaches dance history at The Juilliard School and a graduate seminar at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Stephen Petronio
For over 35 years, Stephen Petronio (Founder and Artistic Director, Stephen Petronio Company) has honed a unique language of movement that speaks to the intuitive and complex possibilities of the body informed by its shifting cultural context. He has collaborated with a wide range of artists in many disciplines over his career and holds the integration of multiple forms as fundamental to his creative drive and vision. He continues to create a haven for dancers with a keen interest in the history of contemporary movement and an appetite for the unknown. Mr. Petronio was born in Newark, New Jersey, and received a B.A. from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he began his early training in improvisation and dance technique. He was greatly influenced by working with Steve Paxton and was the first male dancer of the Trisha Brown Dance Company (1979 to 1986). He has gone on to build a unique career, receiving numerous accolades, including a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, awards from the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, an American Choreographer Award, a New York Dance and Performance Bessie Award, and a 2015 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award.
Yvonne Rainer
Yvonne Rainer, one of the founders of the Judson Dance Theater (1962), made a transition to filmmaking following a fifteen-year career as a choreographer/dancer (1960-1975). After making seven experimental feature-length films, she returned to dance in 2000 via a commission from the Baryshnikov Dance Foundation (After Many a Summer Dies the Swan). Her dances and films have been seen throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia in concert halls and museum retrospectives. Her publications include Feelings Are Facts: a Life, Work: 1961-73, The Films of Yvonne Rainer, A Woman Who…: Essays, Interviews, Scripts, Moving and Being Moved, and Revisions. Her awards include two Guggenheim Fellowships, a MacArthur Fellowship, a U.S.A Fellowship, and a Yoko Ono Courage Award.
Guillermo Rios
Guillermo Rios joined New York Dance Project in 2019. A native of Panama, he began his career with the National Folkloric Dance company and studied ballet with Raisa Gutierrez before dancing with the National Ballet of Panama from 2014-19. Guillermo is enjoying broadening his artistic horizons as a member of NYDP, recently working with such varied and esteemed artists as Sonia Alonso, Maleek Washington, Tyler Gilstrap, Janice Rosario, and Ephrat Asherie. Guillermo is thrilled to be dancing Light Rain, the iconic work of Joffrey Ballet founder Gerald Arpino. He also holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Panama and is interested in teaching and injury prevention.
Nicole Duffy Robertson
Raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Nicole Duffy Robertson is a co-founder and Associate Artistic Director of New York Dance Project, a hybrid company that bridges divides and creates opportunities in dance. She danced with the Joffrey Ballet for over a decade, performing classic works by Joffrey, Arpino, Ashton, Balanchine, Cranko, DeMille, Limon, Massine, and Nijinska, as well as contemporary repertory by Alonzo King, David Parsons and many others. Ms. Duffy is répétiteur for The Gerald Arpino Foundation, dedicated to passing on the historical Joffrey repertory. Most recently, she staged Arpino’s Light Rain and Birthday Variations and assisted Trinette Singleton in the reconstruction of Robert Joffrey’s Gamelan. She teaches master classes and workshops nationally and internationally, guest teaches for Ballet Hispanico and STEPS on Broadway. Nicole is a graduate of NYU’s Gallatin School. Her writing has been published in The Massachusetts Review, Eye on Dance and the Arts, and the NYU journal Esferas.
Leslie Satin
Leslie Satin is a choreographer, dancer, writer, and member of the Gallatin Arts Faculty at New York University. As faculty member/guest artist, she has taught at Bard College, The Ailey School/Fordham University, State University of NY, University of Chichester/UK, Hamidrasha/Israel, Centro Coreográfico do Rio de Janeiro/Brazil, and other venues. Her dances and workshops have been presented in NYC, elsewhere in the US, Europe, and South America. Satin co-edited a special issue on performing autobiography in Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory. She is developing a manuscript joining the experimental writing of Georges Perec to dance. Her performance texts and writings about dance and its intersections with Perec, space and site, visual art, score-derived composition, and autobiography appear in many journals and edited collections, including Literary Geographies, Choreographic Practices, Dance Research Journal, Performing Arts Journal, and Georges Perec’s Geographies. Satin holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from NYU.
Nick Sciscione
Nicholas Sciscione (Dancer and Assistant to the Artistic Director, Stephen Petronio) was born and raised in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He graduated magna cum laude with a BFA in Dance from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. Sciscione has worked with Joshua Beamish, Kyle Marshall Choreography, and 10 Hairy Legs. He is a grateful student of Susan Klein and the Klein Technique. Sciscione joined Stephen Petronio Company in 2011 and has been the Assistant to the Artistic Director since 2016. He was a 2017 NY Bessie Awards Nominated performer.
Esther M. Siddiquie
Esther M. Siddiquie is an artist working through performance, family archives, writings and technology. Her works have been presented at the New Lab in Brooklyn, IAC, Tanzhaus NRW, German Consulate General in New York, Kunstmuseum Bochum, Dance Umbrella Festival, The Place and Sadler’s Wells. She is a guest artist with Gracef**l Collective, Charlotte Triebus and part of the collective B.EEF. She holds an MFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts and works as an Artistic Associate at the School of Dance at University of the Arts.
Adam Sklute
Since 2007, Adam Sklute has expanded Ballet West’s outlook, repertoire, and visibility with exciting company and world premieres, increased touring, heightened public exposure, and greater focus on the Ballet West Academy. He began his career with The Joffrey Ballet, rising through the ranks from dancer to Associate Director. From September 2016 to October 2017, Mr. Sklute took on the dual position of CEO and Artistic Director overseeing both administrative and artistic operations of Ballet West. Under his tenure, the company has been invited to present at some of the most prestigious stages in the nation, including The Kennedy Center, New York City Center, and was recently featured at The Guggenheim Museum’s Works and Process series. An internationally sought after teacher and adjudicator, Mr. Sklute is a frequent judge for Youth America Grand Prixe and other prestigious ballet competitions. He has received numerous awards, including Utah’s Enlightened 50; The Bronze Minuteman Award for Outstanding Service to Utah and The Nation; Utah Diversity Connection’s Business Award for outstanding commitment to diversity initiatives; and most recently, Westminster College’s Martin Luther King Unsung Hero Award.
Jason Samuels Smith
Jason Samuels Smith (Tap Dancer, Choreographer, Performer) received an Emmy Award, Dance Magazine Award, American Choreography Award, and Gregory Hines Humanitarian Award. Television/film and choreography credits include Outkast’s Idlewild; Black Nativity; Psych; Secret Talents of the Stars (MYA); So You Think You Can Dance; Dean Hargrove’s Tap Heat. Stage credits include Broadway’s Bring in Da’Noise, Bring in Da’Funk; Debbie Allen’s Soul Possessed, and Imagine Tap!. His touring works include India Jazz Suites as documented in Upaj: Improvise, A.C.G.I. Tap Company, Going The Miles, Chasin’ The Bird, and Dormeshia’s And Still You Must Swing. Director of L.A. Tap Festival and Tap Family Reunion, Mr. Samuels Smith supports DRA/Broadway Cares, Tied to Greatness, CTFD/The Actors Fund, Groove with Me, TapTakeOverHarlem, amfAR, and AHF among others. He promotes respect for tap dance and its history, developed a pro tap shoe by BLOCH, and creates opportunities for upcoming generations as a global ambassador and advocate.
Gus Solomons Jr
Gus Solomons jr—Dancer, Dance maker, Dance reviewer, and Actor. Graduated M.I.T.: architecture; danced with Martha Graham, Donald McKayle, Merce Cunningham, Pearl Lang, and many others; founded and directed Solomons Company/Dance (1972-1994) and PARADIGM (1996-2011). Mr. Solomons is now a freelance performer.
Sally Sommer
Sally Sommer, Ph.D., is a dance writer, historian, and filmmaker whose writings on dance and popular culture have appeared in journals, newspapers and magazine publications such as Dance Research Journal, The Drama Review, The New York Times, Dance Magazine, The Village Voice, Performing Arts Journal, Le Monde; she has contributed to five encyclopedias, three books, and wrote Ballroom (Milkweed Press). She co-edited a two-volume anthology, Perspectives on American Dance, 2018, University Press of Florida, and worked on three PBS documentaries, Watch Me Move; Tap: Dance America; and the Peabody Award-winning Everybody Dance Now! She has taught at New York University, Duke University, and is Professor Emerita, School of Dance, Florida State University. She produced and directed Check Your Body at the Door (2012) about extraordinary dances and dancers of the 1990’s underground club scene in NYC and is currently a consultant on a documentary film about Loie Fuller.
Ken Tabachnick
Ken Tabachnick is currently the Executive Director of the Merce Cunningham Trust, where he oversees all operations and long-term planning. Prior to that, Ken worked as a Senior Associate at AEA Consulting. From 2013-2016, he was Deputy Dean at the Tisch School of the Arts, NYU and prior to joining Tisch, he was the first Dean of the School of the Arts at Purchase College, where he oversaw the arts. Before joining academia, Mr. Tabachnick was the General Manager for New York City Ballet (NYCB), where, in addition to overseeing administrative aspects of operations, he supervised the renovation of the David H. Koch Theater. He began his career as a lighting designer and is a Bessie Award winner for his work with Stephen Petronio. Ken earned his J. D. from Fordham Law School in 1996 and holds a 3rd-degree black belt in Taekwondo.
Michael Trusnovec
For over two decades, Michael Trusnovec danced with the Paul Taylor Dance Company, creating new works with Mr. Taylor, as well as choreographers including Pam Tanowitz, Larry Keigwin, Margie Gillis and Doug Varone. Additionally, Mr. Trusnovec was Associate Rehearsal Director, and currently serves as Director of Licensing and as a repetiteur of Mr. Taylor’s dances. He received a 2018 Dance Magazine Award, a 2006 Bessie Award, and was a 1992 YoungArts awardee and Presidential Scholar in the Arts. He serves on the Board of Directors of Dance Films Association, and is a co-founder of the Asbury Park Dance Festival. Mr. Trusnovec most recently performed Molissa Fenley’s State of Darkness at the Joyce Theater, and appeared with New York City Ballet’s Winter 2020 Lincoln Center performances of George Balanchine’s Episodes.
Sylvia Waters
Sylvia Waters began her dance studies in junior high and earned her Bachelor of Science in Dance from The Julliard School. As a professional dancer, she toured in the European company of Black Nativity, as well as in Donald McKayle’s Black New World. She also worked with Maurice Béjart’s company in Brussels and at the Summer Olympics in Mexico City. As a member of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Ms. Waters toured the globe as a principal dancer before shifting her focus to Ailey II when Alvin Ailey chose her to become the artistic director. She is the recipient of honorary doctorates from the State University of New York at Oswego and The Juilliard School. She has received a Bessie Award, the Legacy Award as part of the 20th Annual IABD Festival, Syracuse University’s Women of Distinction Award, and the prestigious Dance Magazine Award. Ms. Waters served on panels including the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Princess Grace Awards. Currently, she leads The Ailey Legacy Residency, a lecture, technique, and repertory program for college-level students that looks definitively into the history and creative heritage of Alvin Ailey. She is also a consultant to the Ailey Archives.
Maia Wechsler
Maia Wechsler is an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose films have been broadcast and seen around the world. Her latest work, If the Dancer Dances, was a New York Times Critic’s Pick and was released theatrically across the United States. Prior to working in film, Ms. Wechsler was special correspondent in Paris for U.S. News and World Report, managing editor of the Paris city magazine Passion, and a reporter/writer at The Times in Trenton. She gained experience in documentary filmmaking working with Academy Award-winning director Barbara Kopple and the Maysles, among many others. Ms. Wechsler devoted her early life to dance. More recently, she became a certified yoga instructor and spent two years teaching women at Rikers Island.
Janet Wong
Janet Wong is the Associate Artistic Director of New York Live Arts and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company. She leads the performance and humanities programming at Live Arts with Artistic Director Bill T. Jones and has been working closely with Jones since 1996. Wong is also a projection designer, having designed all of the company’s multimedia works since 2006, and collaborates with other artists such as Aaron Landsman, Daniel Bernard Roumain, and Heidi Latsky.