NDT in NYC

NEW YORK CITY   Nederlands Dans Theater returns to New York City Center for the first time since Emily Molnar took the helm. William Forsythe’s N.N.N.N. is joined by a pair of U.S. premieres: Imre and Marne van Opstal’s The Point Being and Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar’s Jakie. April 3–6. nycitycenter.org. —Courtney Escoyne

Centering Latina Voices

SAN FRANCISCO  The Carmen premiering at San Francisco Ballet this month won’t look or sound the same as usual. Choreographer Arielle Smith (a 2022 “25 to Watch” pick) sets the tale in contemporary Cuba—specifically at the family restaurant to which the titular heroine returns with her new husband after the death of her mother—while refocusing the story on Carmen and emphasizing the depth and complexity of the characters with cinematic flair. Escamillo, whom Carmen falls in love with, is recast as a woman, and the new score by Arturo O’Farrill only references the familiar Bizet opera as it layers in Cuban folk music. Joining the new ballet on the Dos Mujeres program is Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Frida Kahlo–inspired Broken Wings (which SFB artistic director Tamara Rojo commissioned and starred in during her English National Ballet tenure). The evening marks the first double bill choreographed by women and the first full program dedicated to Latinx stories at SFB. April 4–14. sfballet.org. —CE

Eclipsing All Else

NEW YORK CITY  Ahead of the Great North American Eclipse on April 8, the feath3r theory alights at NYU Skirball to premiere a devised dance theater work about a group of friends who team up to watch the celestial event and miss it. Raja Feather Kelly draws on Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death, the popularity of the science fiction concept of the multiverse, and the ways social media exacerbates loneliness and society’s inability to face it for The Absolute Future (or Death, Loneliness, and The Absolute Future of the Multiverse, or How to Cover the Sun with Mud). April 5–6. nyuskirball.org. —CE

Carnival of Politics

SEATTLE  Choreographed and directed by Francesca Harper and performed by dancer Wendy Whelan and poet Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Carnival of the Animals reframes the Camille Saint-Saëns classic to consider the animals of a political jungle as it responds to the January 6 insurrection and contemplates the future of democracy. The SOZO-produced work premieres at the Meany Center for the Performing Arts on April 6. sozoartists.com. —CE

Memories of Matriarchs

HOUSTON  With three “Bessie” Awards, the Rome Prize, and a sumptuous stage presence, Jasmine Hearn is one of the most acclaimed contemporary dance artists to come out of Houston. But Memory Fleet: A Return to Matr, a performance, installation, and online archive that preserves the memories of eight Black Houston matriarchs, is their first major commission in their hometown. Commissioned by DiverseWorks, the multidisciplinary project includes original sound scores, choreography, and garments, along with guest performances by former Houston Ballet soloist Sandra Organ Solis and additional vocals and performances by local dancers and “Houston Aunties,” as Hearn calls them. The premiere at Houston Met April 6–7 will be followed by tours to Pittsburgh and New York City. diverseworks.org. —Nancy Wozny

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

COSTA MESA, CA  American Ballet Theatre presents the North American premiere of Woolf Works, Wayne McGregor’s three-act meditation on the writings of Virginia Woolf, at Segerstrom Center for the Arts. Inspired by her novels Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando, and The Waves as well as her letters and diaries, the critically acclaimed ballet eschews narrative adaptation to take a stream of consciousness approach to the modernist writer’s oeuvre. April 11–14. abt.org. —CE

Packed With Premieres

CHICAGO  South Chicago Dance Theatre returns to the Auditorium Theatre for an evening filled to the brim with premieres by Donald Byrd, Joshua Blake Carter, Monique Haley, Tsai Hsi Hung, Terence Marling, and founding executive artistic director Kia Smith. April 27. southchicagodancetheatre.com. —CE

The Weight of a Lie

ZURICH  Cathy Marston brings her penchant for literary adaptation to Atonement, her first new work as Ballett Zürich’s director. In Ian McEwan’s novel and Joe Wright’s acclaimed film adaptation, teenage writer Briony Tallis tells a deliberate lie about her older sister’s lover and spends the rest of her life attempting to make up for its unintended consequences. Marston transfers the action to the world of ballet, making Tallis a choreographer while wrestling with the story’s questions about the fallibility of memory and the nature of self-deception and guilt. April 28–June 7. opernhaus.ch. —CE

A Jazzy Centennial

Dance artists join the nationwide celebration of iconic jazz drummer and composer Max Roach.

Max Roach 100 at The Joyce Theater

NEW YORK CITY  Richard Colton curated The Joyce Theater’s Max Roach 100 program, which will feature a new work to Roach’s Percussion Bitter Sweet album by Ronald K. Brown for Malpaso Dance Company and EVIDENCE, A Dance Company; Rennie Harris Puremovement in The Dream/It’s Time; and a solo by tap star Ayodele Casel set to a series of duets by Roach and Cecil Taylor. April 2–7. joyce.org. —CE

Bill T. Jones at Harlem Stage

NEW YORK CITY  Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company revisits Degga, a 1995 collaboration between Jones, Max Roach, and Toni Morrison, as part of Harlem Stage’s E-Moves program. Also on offer is a new work by Roderick George. April 19–20. harlemstage.org. —CE

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Ayodele Casel and Arturo O’Farrill

“It’s frightening and glorifying at the same time.”

To hear tap dancer and choreographer Ayodele Casel and jazz musician Arturo O’Farrill talk about their artistic partnership is a lot like watching them improvise together onstage: You sense their joy, gratitude, faith, and, perhaps most importantly, Zen-like connection. “The thing that’s boggled my mind the most and also settled me right away in working with Arturo is that feeling of familiarity and home and trust and play,” says Casel.

That rush of seemingly contradictory feelings is something O’Farrill experiences during performance, too. “When I get in front of Ayodele and next to a piano and throw down, it’s frightening and glorifying at the same time,” he says. “It’s like playing in a cosmic sandbox.”

When Casel was filming Chasing Magic, a 2021 virtual performance at The Joyce Theater with O’Farrill (and several other collaborators), she was confident enough in their improvisatory mind-meld to not meticulously plan what their contribution to the concert might be. “I said, ‘Arturo, do you want to come to The Joyce in, like, 10 minutes?’ ” she remembers. “He came onto the stage, we had a brief conversation, and then we jumped right in. Fourteen minutes later, [director] Torya [Beard] was like, ‘Okay!’ ”

Casel cites an ability to deeply, meditatively listen to each other as necessary for that kind of extraordinary encounter. O’Farrill likens it to a letting go of expectation and orchestration. “When you first meet somebody, you think, Let’s fill in every dot,” he says. “You have to get past the ‘Oh my god, what are we doing?’ Now, we know that we don’t know what we’re doing. But as you get older you’re like, ‘Wow, this is exactly what art is supposed to be.’ ”

David Roussève and cari ann shim sham*

“We’re wielding our swords together.”

Choreographer, writer, and director David Roussève and multidisciplinary artist cari ann shim sham* have a nearly 25-year artistic relationship that could perhaps best be described as fluid. They met when shim sham* was a student of Roussève’s at the University of California, Los Angeles. Since then, shim sham* has been, at different times, his cinematographer, his film editor, and even a one-time performer in Roussève’s choreography. But she’s also been his teacher, as when Roussève first forayed into dance film and needed help finding his “sea legs,” as he puts it, as well as his creative collaborator in more recent projects, like 2018’s Halfway to Dawn, with choreography and text by Roussève and video by shim sham*.

“What I appreciate about cari ann is that she’ll say, ‘I don’t know if this is going to work. Let’s just try it,’ ” says Roussève. That kind of experimental ideation fuels their partnership in a way Roussève had never experienced previously. “I used to think, I need a collaborator who can execute my vision,” he says. “Over time, you realize a good collaborator is going to have better ideas than you.”

Shim sham* credits their chemistry to the ways in which they balance each other. “David is a wordsmith,” she says. “I’m not strong with words, but I’m very strong with visuals and imagery. David is so good at setting up metaphors that I can then visualize through imagery.”

At the root of their ease and trust is a shared belief in art’s ability to provoke. Roussève describes their aesthetic as “socially interested” and “askew.” “We both have really strong activist standpoints in our work,” agrees shim sham*. “We’re wielding our swords together.”

Cynthia Oliver and Jason Finkelman

“It’s magic. It is sleight of hand.”

Unlike most artistic collaborators, choreographer Cynthia Oliver and composer Jason Finkelman don’t get the downtime that comes from being able to say goodbye at the end of a long day. That’s because Oliver and Finkelman, who have been working together for almost as long as they’ve known each other, are married.

That relationship can sometimes lead to, say, freer discussion than what might take place between two artists still learning each other’s sensitivities. “There’s the moment in rehearsal when I tell the dancers that Jason is coming in, and we’re going to have little conversations in the corner,” says Oliver. “I tell them there’s going to be tension—we might even fight a little bit—but don’t be alarmed. This is what we do.”

Their process has taken many shapes over their decades together­, but Finkelman always demands that the score be in service to Oliver’s space-devouring, nuanced movement. “I’m always looking for what the choreography is calling for,” he says. “Something to drive the dance? To underscore the text? To propel or emphasize the silence?”

Despite its longevity, their partnership shows no sign of stagnation or fatigue. “It’s magic. It is sleight of hand,” says Oliver. “We don’t even know how it manifests, but ultimately something comes out of the fairy dust of these conversations—a commitment to making something together.”

Raja Feather Kelly and Michael R. Jackson

“It feels like we were always together.”

Months before they started working together on the musical A Strange Loop in 2018, choreographer Raja Feather Kelly and playwright-composer-lyricist Michael R. Jackson kept hearing from mutual colleagues that they needed to collaborate. They chalk this up partly to their similarities as people and artists—“We’re both Black gay men, both queer artists who have a similar iconoclastic, experimental, counterculture point of view,” says Jackson—but also to their immediate, uncanny connection. “I can’t recall a time before our collaboration or friendship began, or what it was like in the early parts of it, because it feels like we were always together,” says Jackson. “Raja just came in, and he was magical.”

That magic helped them communicate easily despite their admittedly­ different artistic disciplines. “We both really love popular culture,” says Kelly, as an example. “In the moments where it might be difficult to find a common language, we’ll find analogies for each other: ‘This is a Kanye-Kardashian/OJ Simpson kind of thing’ versus ‘This is Mean Girls meets Heathers meets [Beetlejuice’s] Lydia Deetz kind of thing.’ ”

They stretch each other, too, which leads to an occasionally challenging but ultimately deeper collaborative practice. “On A Strange Loop, I had come late in the process with an entirely rewritten opening number,” says Jackson. “Raja was like, ‘I need a dance break,’ which I had not planned for—I’d never written a dance break. But his provocation to me was that that was important, so he sent me home and I worked on it. And then we had a dance break in the opening number.”

The end result is always something neither could have conceived of without the other. As Kelly says, they are “artists who are influencing one another because of our desire to understand art better.”

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Clarissa Rivera Dyas

Freelance dancer and choreographer

Clarissa Rivera Dyas thrives most in collaboration with other artists, and layers different art forms with sophistication. She created Something Remains, her 2022 evening-length choreographic debut, with visual artist and composer Jakob Pek. In it, Dyas and her three dancers pushed the boundaries of physicality as they danced with long rolls of paper and paint, serving as both brushes and canvas. Her dynamic movement, which defied predictability as it showcased both strength and vulnerability, served as the perfect counterpoint to Pek’s experimental score.

Dyas, a sought-after performer for artists like Robert Moses, prioritizes disrupting norms, challenging expectations, and embracing the raw, vulnerable, and even sloppy in her work. “How can we involve the idea of failure?” she asks. “As a Black queer artist, there is little room for failure. How can we allow for failure?”

In 2021, after recurring experiences of being tokenized in the largely white-led Bay Area dance scene, she co-founded the nonhierarchical artist collective RUPTURE alongside fellow queer Black artists jose e. abad, Stephanie Hewett, Gabriele Christian, and Styles Alexander. “It’s about being in process with collective rest, play, and somatic experimentation as resistance,” she says, “challenging what it means to be in dance and performance.” A RUPTURE event might include dance, live sound design, spoken word, visual art, multimedia elements, community engagement, improvisation, and play. In June, the cohort will present a new work at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture.

—Rachel Caldwell

Danielle Swatzie

Freelance dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker

If any contemporary dance artist captures the spirit of Atlanta’s up-and-coming generation, it’s Danielle Swatzie. Take her solo The Fleeting Serenade. In the section set to Ella Fitzgerald’s rendition of the jazz standard “Angel Eyes,” Swatzie whirls across the stage, her legs slicing arcs, arms gesturing in staccato bursts as she embodies the emotional turmoil churning beneath the song’s smooth surface.

A graduate of Philadelphia’s University of the Arts, Swatzie is equally compelling in front of or behind a camera. She creates an aura of honesty, thoughtfulness, and fearless compassion combined with a drive to unpack­ inner emotional landscapes. Her dance films, which illuminate a vision of a more equitable world, have been garnering increasing attention. META, a solo reflecting on family, generational trauma, and feminine empowerment, received the 2021 BronzeLens Film Festival Award for Best Music/Dance Video. Her growing roots through concrete was selected for American Dance Festival’s 2023 Movies By Movers festival. The film features seven young women artists, Black and white, who join together in precarious group counterbalances to confront individual experiences with racism and find wholeness as a community—as Swatzie says, through “radical connection and radical love to manifest radical change.”

—Cynthia Bond Perry

Grace Rookstool

Soloist, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre

Last season, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre’s statuesque Grace Rookstool made a pair of major debuts. The then–corps-member embodied emotional resilience as Mina in Michael Pink’s Dracula and showed off her commanding stage presence and technical prowess as Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty. She dances with an assuredness that artistic director Adam McKinney says got her promoted to the rank of soloist for this season. “She is a consummate professional, a classicist, and has a natural sensibility to embody music,” he says of the 23-year-old.

Born and raised on Whidbey Island, Washington, Rookstool trained at Pacific Northwest Ballet School and in its Professional Division Program. While there, she was selected for an exchange program with Dresden Semperoper Ballett and danced in its production of La Bayadère. She joined PBT’s corps de ballet in 2019.

A truly versatile dancer, Rookstool says she most enjoys high-flying jumps. Expect her career to soar in 2024.

—Steve Sucato

Erina Ueda

Dancer, Giordano Dance Chicago

Erina Ueda’s breakout moment with Giordano Dance Chicago came last April in Kia Smith’s Luminescence. With a cast of 22 dancers filling the cavernous Harris Theater, the piece starts and ends with Ueda completely alone, in a solo showcasing her unbridled facility and unflappable joy. Giordano’s dancers are known for their silky jazz technique balanced with razor-sharp precision. Ueda has that and more, bringing honesty and authenticity to the company’s rep. 

Ueda earned a BFA in dance with a minor in psychology from the University of Arizona, not too far from her hometown of Chandler, Arizona. Born in Japan, she was the first Asian woman to join the 60-year-old Giordano company. She’s upped its digital game, too, as the company’s social media manager and video content producer since her arrival in 2022.

—Lauren Warnecke

Donovan Reed

Dancer, A.I.M by Kyle Abraham

Nature metaphors spring to mind as you watch A.I.M by Kyle Abraham’s Donovan Reed. They seem driven by wind, buoyed by water, licked by fire. They might stop a liquid phrase cold with a thorny angle—not breaking the spider’s thread of movement, but rather snapping it taut. They can make the unlikeliest shapes look organic. (Though these qualities never feel less than authentic to Reed, they are very Abraham-esque: Reed, who’s danced with A.I.M since 2018, can channel the choreographer with uncanny precision.)

But Reed is an unmistakably human performer, too. In Abraham’s MotorRover—a duet that responds to Merce Cunningham’s 1972 work Landrover—they temper Cunningham’s signature formality with playfulness and wit, carrying on a danced conversation with partner Jamaal Bowman that seems full of little inside jokes. Reed’s a force of nature with a soul.

—Margaret Fuhrer

Kaitlyn Sardin

Irish and hip-hop dancer

You might know her as @kaitrock: the artist whose one-of-a-kind, Irish-dance-meets-hip-hop mashups have earned her an avid following on Instagram and beyond. While traditional Irish dance, with its strict verticality, might seem at odds with more full-bodied and grounded ways of moving, Kaitlyn Sardin finds their common thread: rhythm. Through drumming feet, swiping arms, or swiveling knees, she can tease out the intricacies of whatever sound is fueling her. (Beyoncé, Tinashe, and Victoria Monét are a few current favorites.) In every aspect of her short-form solos—including her colorful fashion choices—she is unabashedly herself.

A former competitive Irish dancer with a foundation of razor-sharp technique (she grew up training at the Watters School in Orlando), Sardin broadened her dance horizons as a student at Hofstra University, where she began adding forms like dancehall and vogue to her vocabulary. She has toured with the Chicago-based Trinity Irish Dance Company and is gearing up for new projects in 2024. From February 14–March 3, you can find her performing in Jean Butler’s What We Hold at the Irish Arts Center in Manhattan. 

Being Black and queer in the mostly white, sometimes culturally conservative world of Irish dance, she’s aware that younger dancers who break with convention might see themselves in her. Her advice for them? “Just go for it. Don’t be afraid, and the world will embrace you.”

—Siobhan Burke

Jake Roxander

Corps member, American Ballet Theatre

Watching Jake Roxander as Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet last July, it was hard to believe that he was making his Metropolitan Opera House debut in the role. Without a trace of nerves, the 21-year-old American Ballet Theatre corps member fully inhabited the character—cocky, loveable, magnetic, with flashes of hot-tempered recklessness. Then there was his dancing: Each solo was thrillingly virtuosic and highly musical, with pirouettes that paused momentarily on relevé—just enough time for him to give an impish grin before he was on to the next feat. 

Roxander comes from a family of dancers; he and his brother Ashton, a principal with Philadelphia Ballet, were trained by parents David and Elyse Roxander at their studio in Medford, Oregon. He spent a season with Philadelphia Ballet’s second company before joining ABT’s Studio Company in 2020, where he stood out in Balanchine’s Stars and Stripes and a duet from Twyla Tharp’s Known by Heart.

ABT has wasted no time pushing Roxander to the forefront since he joined the main company in 2022. This fall he danced principal roles in Harald Lander’s Études and Alexei Ratmansky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, and debuted in the role of Puck in Sir Frederick Ashton’s The Dream. With his powerful, unforced technique and boy-next-door charm, he is making a name for himself, and fast. 

—Amy Brandt

Jindallae Bernard

Choreographer, filmmaker, and corps member, Houston Ballet

Jindallae Bernard’s portrayal of the jealous Lady Rokujo in Nao Kusuzaki’s Genji, an Asia Society Texas Center commission, exuded chilly charm and understated, seductive sensuality. Her quiet authority and stoic elegance also served her well in Stanton Welch’s neoclassical Tu Tu at Houston Ballet, though she proved equally capable of turning up the voltage in Balanchine’s Stars and Stripes. And her talents extend to choreography and filmmaking, too.

Bernard joined Houston Ballet’s corps in 2022. She’s been with the organization since she was 6 years old, rising through the Academy and Houston Ballet II before landing an apprenticeship in 2021. During her training, she took on several choreographic opportunities. Her whimsical short dance film Phase, created in 2020 during a virtual summer program composition class, so caught the eye of artistic director Stanton Welch that the company showcased it during its first live performance after the pandemic pause. “Her work feels so high-end, from the story to her use of color and light, and her directorial insight,” says Welch. He selected her to premiere a new ballet in December for the company’s annual Jubilee of Dance, for which she created Parodie de l’histoire du ballet. Says Bernard: “My goal is to contribute in as many ways as I can.”

—Nancy Wozny

Kia Smith

Executive artistic director, South Chicago Dance Theatre

Last year’s premiere of Memoirs of Jazz in the Alley proved a perfect showcase for choreographer and director Kia Smith. The evening-length “dance opera” exemplified her choreographic voice—note-by-note precision, fluid torso movement, unexpected gesture, powerful unison—and marked the debut of her 7-year-old company, South Chicago Dance Theatre, at the Auditorium Theatre, its largest venue to date. The work paid homage to Smith’s childhood experiences at her musician father’s weekly Jazz in the Alley gatherings. That background surfaces in the way her dances feel born out of the detail and nuance of jazz music.

Smith’s success lies not only in her artistic acumen but also in the way she considers dance and the business of it on a large scale. The Chicago native is both artistic and executive director of SCDT, which has expanded its presence at home through the South Chicago Dance Festival and abroad with its Choreographic Diplomacy international exchange program. Amidst a growing list of outside commissions—notably including the rousing Luminescence for Giordano Dance Chicago’s 60th anniversary last spring—this year Smith will bring her company on tour to Seoul, South Korea, and return to the Auditorium Theatre with another world premiere.

—Maureen Janson

Hohyun Kang

Sujet, Paris Opéra Ballet

A morbid teenager involved in a murder-suicide isn’t exactly an easy first major role. Yet from the moment South Korea’s Hohyun Kang, who joined Paris Opéra Ballet in 2018, stepped out as Mary Vetsera in Mayerling last season, she found logic and purpose in Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s choreography. As she draped herself around Paul Marque, her Prince Rudolf, her lines sizzled with dramatic tension.

It was an arresting breakthrough for the 28-year-old, who had been on balletomanes’ radar for her easy, radiant musicality and technique in ballets such as Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco. A graduate of Korea National University of Arts, she was noticed by William Forsythe shortly after joining POB and landed a soloist role in his Blake Works I, before quietly making her way up the ranks and becoming a sujet (soloist) last season. She is already slated for a Kitri debut in April—and may well follow in the footsteps of Paris’ first South Korean étoile, Sae Eun Park.

—Laura Cappelle

Karla Puno Garcia

Musical theater choreographer

When last year’s Tony Awards had to go without a script and instead lean on dance to set the scene, host Ariana DeBose knew just the choreographer who could pull it off: Karla Puno Garcia. The resulting opening number brought viewers on a danced journey through the United Palace theater, using Garcia’s spunky, sassy movement to amp up excitement for the night. Later, Garcia’s unapologetically feminine flair and super-satisfying musicality showcased DeBose and Julianne Hough in a duet that felt both timely and timeless.

Garcia was the first woman of color to choreograph the Tonys. But it’s far from her only brush with the event. A Broadway vet who’s been dancing on the Great White Way since her college days at New York University, she previously performed with the casts of Gigi and Hamilton at the Tonys and was a dancer and associate choreographer in 2021 when Sergio Trujillo choreographed the opening number. Soon, she may even be up for a Tony herself: She’s making her Broadway choreographic debut this January with Days of Wine and Roses, which she co-choreographed with Trujillo.

For his part, Trujillo thinks she’s “unstoppable” as a choreographer: “Karla’s like a musician that can play all the instruments with her feet and arms and body,” he says. “She comes across as incredibly gentle, but she’s a force to be reckoned with.”

—Jennifer Heimlich

Kuu Sakuragi

Soloist, Pacific Northwest Ballet

With a raw physicality matched with bighearted sensitivity, Kuu Sakuragi is quickly heading toward rockstar status at Pacific Northwest Ballet. He creates electrifying spectacles onstage, delivering one jaw-dropping performance after another. His big technical jumps look as if he’s floating on air, an impression only heightened by his gravity-defying turnin David Parsons’ Caught, while his warmth and humility come through as deference to the other dancers onstage, as in Alexei Ratmansky’s Wartime Elegy. A PNB DanceChance student and Professional Division graduate, Sakuragi joined the corps in 2020 after dancing with Alberta Ballet for three years and was promoted to soloist in November. “Certain dancers live more completely in the moment when they’re dancing,” artistic director Peter Boal says. “Nureyev, Wendy Whelan, Carla Körbes come to mind. Kuu is one of them.” 

—Gigi Berardi

Sydnie L. Mosley 

Founding executive and artistic director, SLMDances 

In the spring and summer of 2020, conversations about racial equity and social justice erupted across the dance field. How could exclusionary systems be transformed? How could imbalances of power be corrected? How could people better care for one another?

For the choreographer, performer, educator, and writer Sydnie L. Mosley, these questions were nothing new. The Baltimore-born Mosley has been envisioning a future free from oppression—with dance as one way to get there—at least since 2010, when she founded her Harlem-based collective SLMDances. For people just beginning on that journey, she and her collaborators became a guiding light.

A self-described “creative home for trans, cis, nonbinary, queer, disabled, fat, masculine presenting, Black women and femmes of many generations,” SLMDances takes seriously the term “collective,”operating through a model of shared leadership and responsibility. Their community-engaged, joyfully interactive works have tackled issues like street harassment (The Window Sex Project, 2012) and the economics of dance (BodyBusiness, 2015). Their latest, PURPLE: A Ritual in Nine Spells, honors the Black feminist playwright, poet, and dancer Ntozake Shange, whose legacy Mosley extends through her own intertwining of movement and language. Premiering at Lincoln Center last summer, PURPLE marked a turning point for Mosley in its visibility and scale. Her vision persists; what’s changed, perhaps, is the world’s readiness to join her.

—Siobhan Burke

Laila J. Franklin

Independent dance artist

Contradictions power Laila J. Franklin’s charisma. She can shift from sly comedy to earnest sincerity over the course of an eight-count. She moves with disarming frankness, making even complex gestures look straightforward and open; she also seems to keep part of herself closed to the audience, protective of her own mystery.

That sense of unknowable-ness sits right at the center of choreographer Miguel Gutierrez’s I as another, which Gutierrez and Franklin performed in New York City last spring. The intimate, probing duet suggests we can never truly know each other, or even ourselves—but we can try. In I as another, Franklin showed a kind of virtuosic empathy, living fully inside Gutierrez’s creative vision without erasing herself. Forget walking in someone else’s shoes—she can dance in their feet.

Franklin, who earned a BFA from Boston Conservatory in 2019 and an MFA from the University of Iowa in 2021, is also a choreographer, teaching artist, and writer. Maybe over time we’ll get to know her better through her own work. Maybe she’ll always keep part of herself a mystery. Either way, she’ll be holding our attention.

—Margaret Fuhrer

Lucy Fandel

Independent dancer and choreographer

In the semi-improvised, place-based dance Lucy Fandel creates, the land is something alive, not just a backdrop. “The inhaling clouds, quivering blades of grass, swarms of gnats, or the occasional romping dog pulled us in,” she writes of her and Bailey Eng’s creative explorations during a residency in Spain. In a section of their filmed field notes, Fandel responds viscerally to these movements in the environment while dancing atop a rocky outcropping, at once fluid and angular as she articulates through her hands, rib cage, pelvis. 

A dance artist, writer, and arts outreach worker, Fandel grew up in Concord, Massachusetts, and Beaulieu-sur-Mer, France. “Switching languages forces you to think differently,” she says. She later crossed borders yet again, moving to Montreal to study contemporary dance and sociology at Concordia University. Fandel’s attachment to sociology field work influenced her dance perspective and, today, she’s at the forefront of the burgeoning sustainable eco-dance movement in Canada. She’s right at home engaging with the landscape during her outdoor research (“conversations,” as she calls them), examining the vectors of science and dance while sensitizing people to the natural environment in all its ambiguity and transformation.

—Philip Szporer

Miguel Alejandro Castillo

Choreographer and freelance performing artist

Onstage, Miguel Alejandro Castillo emanates a warmth and wit that creates instant connection. An incredibly committed performance in Faye Driscoll’s whirlwind ensemble work Weathering last April highlighted this generosity. As part of a precarious flesh sculpture that teetered off the edges of a spinning raft, Castillo maintained an active, intense bond with his fellow performers, even as his ponytail swept the ground and it became increasingly unclear whether he was being supported or smothered.

Castillo brings a bright presence and big love into the studio, Driscoll says, alongside an impressive conceptual curiosity. “He’s embracing the full range of human experience,” she says, “connecting the light and the dark.” In his own choreography, the Venezuelan artist, who started in theater, explore­s his native country’s diaspora, blending forms to forge a kind of future folklore.

Castillo recently completed a New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks residency and acted as movement director for the David Lang opera Prisoner of the State. He’ll keep building on that momentum in 2024: In addition to choreographing John Adams’ opera The Gospel According to the Other Mary for Volksoper in Vienna and touring Weathering, Castillo will be a choreographer in residence at both PAGEANT performance space in Brooklyn and Abrons Arts Center in lower Manhattan. 

—Candice Thompson

Naomi Funaki

Tap dancer and choreographer

During the in-person debut of Ayodele Casel’s Chasing Magic, Japanese tap artist Naomi Funaki commanded attention with her clear, confident sounds. She modulated her tones and phrasing to cover a broad emotional spectrum, from contemplative to exuberant, as she floated through a duet, in a role originated by Casel, with joyful ease. “Her technical prowess and rhythmic voice are dynamic and contain so much depth and nuance,” says Casel, who invited Funaki to make her choreographic debut last April during Casel’s Artists at the Center engagement at New York City Center.

Casel is not alone in her sentiments. Funaki was the recipient of a 2023 Princess Grace Award and is an apprentice with Dorrance Dance. She performed in the December premiere of Caleb Teicher’s reworked Bzzz, a tap-meets-beatbox show for which she also served as assistant choreographer, and in January will show off her range in Leonardo Sandoval’s samba-inflected I Didn’t Come to Stay with Music From The Sole.

Ultimately, Funaki’s goal is to bring the spirit and professionalism of the New York City tap community back to Japan. Casel has every faith that she will, and along the way inspire a whole new generation of tap dancers.

—Candice Thompson

Olivia Bell

Corps member, New York City Ballet

Some dancers demand your attention. New York City Ballet’s Olivia Bell politely requests it. But the elegantly understated dancer is no wallflower. A fervent musicality powers her fine-grained technique, giving it a lush, romantic sweep. 

Bell, who only joined New York City Ballet’s corps in May, still has surprises in store. At last summer’s Vail Dance Festival, she danced Balanchine’s Tarantella, a mile-a-minute showstopper that must have been nearly impossible to survive at Vail’s one-and-a-half-mile elevation. Bell handled the challenge with not just polish but sparkle, nailing the work’s witty musical phrasing and showing off the prodigious pirouettes that most of us had previously only seen on her Instagram page. Here’s to more surprises, and soon, on NYCB’s stage. 

—Margaret Fuhrer

Pauline Casiño 

Commercial dancer

Pauline Casiño booked her Broadway debut without an in-person audition. She learned about casting for Once Upon a One More Time, directed and choreographed by Keone and Mari Madrid, after the first round of auditions had already concluded and asked her agent to help find a way in. “I always knew of Keone and Mari,” she says. “As a fellow Filipino, I wanted to be part of something they’re creating.” Even though she had never taken class with the Madrids, let alone worked with them before, she landed the part of Esmeralda through a video submission. Onstage, she brought the ensemble character to life with her unforgettable fluidity, powerful femininity, and magnetic presence.

Casiño, who moved to the Bronx from the Philippines at age 12, grew up thinking dance was extracurricular. While studying chemistry in college, she danced in commercial choreographer Candace Brown’s The Soul Spot and BTS’ Love Yourself: Speak Yourself New Jersey concert, but it wasn’t until she graduated in 2020 that she fully embraced dance as her profession. Since then, she has performed with Anitta and Doja Cat at MTV’s Video Music Awards, as well as choreographed and directed her own dance visual. Only three and a half years into seriously pursuing a dance career, Casiño has already proved she has star quality. 

—Kristi Yeung

Rafael Ramírez

Flamenco dancer and choreographer

With fluid arms, deep, effortless lunges, supple contractions, and rapid, complex footwork, Rafael Ramírez spellbinds. But it is his old soul, which adds sensual vulnerability to his performances, that leaves an indelible impression.

Ramírez’s prowess in both traditional and contemporary flamenco captivates across venues, from Spain’s most prestigious tablaos to international theaters with the companies of famed choreographers such as David Coria and Rafaela Carrasco. He’s also garnered critical recognition: In 2021, he won the highly coveted Desplante Masculino at the International Cante de las Minas Festival and, last year, received the 2023 Best New Artist Award from the prestigious Festival Jerez for his Entorno. He carried that momentum into the 2023 Bienal de Málaga, where he premiered Recelo, a collaborative work with prize-winning dancer Florencia Oz exploring the primal emotion of fear, and into a 10-city U.S. tour of his solo show, Lo Preciso, this past fall. With more performances of Recelo ahead, Ramírez enters 2024 on the road to international recognition.

—Bridgit Lujan

Yuval Cohen

Corps member, Philadelphia Ballet

An elegant carriage and genteel demeanor make Yuval Cohen an ideal storybook prince. But behind that refinement lies impressive power. His explosive, elastic leaps and strong, centered turns had everyone buzzing at last summer’s USA International Ballet Competition in Jackson, Mississippi. The 21-year-old Israeli dancer, a newly promoted Philadelphia Ballet corps member, was the first from his country to medal, taking home the senior bronze.

Cohen’s USA IBC coach was his longtime mentor, Nadya Timofeyeva, with whom he trained at the Jerusalem Ballet School. In 2018, she took him to a competition in Russia, where he won first prize and a spot at the Vaganova Ballet Academy. After becoming the school’s first Israeli graduate in 2021, Cohen joined Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet. But the pandemic created visa complications, forcing him to return home that summer. 

Cohen joined Philadelphia Ballet II in October 2021 and became a company apprentice the following season. He’s already gained notice in a range of featured roles, including a Stepsister in Cinderella, the Gold variation in The Sleeping Beauty, and Escamillo in Angel Corella’s new production of Carmen, which premiered this fall.

—Amy Brandt

Sean Lew 

Commercial dancer and choreographer

In viral YouTube videos, two seasons of NBC’s “World of Dance,” performances with stars from Janet Jackson to Justin Bieber, and his own hour-long dance film, II, Sean Lew has won over millions of fans with his articulate athleticism, honest storytelling, and undeniable charisma. The 22-year-old is far from new to the industry, but he’s still taking his career in new directions. In 2023, he conquered his biggest fear: battling. “It’s not just if you’re good at dancing, then you can battle,” Lew says. “People live, breathe, and eat battling.” He amped up his fitness training and studied freestyle genres such as house and krumping, and, after a humbling early-round loss at his first battle, he went on to win the Red Bull Dance Your Style Los Angeles regionals in April. He then brought home the national title in May and represented the U.S. at the global competition in November.

Despite his newfound commitment to the competitive freestyle scene, Lew continues to grow his career in other areas. Over the last year, he launched his first fitness and dance intensive, Artist Range, with trainer Karl Flores; was a first-time creative director for Jackson Wang’s Coachella performance; and was a first-time co-producer on a Dermot Kennedy music video. “The beauty and curse of my life,” he says, “is I just want to do everything.”

—Kristi Yeung

Solal Mariotte

Independent choreographer and dancer, Rosas

In EXIT ABOVE — after the tempest, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s typically minimalistic world suddenly seemed looser and brighter. The reason? A new generation of dancers, led by French newcomer Solal Mariotte, who got his start in hip hop. The curly-haired 22-year-old acted as a mercurial leader, shifting easily from floor work to the air, launching himself into arresting dives to the floor.

At 18, looking for a challenge, Mariotte applied to P.A.R.T.S., the school founded by De Keersmaeker in Brussels, where he immersed himself in contemporary dance while co-founding a breaking crew, Above The Blood, on the side. In addition to joining Rosas in 2023, he is also developing projects with his crew and as a choreographer. In January, a new version of his solo Collages/Ravages will premiere at the prestigious Suresnes Cités Danse festival in France. With his influences now cross-pollinating­ in captivating ways, a shape-shifting career beckons.

—Laura Cappelle

Kamala Saara

Dancer, Dance Theatre of Harlem

Midway through William Forsythe’s Blake Works IV last April, Kamala Saara transfixed the audience in a soulful, introspective solo. She stretched her long limbs expansively, pulling every inch out of them before retracting dynamically into the next phrase. She seemed to be lost in a dream, her arms sweeping through an unseen atmospheric viscosity. And while the solo is deeply internal, Saara invited the audience at Dance Theatre of Harlem’s New York City Center season into her world. 

Saara, 21, grew up studying at the Yuri Grigoriev School of Ballet in Los Angeles, spent two summers at the Bolshoi Ballet Intensive in New York City, and at 16 was invited to Moscow to perform at the Bolshoi Ballet Academy’s annual gala. She moved to New York in 2019, training first with Andrei Vassiliev before entering the School of American Ballet. SAB’s focus on speed and lightness, she says, made her more versatile.

Meanwhile, then-DTH artistic director Virginia Johnson had had her eye on Saara since Chyrstyn Fentroy invited her to take company class at age 15. Saara joined DTH in 2020, shining in Stanton Welch’s Orange and Balanchine’s Allegro Brillante. This season, she takes on the principal role in Balanchine’s Raymonda-inspired Pas de Dix, adding a glamorous ballerina part to her repertoire. 

—Amy Brandt

Water Street Dance Milwaukee 

Contemporary dance company

In Milwaukee, ballet is king. But funders, dancers, presenters, and audiences are all sitting up and taking notice of Water Street Dance Milwaukee, giving the city the top-shelf contemporary company it deserves. The company, which rehearses in a suburban Milwaukee enclave, launched just as the pandemic hit, but still managed to build a roster of impeccable dancers, create a dance festival, and form pre-professional programs. The city’s dance community is mobilizing around Water Street’s momentum as the company produces new festivals, outdoor pop-up performances, and shared auditions. It performs all over the Midwest, but directo­r Morgan Williams’ goal is to take Water Street international. He sprinkles up-and-coming choreographers, like Kameron­ N. Saunders, Madison Hicks, Braeden Barnes, and Leandro Glory Damasco, Jr., into the rep alongside his own choreography. At just 33, he is a savvy director and choreographer with support from some of the region’s sharpest dance leaders and a long runway ahead.

—Lauren Warnecke

Header collage photo credits, left to right, top to bottom: Ryoko Konami, courtesy Naomi Funaki; Michelle Reid, courtesy Kia Smith; Todd Rosenberg, courtesy Giordano Dance Chicago; Laura Irion, courtesy Karla Puno Garcia; Rosalie O’Connor, courtesy American Ballet Theatre; Angela Sterling, courtesy Pacific Northwest Ballet; Kat Stiennon, courtesy Water Street Dance Milwaukee; Erin Baiano, courtesy New York City Ballet; Jay Spencer, courtesy Miguel Alejandro Castillo; Isabella Herrera, courtesy Kaitlyn Sardin; Julien Benhamou, courtesy Paris Opéra Ballet; Nir Arieli, courtesy Dance Theatre of Harlem; Steven Pisano, courtesy A.I.M by Kyle Abraham; Lawrence Elizabeth Knox, courtesy Houston Ballet; Alex Harmon/Red Bull Content Pool, courtesy Sean Lew; Robbie Sweeny, courtesy Clarissa Rivera Dyas; Anne Van Aerschot, courtesy Rosas; Bailey Bailey, courtesy Laila J. Franklin; C-Unit Studio, courtesy Pauline Casiño; Anita Buzzy Prentiss, courtesy Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre; Nicole Mitchell Photography, courtesy Danielle Swatzie; Gabriel Asensio, courtesy Rafael Ramírez; Camille Augustyniak, courtesy Lucy Fandel; Arian Molina Soca, courtesy Philadelphia Ballet; Travis Coe, courtesy Sydnie L. Mosley.

The post Introducing Our 2024 “25 to Watch” appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Comings & Goings

Dani Rowe has been appointed artistic director of Oregon Ballet Theatre, effective February 27.

Moscelyne ParkeHarrison has been appointed associate artistic director of Post:ballet. She will continue to serve as resident choreographer and company artist.

Alabama Ballet artistic director and CEO Tracey Alvey will retire at the end of the current season in June.

Royal Winnipeg Ballet artistic director and CEO André Lewis will step down in 2025.

Marco Goecke has been terminated from his position as ballet director of Hanover State Opera, following a widely-publicized physical assault on journalist Wiebke Hüster. The company plans to keep existing works of his in its repertory.

Elizabeth Sweeney has joined San Jose Dance Theatre as executive director.

At New York City Ballet, Emilie Gerrity, Isabella LaFreniere, Roman Mejia and Mira Nadon have been promoted to principal.

At Miami City Ballet, Dawn Atkins Hilty has been promoted to principal, Damian Zamorano to principal soloist, and Cameron Catazaro and Nicole Stalker to soloist.

At Birmingham Royal Ballet, Max Maslen and Lachlan Monaghan have been promoted to principal.

At Royal New Zealand Ballet, Kihiro Kusukami has been promoted to principal.

At Cincinnati Ballet, Katherine Ochoa has been promoted to soloist.

Tiit Helimets gave his final performance as a principal dancer at San Francisco Ballet on February 11. He will continue as a principal character dancer through the end of the 2023 season.

Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre principal Amanda Cochrane has retired.

Pacific Northwest Ballet principal Lesley Rausch will retire at the end of the current season. Her final performance is scheduled for June 11.

Royal Ballet principal Laura Morera will retire at the end of the 2022–23 season. Her final performance is currently scheduled for July 8. She will return to stage and coach repertory, including overseeing Kenneth MacMillan’s works for the MacMillan Estate.

National Ballet of Canada principal character artist Rebekah Rimsay will retire from the company in June. Principal dancer Piotr Stanczyk will retire in November.

Awards & Honors

Ayodele Casel and Rosy Simas have received 2023 Doris Duke Artist Awards, which include a $550,000 unrestricted grant. Previous recipients each received an additional $20,000 unrestricted grant.

Rennie Harris will receive the 2023 Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award, which includes a $50,000 prize, on June 9. Jody Gottfried Arnhold will receive the 2023 Balasaraswati/Joy Anne Dewey Beinecke Endowed Chair for Distinguished Teaching, which includes a $5,000 honorarium, on June 28.

Jasmine Hearn is the recipient of a 2023 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award, which includes a $45,000 unrestricted grant. The Merce Cunningham Award, with a grant in the same amount, went to devynn emory.

Akeim Toussaint Buck was awarded a 2023 Arts Foundation Futures Award, which includes a £10,000 unrestricted grant.

At the Venice Biennale, Simone Forti will receive the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, TAO Dance Theater the Silver Lion.

James Kudelka is among the recipients of the 2023 Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards for Lifetime Artistic Achievement.

The post News of Note: What You Might Have Missed in February 2023 appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Comings & Goings

Adam W. McKinney has been named artistic director of Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, effective in March.

Royal New Zealand Ballet artistic director Patricia Barker will retire from the company in March. Former artistic director of The Australian Ballet David McAllister will step in as interim artistic director on March 6.

Brooklyn Academy of Music artistic director David Binder will step down in July. He will serve as a consultant through January 2024 while the search for his replacement is underway.

The Shed founding artistic director Alex Poots is no longer the venue’s chief executive.

Mariana Zschoerper has been appointed artistic director of San Jose Dance Theatre. Augusto Silva has been promoted to artistic associate.

Maria Konrad has been named director of Nashville Ballet 2, beginning full time in August.

Meredith Sutton has been named interim director of the Dance Presenting Series at the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago.

Madison Ballet artistic director Ja’ Malik has additionally been named interim executive director following the departure of CEO Jonathan Solari.

National Dance Institute executive director Juan José Escalante will join Miami City Ballet as executive director beginning February 6.

Matt Cook has been named executive director of Blue13 Dance Company.

Aszure Barton has been named resident artist at Hubbard Street Dance Chicago.

Ananya Dance Theatre managing director Gary Peterson will retire at the end of October. He will be succeeded by managing director Jennifer Ward and operations manager Hadiya Shire, who began with the organization in January.

Jared Angle will retire from New York City Ballet at the conclusion of its winter season, giving his final performance February 4. He will join Royal Danish Ballet as a ballet master. Fellow NYCB principal Harrison Ball will give his final performance with the company on April 30.

Oregon Ballet Theatre principal Xuan Cheng will depart the company to join Hong Kong Ballet as a principal dancer and ballet mistress. Her final performance is scheduled for February 25.

Awards & Honors

Ayodele Casel, Ayako Kato, Noemí Segarra Ramírez, devynn emory and Antoine Hunter are among the 2023 United States Artists Fellows, which includes a $50,000 unrestricted grant.

Kayla Hamilton, Christopher Nuñez, Margaret Ogas, Valerie Oliveiro, Mx Oops, Kendra J. Ross, Joseph Tran and Anh Vo are among the 2023 Jerome Hill Artist Fellows. Each will receive $50,000 over two years.

Miguel Gutierrez has been named the New York Live Arts 2023–2024 Randjelović/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist.

Solo Badolo and Jacob Bamogo, Stefanie Batten Bland, Sidra Bell and Immanuel Wilkins, Yanira Castro, Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya, Laurel Lawson and Sydney Skybetter, Yvonne Meier, Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener, Prumsodun Ok, Jasmine Orpilla and Mariana Valencia are among the recipients of the 2023 Creative Capital “Wild Futures: Art, Culture, Impact” Awards, which grant up to $50,000 in direct project funding.

Diana Byer and Dianne McIntyre will receive Lifetime Achievement Awards and Deborah Damast the Mid-Career Award from the Martha Hill Dance Fund at a February 27 ceremony.

Chita Rivera will receive Signature Theatre’s 2023 Stephen Sondheim Award in a ceremony on April 3.

Josh Prince received the 2022 Joe A. Callaway Award for excellence in choreography for his work on Trevor: The Musical.

KJ Takahashi received New York City Ballet’s annual Janice Levin Dancer Award.

The post News of Note: What You Might Have Missed in January 2023 appeared first on Dance Magazine.

I come from a long line of Black dancers who have shaped the history of tap dance, despite being rendered virtually invisible. When I put my tap shoes back on in 1977 at age 26 and entered what we now refer to as “the resurgence of tap dance,” I was fortunate to meet many of the legendary dancers who created the history I was so desperately trying to understand. Through Willie Spencer I met Leon Collins, who became my teacher and mentor, and through Leon I met all the other players. At first, they were mostly men, such as Jimmy Slyde, Buster Brown, Honi Coles, Steve Condos, Eddie Brown, Cholly Atkins and Gregory Hines, to name a few.

Then, in 1982, I saw Debbie Allen and Gregory Hines tap dance on the telecast of the 54th Academy Awards, and that opened my eyes to the possibility of a Black woman as a professional tap dancer—wow.

However, it was Tina Pratt who took me by the hand and introduced me to jazz pianist Barry Harris; during a playful session with Barry, I really “got” the improvisational connection between musician and dancer. At the same time, I learned a great deal from Tina: She could really lay it down without compromising her femininity. 

Later, I was embraced by Mable Lee and members of the Silver Belles, Fay Ray and Marion Coles, legendary dancers who drew crowds to Harlem’s nightclubs and theaters in the ’30s and ’40s. And around 1994, Germaine Ingram invited me to share an evening of performance and introduced me to some of the Black women dancers of Philadelphia: Libby Spencer, Hortense Allen and Baby Edwards. Most of them told me that they were proud to be women, and they strutted their stuff, felt beautiful. This was an affirmation for me. I never felt like I was competing with the guys. Germaine and Jacqui Malone (author of Steppin’ on the Blues) became my support system.

Meeting these women informed my course of action from that point forward. I felt that I had been fortunate to learn the history of the dance, and I wanted to share that history with others in order to increase the visibility of tap dance, especially in the Black community. However, the task was huge. The focus was on building a future for “The Dance,” so the emphasis was on children with the potential to introduce tap dance to a new generation. We developed curriculums and created venues to teach, educate and perform. Before we could think about creating opportunities for women, or even men, for that matter, we had to lay a foundation.

There was so much work to do. As tap star Chuck Green said, “You can’t always do what you want to do; you must do what is necessary.”

But it has paid off, and today the field is full of extremely talented and successful dancers, many of them Black women who are defining their own paths and are at the top of their game.

Leading the way is Dormeshia. A prodigy who began dancing at age 3 and was on Broadway at age 12, from early on she had it all—an impeccable sense of rhythm and style. Her first teachers, Paul and Arlene Kennedy, did not train their students only as “hoofers” but as full-bodied, multi-formed dancers in the Black tradition. In that respect, Dormeshia is in a class by herself. She is masterful—a phenomenal dancer, choreographer, mentor, teacher, producer and director. She is described as the “queen” by The New York Times, and called the Michael Jordan of tap dance. I can’t imagine anyone in the dance community would disagree.

Then there’s Chloe Arnold, a fierce dancer, Emmy-nominated choreographer, actress and director. She has blazed the field with steadfast intentions, and she doesn’t disappoint. She is committed to empowering Black women, specifically the young girls she works with around the world. Her all-female performance group, Syncopated Ladies, has more than 100 million views online. Most recently Arnold finished choreography for a new holiday film Spirited for Apple TV+.

Meanwhile, Ayodele Casel is currently doing tap choreography for a new Broadway production of Funny Girl. This is a dancer who hits the floor with accuracy and intention unparalleled­ by anyone in the field and always shares her story with the audience through her magical work. Casel uses her voice for the forgotten Black women of tap dance whenever she has the floor—which is pretty often lately. 

It is impossible to speak about legacy without talking about Michela Marino Lerman. Under the direct tutelage of Buster Brown, she developed her chops in the Swing 46 era. This was a time when ongoing sessions were held in a jazz atmosphere and young dancers were encouraged to observe, learn, practice and perform under the watchful eye of a mentor. When you learn about “The Dance” from the inside in this way, you have a deeper understanding of what this dance is (or could be), and in time, you might be able to share yourself from that depth. Together with her band, Lerman is dancing and creating music around the world, often with the giants of jazz. She is the Baby Laurence of this generation, a true jazz hoofer. She gets it, she lives it—authentically.

The commonality that these women—and others including Josette Wiggan-Freund, Lisa La Touche, Star Dixon, Sarah Reich and “Brinae Ali” Bradley—share is intelligence, artistic capacity, talent, determination, love for the dance and, most of all, respect and appreciation for all who have come before them. I feel extremely proud as I watch them make their own history as they contribute to the art form and strive to bring more visibility to the dance. As Maya Angelou said, “Now that I know better, I do better.” We are doing quite well.

The post Dianne Walker on the New Generation of Female Tap Dancers appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Coming Together at Lincoln Center

Patrick Randak, Courtesy Casel

Directed by Torya Beard, Coming Together is a multidisciplinary Juneteenth celebration centering family and celebration. Dancer-choreographer Brian Harlan Brooks, street dance specialist Tomoe Carr and tap luminary Ayodele Casel are joined by DJ Justin Johnston and poet Fanta Ballo for this presentation by Lincoln Center’s Concerts for Kids. The event will take place June 19 at 12 pm ET at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts’ transformed outdoor campus. Tickets are free but must be secured via the TodayTix Lottery. lincolncenter.org.

REFRAME / REMNANT / RITUAL at NCCAkron

Victor Blanco, Courtesy NCCAkron

The culmination of Cara Hagan’s Community Commissioning Residency at the National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron, this collection of short dance films explores ancestry and embodied relationships to space, as well as the reframing of history from the perspectives of women of color. Dancer-choreographers Ananya Chatterjea, Paloma McGregor and Tamara Williams collaborated with Hagan on the quartet of films; poet Jacinta V. White and dramaturg Sharon Bridgforth also worked with the cohort. The films premiere June 19 at 3 pm ET on NCCAkron’s YouTube channel. The event is free, but you can RSVP at nccakron.org.

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Patrick Randak, Courtesy Casel

The post News of Note: What You Might Have Missed in January 2021 appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Still, she remembered a promise she had made to herself two years earlier, after the 2015 crash of Germanwings Flight 9525. A frequent flier, she was struck by the story of the co-pilot who had deliberately maneuvered the plane into a mountainside, killing everyone on board.

“When I saw that story, I had been feeling particularly unsatisfied with my level of artistic expression,” she says. She thought: What if I’d been on that plane? What would I feel on the way down? What would I think about everything that I wanted to do and didn’t?

“Something in me broke open,” she says. From that moment on, she promised herself she would follow her impulses as authentically as possible. “Since then I’ve been constantly asked to work in spaces and with people that I love and to live my artistic life without compromise. It’s the most incredible freedom. I wish everyone could experience it.”

Audiences certainly experienced some of it that summer when her Spoleto performances were sold out. The New York Times declared that she was “having her moment.” But to the tap community, who had already known her for two decades as a teacher, performer, choreographer and producer, her moment had started long before. The rest of the world was just catching up.

Casel, 45, says only half-jokingly that she hasn’t taken off her tap shoes since she started dancing. Born in the Bronx and raised in Puerto Rico, she first took tap as a movement elective while majoring in acting at New York University. Just a few years later, she was dancing with Savion Glover’s Not Your Ordinary Tappers, the only female in the ensemble. She found her voice as a soloist, performing at New York City’s Triad Theatre in 1999 and Joe’s Pub in 2000. The themes that would come to define her work were already present: dancing to Latin music, honoring her Puerto Rican roots, and incorporating narratives and spoken word.

As someone who became interested in mining the possibilities of tap and storytelling, she could not have picked a better time: Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk, a blend of tap and spoken word that honored Black history, had just made waves with its Tony Award–winning run on Broadway.

But even as tap was at its apex during the ’90s, something was still missing for Casel.

“I was getting weary of audiences just commenting on the virtuosity of our footwork, but nothing else,” she says. “I wanted to humanize tap dancers and reveal who we are as people, as human beings, and why we do what we do.”

That desire resulted in the first incarnation of Diary of a Tap Dancer in 2005, the beginning of her exploration of presenting tap in a narrative form that included the voices and experiences of the dancers. As a woman of color, Casel was alarmed at how little documentation there was of the lives and careers of female tap dancers, such as Jeni LeGon, Alice Whitman and Lois Bright. She wanted to share their stories and give voice to their influences. “I also thought, Wow, should I not tell my own story, it will be no different than those women,” she says.

After 2006, when she appeared on the cover of Dance Spirit and co-starred in Imagine Tap! in Chicago, it may have seemed that her story was, as she puts it, “lost in the shuffle.” But although she wasn’t receiving as much attention, she never stopped working. She toured with L.A. Dance Magic, co-created the popular online resource Operation: Tap and co-founded Original Tap House, a performance and rehearsal space for artists in the Bronx.

“My work is independent of opportunities that come and go,” she says. “The difference between me now and me at 25 is that now I don’t just think, When’s my next gig? I see the power of this art form to speak to social justice, race, identity, politics.”

As a 2018–19 artist in residence at Harvard, she presented research, taught and performed on campus, and began a community project around sharing and archiving personal narratives. Then as a 2019–20 fellow at the university’s Radcliffe Institute, she began researching and developing Diary of a Tap Dancer: The Women. The next installment of her ongoing project, it focuses on the voices and lives of Black women tap dancers.

Being in an interdisciplinary setting at Harvard, surrounded and respected by great thinkers, left an indelible impression. “It wasn’t the experience of the average tap dancer,” she says, “but it should be. Tap dancers should be included in conversations about all things culture, beyond just dance.”

In early 2018, Casel participated in a conversation on “Decolonizing Dance,” hosted by Gibney in New York City. While proud of the attention that Dorrance Dance had been receiving, she voiced concerns that Black tap dancers weren’t getting the same kinds of opportunities.

“I didn’t speak with the intention of being combative,” she says. “I want to illuminate and forge a path for more equity in response to the injustices I see about who gets to dance and who doesn’t, what presenters find appealing and not appealing.”

In the audience was The Joyce’s new director of programming, Aaron Mattocks, who made a point to look her up online the next morning. “I was completely enthralled with her magical combination of uplifting joy, her infectious smile, her rhythm and her groove, her presence, and most importantly, her vulnerability and honesty,” he says. “Her story had an urgency and a passion that I knew would connect with audiences.”

In September 2019, Casel was featured in The Joyce’s tap-filled fall schedule in a full-length show with Arturo O’Farrill, the Grammy Award–winning bandleader of the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra. “She is a listener, a contributor,” says O’Farrill, “and a true partner.”

The two had also performed together in ¡Adelante, Cuba!, a celebration of Afro-Cuban and Latino music and dance at New York City Center. Casel is a frequent collaborator with the venue, which had previously hired her to perform in its Fall for Dance festival and to choreograph a revival of the musical Really Rosie. She was also the featured artist of the inaugural City Center On the Move program last year, in which Casel presented a lecture-demonstration in each of the city’s five boroughs. Even some of Casel’s longtime neighbors, who had never seen her dance, attended. Starting July 14, she is presenting a series of weekly tap performances through New York City Center Live @ Home.

“I clearly see my purpose now,” she says. “Dance is my entry point to make connections with people and spread joy.”

That’s exactly what she does with A BroaderWay Foundation, which teaches leadership skills through the arts to young women ages 9 to 17 from New York City charter schools. She directs the graduate program, mentoring girls who have gone through the experience, while her wife and collaborator Torya Beard serves as the foundation’s executive director.

“Ayodele brings the legacy of her heroes into every space she occupies,” says Luke Hickey, who often dances with Casel. “She is fearless, but also welcoming to everyone she invites into her process.”

In a particularly poignant moment in the first version of While I Have the Floor, Casel wondered aloud whether her story would be forgotten, or whether future generations would recognize her name. Today, she is having more than just a moment. She is cementing her legacy.

The post Ayodele Casel Is Proving Tap’s Power to Speak to Social Justice—and Spark Serious Joy appeared first on Dance Magazine.

“Whereas the multifaceted art form of tap dancing is a manifestation of the cultural heritage of our Nation…

Whereas tap dancing is a joyful and powerful aesthetic force providing a source of enjoyment and an outlet for creativity and self-expression…

Whereas it is in the best interest of the people of our Nation to preserve, promote, and celebrate this uniquely American art form…

Whereas May 25, as the anniversary of the birth of Bill “Bojangles” Robinson is an appropriate day on which to refocus the attention of the Nation on American tap dancing: Now therefore, be it resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress that May 25, 1989, be designated “National Tap Dance Day.”

Happy National Tap Dance Day!

Tap has many styles, and the opening montage gives a glimpse of its range.

In this intro-montage, a pair of tap-dancing shoes introduce us to the myriad styles of tap dancing.

Tap dance is a complex, intercultural fusion that came out of the interaction of Irish indentured servants and enslaved West Africans in the Caribbean during the 1600s, African American folk and Irish American laborers in the southern United States during the 1700s, and African American freemen and Irish American performers in northern urban cities in the 1800s.

By the early 20th century, with the syncopated music of ragtime, the blues and jazz, tap dance began to fully embody its black rhythmic sensibilities, distinguishing itself from Broadway musical theater dancing by referring to it as jazz tap.

The Ring Shout was an early predecessor to tap.

As Africans were transported to the Americas, African religious circle-dance rituals were adapted and transformed. The Ring Shout was an ecstatic, transcendent religious ritual practiced by plantation slaves by moving counter-clockwise in a circle while shuffling the feet, clapping hands and patting the body as if it were a large drum.

In its intersection of rhythm and spirituality, the Ring Shout was one of the early predecessors of tap dance. “It’s called the black church, the invisible black church,” says Dr. Cornell West about the Ring Shout.

In this clip, former slave Sylvia King describes the Ring Shout in a Works Progress Administration transcript.

Modern tap was born with Master Juba in Five Points.

In the nineteenth century, the Five Points district of lower Manhattan was a neighborhood of freed slaves and northern free African Americans and Irish immigrants. It was here that the most influential African-American dancer of the century became “King of All Dancers”: William Henry Lane, known as Master Juba.

“A lively young Negro who is the greatest dancer known,” wrote Charles Dickens, who in American Notes (1842) described Lane’s dancing as consisting of “Single and double shuffling, cutting and cross-cutting; snapping his fingers, rolling his eyes, turning his knees…spinning on his toes and heels; dancing with two left legs, two right legs, two wooden legs, two wire legs, two spring legs—all sorts of legs and no legs.” It was with “Master Juba” and the Five Points that modern tap was born.

In this clip, the dancing of Master Juba is animated by a motion capture of the tap dancer Jason Samuels Smith interpreting Dickens’ description. The animation of Master Juba is modeled after a woodcut of him in The Illustrated London News, August 5, 1848.

Women have historically been overlooked.

Though women are prominent artists in tap today, it was not always the case. The absence of women in early accounts of tap dancing reveals a mistaken belief in the authority of the male in tap dancing that has discriminated against and been critical of women, particularly women soloists.

In fact, women—whether choreographers or dancers (soloists, sister acts, chorus dancers), teachers or producers, preservationists or proselytizers—have far outnumbered men in tap. In this clip, tap dancer Ayodele Casel says: “Historically, women didn’t have the floor and it’s a loss to the art form to not have known about them—all we have are other dancers’ recollections of who they were.” Casel honors and keeps alive the nearly forgotten black women in tap, calling out their names: Louise Madison, Cora LaRedd. Jeni LaGon, Lois Bright.

In the end, it’s all about rhythm.

“At a time when America struggling with its cultural identity—when anti-immigrant and nativist sentiment boils over into outright racism and xenophobia—we are compelled to look inward, to unpack what it means to be American,” Wilkinson writes in his artistic statement the to the film.

American Tap
exposes the elements of our history which have had the potential to tear us apart—the stigma of slavery and the friction caused by immigration. They are, however, the same forces that bind us together and fuel our interconnectivity. This shared experience is the cultural fire that forged our nation’s common rhythmic language: American tap dance.

The post Celebrate National Tap Dance Day with American Tap appeared first on Dance Magazine.

During my senior year of high school, I discovered the films of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. They were magical to me. I wanted the ability to move like them, and I started to teach myself. I took my first tap class as a sophomore in college and became obsessed.

At the time, I thought tap dance was simply a joyful way of moving one’s feet and body. But when I learned about its origins being rooted in the power of communication, self-expression and traditions of African-American people, I found myself tethered to this art form for life. In tap dancing, I found another language.

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