“There’s a little bit of everything,” he says. “Tap is probably the only thing we don’t have.”

It may be an exaggeration, but not by much. In the show’s ballet- and contemporary-inspired tornado scene, a storm of dancers destroys Dorothy’s home and sends her off to Oz. Once she gets there, she’s swept up in a New Orleans–style second line that leads her down the Yellow Brick Road, where she meets a Tinman who pops-and-locks. Eventually, she is ushered into the Emerald City amongst a dizzying array of dances from the Black diaspora, from street styles out of Atlanta to Afrobeats to the South African amapiano. 

Though The Wiz may have one of the most versatile casts of dancers on Broadway right now—and, in Knight, a choreographer who has shown from his expansive commercial career that he can do pretty much anything—the show’s pull-out-all-the-stops movement isn’t about showing off. Instead, it’s a form of placemaking, says director Schele Williams, grounding Dorothy in elements of Black culture as she journeys through Oz and back home again.

“I liken Dorothy’s journey to a walk through the woods,” she says. “You can turn a corner, and it’s a gorgeous meadow. And then you can go another 40 yards and all of a sudden there’s a lake. Every turn, you can be in a new location with its own set of rules. It gives us permission to fully immerse ourselves in a new location.”

Tapping into his encyclopedic knowledge of dance genres to create a unique vocabulary was nothing new for Knight, who has spent years choreographing for top pop stars, most notably Beyoncé. What was new for him: the genre of musical theater, and the task of using those dances to tell a story.

And not just any story. The Wiz, a retelling of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and a staple of Black culture, was revolutionary when it premiered in 1975 with choreography by George Faison, winning seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Choreography. A film adaptation starring Diana Ross and Michael Jackson, with choreography by Louis Johnson, came three years later. Several efforts to reignite a Broadway production have been in the works since, including a revival in 1984 that only lasted 13 performances, and another attempt in 2004 that never got off the ground.

This time, The Wiz team predicts, will be different. Williams believes the world needs this show, with its joy-infused score and hope-filled message, right now. And by taking the production out of the ’70s and adding some contemporary innovations—in addition to Knight’s genre-bending choreography, there are updates to the book by comedian Amber Ruffin; costumes by Sharen Davis (of “Westworld,” “Watchmen,” and Dreamgirls); a dazzling set by Hannah Beachler, of Black Panther; and a modernized score by music team Joseph Joubert, Allen René Louis, Adam Blackstone, and Paul Byssainthe Jr.—they hope it will become timeless.          

“I really wanted to create something that didn’t feel super ‘now,’ ” says Knight, “but takes you on a journey of Black dance. Throughout the show you see how these people live, how they move, how they celebrate, how they mourn, how they support each other, how they find a family.”           

Knight began building the show’s choreography in October 2022. He workshopped movement in Los Angeles with some of his go-to commercial dancers. “I dreamed as big as I could,” Knight says. “For me, it was about, How do we keep the essence­ and energy of what George Faison did, and also bring JaQuel Knight to the table?”

Broadway veteran and The Wiz dance captain Amber Jackson says the dance call was one of the most intense she’s experienced, with long, fast combos that constantly switched between styles, and rooms jam-packed with a who’s who of Black dance talent. A dance workshop with the chosen few—many of whom were Broadway newbies like Knight—followed, then rehearsals, then the national tour, then another round of rehearsals and tweaks before Broadway previews.

Reviews of the tour seem to agree that the production is highly entertaining, if a bit flashy. But as far as the choreography is concerned, nothing is flashy for flashiness’ sake. “I think the movement does a really beautiful job of not letting the audience feel detached from it,” says ensemble member Maya Bowles. “It’s not so codified in technique that it’s like, ‘That’s so impressive.’ It feels familiar. It feels like home. It feels like something that’s inherently in us as a Black community. It’s something you can be a part of. The invitation is open.”

From Beyoncé to Broadway

Theater was already on Knight’s bucket list when he got the offer to choreograph The Wiz, a call that, he says, made him “lose his mind.” Moving from commercial dance to Broadway presented a new opportunity: Knight, who is so often tasked with executing the vision of another artist—whether Beyoncé, Megan Thee Stallion, or Britney Spears—had a chance to discover his own vision. “I feel like I’m given room to explore my creativity and shape my voice as a movement artist,” he says. “And I’m enjoying that.”

Being new to theater, and therefore not beholden to ideas of how things are “supposed to be” done, has given Knight freedom to push the boundaries of what dance on Broadway can look like, says Phillip Johnson Richardson, who plays the Tinman. “He has the audacity to reinvent the whole thing,” Richardson says, “and not think of it like, ‘We can’t touch that, that’s classic material.’ ”

A New Kind of Tinman

In most productions of The Wiz, during the song “Slide Some Oil to Me,” the Tinman shows off his newly lubricated joints with a tap dance. But in Knight’s interpretation, the dance break becomes a showstopping hip-hop moment that Richardson, who plays the Tinman, says revealed the whole character to him.

The movement—lots of popping, locking, and waving—felt familiar to Richardson, reminding him of dances he watched growing up. “It was like, ‘Oh, I know who this guy is,’ ” says Richardson. “ ‘And I know how I can approach this guy.’ It informed how I wear my hat—I was originally supposed to wear it to the front, and I was like, ‘Nah, he’d wear it to the back or the side.’ He’s a lot closer to me than I originally thought.”

The post <i>The Wiz</i> Returns to Broadway Nearly 50 Years After Its Premiere With More Dance Than Ever appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Greta is not real. She’s the personification of the creative idea, as imagined by the Soles of Duende trio: Castro, Brinda Guha, and Arielle Rosales. Other times, a dancer might call out “parking lot,” to table an idea they don’t have time for, or “mangu,” which is the name of a mashed plantain dish and signals they’re too drained or overloaded to think clearly. 

Any group develops their own lingo after spending hours together. But for three dancers working in different physical languages—kathak (Guha), flamenco (Rosales), and tap (Castro)—this shared verbal lexicon streamlines the creative process. “They don’t share the same style, but they share the same kind of creative energy,” says tap dancer Jason Samuels Smith, who recently worked with the trio during a residency at the Chelsea Factory in New York City. “Some collaborations can feel forced. But with them, you feel the chemistry, you feel the camaraderie.” And at a moment when cross-cultural conversations can feel fraught, these artists are showcasing the power of embracing our differences.      

Distinct Voices in Harmony

Soles of Duende, or “Soles” as the dancers call it, started in 2016 when Guha and Rosales had an opportunity to perform at Dixon Place. The pair had met as colleagues at Broadway Dance Center and had already done a few projects together, and they wanted to weave in an additional percussive dance voice this time. “We needed a third sound so it wasn’t just a back-and-forth, but a conversation amongst a team,” says Guha. Then, at Run The Night, a commercial dance competition led by Jared Grimes, Guha watched Castro set the audience afire with a tap dance solo to an excerpt of “Winter,” from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. She knew she’d found their third voice.   

The first time all three gathered as a group was for a publicity-photo shoot for the piece they hadn’t begun rehearsing for yet. Still, the vibes flowed. “It was like we were all long-lost friends,” says Guha.

The work they created was a hit, and they were asked to perform it again…and again. “People want to see virtuosity in music and rhythm that doesn’t include machismo and competition,”­ says Guha. By 2018, Soles was back at Dixon Place as artists in residence creating the first iteration of their full-length work Can We Dance Here? That work has since become­ a calling card, with the latest version taking the stage at The Joyce Theater this January as part of the American Dance Platform. 

In the audience of that 2018 run was critic and curator Eva Yaa Asantewaa, who, wowed by their vivacity and generosity as performers, would later commission Soles for Gibney’s Spotlight Series in New York City. “I was completely won over, not only by their individual technical and aesthetic capabilities but also by the seamless, joyful way they blended these discrete percussive dance styles and energies,” she says.

Experimentation and Negotiation

In Soles’ work, the dancers sometimes “pass the mic” back and forth, and sometimes dance in unison. But much of the magic happens when they each tackle the same rhythm in their own style, showcasing just how many similarities live within their differences. “We hear music very similarly often, but the way we physically execute the step is very different,” Rosales says. To get a better sense of each other’s weight distribution, the three will sometimes put on each other’s shoes, or Guha’s ghungroo ankle bells, and do traditional warm-ups in each other’s forms. 

Choreographing is a constant negotiation—with each other, and with how they represent their forms. “We have a Boricua from Connecticut doing tap dance. We have a Mexican Jew who grew up on the Lower East Side doing flamenco. We have a Bengali American who’s learning a North Indian classical dance form in New Jersey,” says Guha. “Are we even allowed to make these artistic decisions? And when do we move forward with and without blessings, and when do we experiment in good faith?” Those questions are part of what informed the title of Can We Dance Here? (The other part is more literal: The trio has often been offered residencies, but told they couldn’t make noise and wouldn’t have a percussive floor.)

All three are very aware that work in historically marginalized forms must be done with integrity. “Even when we have choreographic disagreements, we’re like, ‘Well, why do you feel like that?’ And then we end up having an hour-long conversation about history and why this step is this way,” says Castro. 

Yes, They Can Dance Here

Today, Soles also includes three live musicians. They’re treated as both a band and a dance group, which can open up opportunities at many types of venues but can also sometimes mean performing on small stages with amazing sound quality but little space to move. Now, with a 2023 Bessie nomination for Outstanding Breakout Choreographer and rave reviews in The New York Times, they’re hoping to get the best of both worlds soon. This year, the group is wrapping up the final performances of Can We Dance Here? and working on a new feature-length work to premiere in 2025. 

They’ve stopped asking for permission to dance because, wherever they are, they know they’ll find a way to do it. “Even when we wait for the train to go back home, we’ll hear the subway and we’ll just start clapping,” says Rosales. “And now we’re jamming and stomping and doing vocals to the sound of the train going by. That’s how we hang out.”

Meet the Trio: Amanda Castro

When people ask Amanda Castro what kind of dancer she is, she likes to tell them “I’m a storyteller.” 

She could also say she was that BFA student who choreographed tap dance numbers at the experimental California Institute of the Arts, even after the dean told her not to. Or that she followed four years at Urban Bush Women with stints in a regional production of In the Heights and as Anita in a tour of West Side Story. Or that she now works with heavy-hitting tap dance stars like Ayodele Casel, Dormeshia, Jason Samuels Smith, Jared Grimes, Caleb Teicher, and others. She could mention being one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” in 2023, and winning a Bessie for Outstanding Performer later that year. 

But she sticks with what she sees as her mission as a dancer: to tell stories. “Yes, there are different languages, which are the different styles of dance,” she says. “But I’m here to provide a service to the people.”

Meet the Trio: Brinda Guha

Collaboration has long driven Brinda Guha’s work. It’s even why she fell in love with kathak itself. “I realized how kathak was a confluence of Hindu and Muslim cultures and religions, how it exemplifies how people actually work together and live together and express together and make music together,” she says. 

Today, in addition to her work as a dancer and company manager with Soles of Duende, Guha is the artistic director of contemporary Indian dance ensemble Kalamandir Dance Company, curator of arts showcase Wise Fruit NYC, and senior producing coordinator for Dance/NYC. Her main goals are to investigate what makes any art form contemporary and to work from a place that’s driven by the feminine divine, whether in the exploration of contemporary Indian dance in her personal dance practice or through collaboration. 

To better understand the essen­tial elements of dance, she’s sought out practitioners from other forms.  It’s why she first decided to collaborate with Arielle Rosales. “There was this dialogue around where our personal styles found a way to speak to each other cohesively, and when they were in dissonance,” Guha says. That dialogue has only grown deeper through her work in Soles. 

Meet the Trio: Arielle Rosales

On her website, Arielle Rosales calls herself a “social engagement performing artist.” It was a term she chose, she says, because she could never find the right words to describe her work: “Just saying ‘flamenco dancer’ felt inaccurate.” 

In addition to pushing the boundaries of flamenco, Rosales is a percussionist with an all-woman Afro-Brazilian band, and she once ran a multicultural dance school in East Harlem called House of Duende (which hosted some of Soles of Duende’s first rehearsals and led to the group’s name). The phrase “social engagement” also felt like it better encompassed her love of engaging directly with the audi­ence through site-specific work and the lecture-demonstrations she does with Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana. 

Still, Rosales admits that the term initially came out of a place of fear that her experimentations with the form meant she didn’t fully qualify­ as a flamenco dancer. But that’s changed. “Over the seven years with Soles, because we are so intentional about what traditional things we’re using, and when we’re breaking the rules, in that journey of integrity, now I will call myself a flamenco dancer fully,” she says. “I don’t feel any more like anyone can take that away from me.” 

The post Sole Sisters: The Cross-Cultural Collaboration Soles of Duende Offers Just the Kind of Art We Need Right Now appeared first on Dance Magazine.

The Backstory

First things first. Harrell grew up in Douglas, Georgia; his family was part of a Southern, land-owning Black elite—educated and well-established for generations despite segregation and its discontents. The Harrells have a singular sense of history. Harrell explains that his godmother named him Trajal after the Roman emperor Trajan, and his father chose Aurelius as his middle name after the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. “It was funny being born in Southeast Georgia with this Roman namesake heritage!” Harrell says. 

In his youth Harrell was a gymnast and an avid learner, excelling in school and participating in “history day” competitions, a staple in many secondary school districts nationwide. He remem­bers that he “was kinda the leader—writing, directing, and performing with a group of other students. We won group performance statewide for six years. Clearly, this making performances based on history is still with me.”

At Yale University he majored in American Studies with a concentration in creative processes, thinking he would focus on theater and acting. However, once introduced to the embodied stagecraft of director Anne Bogart and Mary Overlie’s “Six Viewpoints” system of movement research, he felt “it was like coming home, coming back to my body,” and he claims that he “didn’t want to speak onstage anymore. I started making movement-based work.” Around this time a friend said that perhaps he was trying to be a choreographer.

After graduating, he gravitated toward dance and moved to New York City, having also touched down on the West Coast for a short stint in San Francisco. He studied briefly at the Martha Graham School and took composition workshops “with Trisha Brown, herself, and with Yvonne Rainer, herself,” he says. He also found his way to Harlem’s voguing balls and the runway culture of the city’s fashion district—and, later, to butoh, which he studied in Tokyo.

The Inspirations

Harrell cites history as “a way to enliven the imagination.” His repertory is full of historical “what ifs,” beginning with the now-legendary Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church. Between 2009 and 2017, this project was staged numerous­ times in, as he describes it, “various sizes,” nationally and abroad. His witty historical proposition explains­ the long title: What if the largely Black, queer voguing community—brought to mainstream attention by the 1990 film Paris Is Burning—came “downtown” and brought its expressive, glamorous, “over-the-top” genre to Judson Church, Greenwich Village’s temple of minimalist dance?

Many of Harrell’s evening-length works create spaces for different eras and philosophies to converge. Take, for example, these excerpts from the program note for The Romeo, which premiered in 2023:

Picture a dance. Let’s call it the “Romeo,” after Shakespeare’s young lover who, in ignited enthusiasm, believed he could conquer death…. [I]magine this dance that people of all origins, genders, and generations, of all temperaments and moods, dance when they face their tragedies and only dance. 

A Harrell dance named after a Shakespearean character will not restate that famous play. Instead, his aesthetic foundations and his personal conceptual scaffolding foreground choreography that is imaginatively wide-ranging, transcultural, intersectional, and futuristic.

Consider the artists Harrell cites as influences. “Sigmar Polke, the visual artist, blew my mind,” Harrell says. “The writer, theorist, and filmmaker Trinh Minh-ha changed my life. I have been inspired by the architecture of Tadao Ando.” Polke produced paintings focused on historical events and perceptions; Minh-ha theorized postcoloniality and feminism; Ando’s architecture reflects Japanese spirituality and Zen-like simplicity. Similar elements can be found in the themes, stage design, costumes, visual richness, and overall “architecture” of Harrell’s creations.

The Movement 

Although his work has evolved since its beginnings, Harrell’s movement vocabulary engages two central motifs. There’s the walking—dancing—on relevé, as though wearing stiletto high heels, while leaning, tilting, sliding, turning, sometimes teetering, yet remaining upright. It’s a challenging balancing act, and his dancers excel in creating character nuances within this limitation. A kick-up-your-heels, dance-till-you-drop, bacchanal “folk” dance is another leitmotif. These modes persist in works as different as Twenty Looks and the recent Monkey off My Back or the Cat’s Meow (2021). 

In Harrell’s universe, nothing is rushed, regardless of rhythm or tempo. Each work takes its time. The present moment­ is his friend, and he invites us to languish and breathe in the heady spaciousness of his vision. He shows a visual artist’s sense of stagecraft, props, and costuming. The floor design in Monkey off My Back… is a stunning rectangular grid of Mondrian-like colored blocks spanning the length of the performance space, with white platform modules set in sofa-like shapes at the center. The audience is seated lengthwise both sides. This longitudinal stretch is used as a catwalk, a dance floor, a showplace. 

Harrell’s self-created pop/rock/new music choices speak tropes of love, loss, tumult, and even trance. These elements add up to a repertory of elegance, passion, and compassion, with the dancers delineating their personal constellations in Harrell’s galaxy, in what he says is “a sharing of style, not a mimicry of my movement.” The ensemble is keenly adept at inhabiting this style while adroitly making it their own. The results are exquisitely poignant embodied portraits, including the characters elicited in his sensational Köln Concert, choreographed in 2020, during the pandemic—the first work made in his role as director of the Schauspielhaus Zürich Dance Ensemble. Other portraits, as in the poetically zany Caen Amour, explode with the wily wit and arch humor that Harrell uses to restore popular entertainment varieties to contemporary theater, as it had in ancient Greek and Shakespearean times.

Explaining that he isn’t “the kind of choreographer who can sit back and watch the picture,” Harrell generally dances in his creations. “It must go through my body,” he says. “The choreographer in me has ideas, but I don’t believe in them until the dancer in me signs the contract.”

A tradition that reflects Harrell’s respect for the audience begins before the performance itself. He sometimes stands onstage to greet the audience, who might find him watching with detached though friendly interest as they enter. This reminds us that we are about to see a presentation—that he and his dancers are real people, that performance is mindful artifice. He is intentional with this because, he declares, “I’m in love with my audience. I don’t discriminate. I just love them all, that’s the only way. I usually can’t wait for the opening night: standing onstage, watching them enter. I love that. I love them.”

The Next Steps 

Later in 2024, Harrell will conclude his successful tenure as director of the Schauspielhaus Zürich Dance Ensemble. In his five years there he created six major works and trained a sterling cadre of ensemble artists. He contemplates his next steps, musing that Zürich “is where I’ll change to the next period of my work: After runway/early-postmodern dance was the first phase, and then butoh/modern dance, now the third phase is coming.” In addition to continuing to develop his company, it may well involve visual arts and opera work. 

Fasten your seatbelts for the takeoff, dance lovers!

Butoh Mind

Trajal Harrell is deeply stirred by butoh. “My big inspirations now are Kazuo Ohno and Tatsumi Hijikata,” he says. With these forceful influences, a title is more than a name, and a dance event is a special meeting place unlike any other. It is a moment of what Harrell calls “butoh mind.” “Butoh mind is invigorating—where you show the things about yourself that aren’t beautiful,” Harrell says. “When you allow yourself to dance from that place where you can never be perfect, something else happens. People feel that. People recognize it. They know it’s inside them. That becomes beauty!”

In 2013 he first visited Tokyo to study butoh in its birthplace. “I am looking at butoh through the theoretical lens of voguing and voguing through the theoretical lens of butoh,” he says. The result is a deft interfacing of voguing’s glorious pageantry and elaborate flourishes with the guttural, visceral passion of butoh, widening the lens on both genres and creating a captivating hybrid. 

What the Dancers Say

Ondrej Vidlar and Thibault Lac began working with Trajal Harrell in 2010. Early on the three dancers worked in duos or trios, “touring from one gig to the other with costumes and set in a suitcase,” Lac says, describing this period as “a process of unlearning, in a way, an emancipation from certain tastes and values about dance learned in school.” 

Vidlar enjoys working with the mosaic of performers Harrell brings together, and is grateful that Harrell grants them “the freedom to express his ideas through their own understanding.” He and Lac have a “like family” relationship with Harrell, having developed professionally in and through his artistic vision. 

Nasheeka Nedsreal has worked with Harrell since 2018, in Maggie the Cat (2019), Monkey off My Back or the Cat’s Meow (2021), Deathbed (2022), and The Romeo (2023). She cites her admiration of the choreographer’s “subtlety and the delicateness and precision of his approach. Even though we work in the conceptual, there’s deep emotional expression that’s often required, and I appreciate that.” 

As an African American woman who, like Harrell, grew up in the American South, Nedsreal sees similarities in their aesthetic processes. “Though I’m not sure where this lust of ours for freedom and improvisation comes from,” she says, “I’m certain there are links to the music of the South, jazz and blues, as well as from the traditions of the church and Black families.” She concludes, wisely: “You can take us out of the South, but you can’t take the South out of us!”

The post Enlivening the Imagination: Trajal Harrell’s Rich Repertoire of Transcultural, Intersectional, and Futuristic Works appeared first on Dance Magazine.

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.

Mayara Magri has, indeed, done it—and at her dream company, no less. In 2021, during Magri’s 10th year with The Royal Ballet, director Kevin O’Hare promoted her to the company’s highest rank. But Magri’s work is far from done.

“I used to always say I wanted to be a principal with The Royal Ballet. I wouldn’t think about after that,” Magri says, smiling to herself. As she continues, her hands fill with an energy that reveals her determination and straightforward sincerity: “Now, I really want to establish myself here.” 

For Magri, ballet is an all-encompassing lifestyle. “You can’t just walk into an office and ‘That’s what I am’ for six hours, and then walk away,” she says. She’s all in, with a resoluteness of character she’s had from a young age. 

Now 29, Magri was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to a family with no known dance history. That changed when a school friend suggested dance classes. Magri and her two sisters soon began studying ballet on scholarship at Rio’s Escola de Dança Petite Danse. Without that scholarship, she says, ballet would not have come into her life, as the cost of putting three girls into classes would have been too much for her family. 

By age 12, Magri was practicing full variations on pointe. She explains that in Brazil, it is not uncommon for teachers to challenge their students with complex choreography at an early age. It was also standard for young dancers to perform onstage frequently to nip stage fright in the bud. Magri remembers dancing outside of shopping malls on a dance floor her teacher had laid down. Evidently, it worked: “I am not scared of the stage,” she says. “I actually really love it.”

That early comfort with being onstage, combined with Magri’s inherent pluck, helped develop the attack and solidity that would come to define her dancing. Those qualities also came in handy when she began competing around age 12, eventually leading to her winning turn at the Prix de Lausanne in 2011. After the competition, her teachers encouraged her to train in the U.S., arguing that the country’s schools would be a better fit for her style and Vaganova background. But Magri had her heart set on The Royal Ballet School. 

“I was just obsessed with the Royal Ballet DVDs,” she says, laughing. “Especially the one of La Bayadère with Darcey Bussell as Gamzatti. And YouTube videos—I used to watch them over and over again. I was just like: I want that.” 

O’Hare, who had just begun his first year as director, remembers her arrival in London clearly. While sitting in on the school’s classes and performances, “I remember just being bowled over by her dynamics,” he says. “She really looked like somebody that had the potential to go far within the company.” After a year in the school’s uppermost level, Magri was one of the first academy dancers to receive a contract for the 2012–13 season. 

But the transition to The Royal’s style was not without its challenges. For some time, she felt confused about her teachers’ emphasis on subtle details and lower, rather than up-to-the-ears, legs—a “less is more” approach that conflicted with the “always more” mentality her teachers encouraged in Brazil. Now, Magri believes that perspective shift was crucial to her success. “I carry both with me,” she says. “I can still do a massive grand jeté with split legs, but with a well-placed upper body and delicate fingers.” 

For several years, Magri kept her head down and steadily worked to master The Royal’s finesse. She was promoted to first artist in 2015, soloist the following year, first soloist in 2018, then principal in 2021. While climbing the company ranks, Magri approached her career with a balance of verve and patience—much like the happy marriage of power and subtlety she continued to foster in her dancing. “She is a real company member, someone who will always be there for the company and her colleagues,” says friend and fellow principal dancer Marianela Nuñez. “She’s a generous soul…something that comes across when you see her on the stage.”

Olga Evreinoff, a coach at The Royal who has worked with Magri on major roles like Princess Aurora and Gamzatti, admires Magri’s intellect, resolve, and capacity for integrating feedback. “I think her strength is herself,” says Evreinoff. “It’s just how she is, like the airplane that goes and goes faster, and then it takes off. She’s at that point where she’s taken off.”

Recently, Magri has leaned further into her artistic development. In her downtime, she and her partner, fellow Royal principal Matthew Ball, enjoy attending operas and classical concerts to connect with the opera house’s other artists. She’s also a fan of the TV show “Friends” (“I’ve probably seen it through six times now!”), which helps her wind down from particularly taxing days. 

Magri and Ball motivate each other both inside and outside the studio. “We can be really honest and help each other with our weaknesses,” she says. “For me, that’s partnering—Matthew reminds me I can’t be too much in charge.” The duo performs in galas around the world during breaks, opportunities Magri relishes for the chance to travel and to practice repertoire. One example is the role of Kitri, which she brushed up on earlier this season for the 2023 Prix de Lausanne gala, then danced in The Royal Ballet’s fall production of Don Quixote.

Going forward, Magri hopes to expand her reach in the company’s repertoire, with Manon being a dream role. “I think one of the challenges for Mayara is that she loves being onstage,” says O’Hare. “And as a principal, you perform less than you do as a soloist.” But when she is onstage, “She hits you between the eyes,” he says. O’Hare also hopes Mayara will be able to create more original roles that showcase her versatility, as she did with Rosaura in Christopher Wheeldon’s Like Water for Chocolate and several solo roles in the company’s contemporary repertoire. 

Eventually, Magri plans to transition into full-time coaching and education, citing a great desire to give back. She points especially to the people in Brazil who have shared their pride and supported her throughout her career. 

“I just need to keep going forward, inspiring people to keep on doing what I love to do, and to help them find the joy that I found,” she says. “The career I’ve had is giving me so much that can help future generations.” 

The post Mayara Magri’s Intellect, Resolve, and Versatility Have Powered Her High-Flying Career appeared first on Dance Magazine.

You get the sense that Sykes, who arrived in New York in a U-Haul 20 years ago at 18, sees himself as something of a group enterprise. He studs his narrative with the names of people who’ve helped and shaped him, from his septuagenarian babysitters to the Broadway professionals who taught him the ropes.

His talent? It’s a Sykes-family thing. His career? A series of surprises. Pal Joey? More on that later. First, his story, after the parents fall in love. 

Sykes’ parents—a Baptist pastor and a schoolteacher—raised him in St. Petersburg, Florida. “Growing up in the Black Southern church,” Sykes says, “we were heavily immersed in the arts. Everybody sang, everybody danced, everybody played instruments.” He loved it, but it was his younger sister, Martina, now touring in The Lion King, who was the born performer. He “kinda tagged along and would peep in on some of her dance classes.” 

Music was his first love, and his mother, who plays the drums, started teaching him when he was around 5. His father plays piano, French horn, and trumpet, and Sykes remembers the music that filled their home with a nostalgia that sets him aglow. “I was singing and playing and dancing since I could walk and talk,” he says. “And on the weekends doing our chores, they’d throw on all the old Motown records.”

Then a ballet teacher came to his fourth-grade band class in search of more toy soldiers and mice for The Nutcracker. “They forced me to go to this audition, and that became my first ballet class,” he recalls. Surprise number one: He was told he “had a natural talent.” So he went through the Pinellas County Center for the Arts’ arts magnet school program all the way through high school, studying both music and dance, and attending summer intensives at The Rock School for Dance Education in Philadelphia and at The Ailey School in New York City.

He didn’t get into Juilliard or any of the other colleges he was hoping for, and instead accepted the theater scholarship he’d been offered at Tennessee State, planning to join the marching band. Still, he couldn’t resist one last summer at Ailey, “just to dance and hang up my shoes.” Surprise number two: At the end, he was invited to join the incoming class at Ailey’s joint BFA program with Fordham University. “Just like that,” he says, snapping his fingers, “change of plans.” 

After graduating, Sykes toured with Ailey II for a second year, but didn’t get into the main company—or any others. “All these auditions, I’d do really well, but I never crossed that boundary. It’s like God was shutting the doors to the concert life on me, and I didn’t know why, or what to do,” Sykes says. His father came to the rescue. “He said, ‘Hey, stay a little longer,’ and he put a little more money into my bank account.”

Within that week came another surprise. James Brown III, who’d assisted when Darrell Grand Moultrie choreographed on Sykes at Ailey II, was now the dance captain at The Little Mermaid on Broadway. “He said, ‘Hey, there’s a guy leaving the show,’ ” Sykes remembers. “ ‘You’ll fit the costume. Why don’t you audition?’ ”

Broadway musicals were not on Sykes’ radar. “I had no clue,” he says, “no interest.” Then he went onstage in Little Mermaid. “I was like, ‘Oh, wait—this feels almost like a home.’ ” The company took him under their collective wing, teaching him how to manage his voice, how to manage the tap choreography, how to manage his salary, just how to manage. 

With all that on-the-job learning came another realization: “Much as I love the Ailey choreography and the company, not being able to sing, not being able to play instruments, I always felt I was missing parts of myself.” He went on to exercise those parts in Memphis, Newsies, Motown: The Musical, Hamilton, and, of course, Ain’t Too Proud, while getting film and television work, too.

Choreographer Sergio Trujillo remembers Sykes’ Memphis audition distinctly. “I was like, ‘Who is that boy?’ He was like a colt, so athletic, with long limbs—when he took flight, it was beautiful to watch.” Working with him, Trujillo became equally impressed with Sykes as a person and as an artist. “We had the relationship and the trust where I could just lean into him and say, ‘Can you try this? Can you try that?’ That’s special.” 

​​In 2019, Ain’t Too Proud earned them both Tony nominations. Trujillo won, Sykes didn’t. But Sykes’ tour de force performance as the Temptations’ most notable lead singer, David Ruffin, copped the Chita Rivera Award for best male dancer on Broadway. Trujillo says Sykes was more than dancing, singing, and acting the difficult role. The “quadruple threat,” Trujillo says, also brings “that other thing”: unmatched charisma.

Sykes’ magnetic presence helped him win the Michael Jackson role in 2019, right before COVID-19 taught him and everyone else in theater that surprises aren’t necessarily good. By the time MJ was getting back on its post-pandemic feet, Sykes was involved in another project—a film that has yet to be made—and he opted to stick with it, instead of returning to the role he’d done in the MJ workshop. 

Which brings us to Pal Joey, giving seven performances November 1–5 as City Center’s annual benefit presentation. In 1940, despite the glorious Rodgers and Hart score and the presence of then-newcomer Gene Kelly in the title role, the musical opened to mediocre reviews—the usual explanation being that Broadway wasn’t ready for the cynicism and bad beha­vior of its sleazy hero. Since then, the show’s bumpy history has included a hit revival in 1952; a 1957 film starring Frank Sinatra; limited-run City Center revivals in the early ’60s with Bob Fosse as the heel; and a 2008 production with a new book that fared little better with the critics than the original.

Goldwyn and his friend and partner Richard LaGravenese­ got permission from the Rodgers and Hart estate to do yet another version, and to subtract or add Rodgers and Hart songs, which they did. Their idea, Goldwyn says, was to change Joey from “just a cad who sleeps with a lot of women” to “a true artist, a genuinely gifted man.” As they tinkered, Joey evolved into a Black jazz singer struggling to be heard in 1940s Chicago. But the show’s theme, Goldwyn notes, goes beyond race to “explore the human need to be seen. When your story is not being heard and you are invisible, that is a very painful way to live your life.” LaGravenese enlisted Daniel “Koa” Beaty to work with him on the book, and Goldwyn asked Glover—his “dream partner”—to choreograph and co-direct.

They chose Sykes to play this Joey because, Goldwyn explains, they needed someone “to be the star that everyone talks about him being in the story.” Then there was the dancing: “We needed a man who could hang with Savion Glover.”

Glover says Goldwyn’s name alone got him interested. But, he adds, “I was thinking the old Pal Joey. When I found out what was really going on, it turned into me having the opportunity to once again be part of a narrative that has been a part of my life. My story that is the story of Sammy Davis Jr.; my story that is the story of Chuck Green, Jimmy Slyde, Ben Vereen, Picasso, Frank Sinatra. This iteration of Pal Joey is a lot of cats that I know.”

Sykes says Joey hits “very close to home” for him, too—“a young, hungry Black man out of the South trying to make it as a performer.” When he was asked to audition, he’d never seen Pal Joey and knew nothing about it, so he did some research. He feigns nonchalance as he describes his reaction: “Oh, there was a movie. Oh, Gene Kelly did this. No pressure.”

Needless to say, the dance in this production is pivotal. Glover promises it will “look like nothing I’ve seen myself or heard myself do,” while also including “everything” he knows. Sykes is a little less elliptical, but admits the choreography is hard to describe. “It feels like a coming together of a lot of different languages,” he ventures, “the main one being Savion’s hoofing and tap language meeting the world and the movement of that time period‚ especially Black folks. How we moved, how we walked, that whole energy, those steps that were popular in the ’40s in the Black community, in the juke joints.” 

Talking about the show, Sykes is clearly awed. “Savion is teaching me this entirely different language, tying back to my ancestors, his ancestors, our African roots,” he says. “He’s able to communicate with his feet the thoughts that are in his mind. He’s one of the greatest to ever do it, and I’m having one-on-one sessions with this man!”

Sykes will probably stay a student always, but he also has something to teach. He and his sister, Martina, have started a college scholarship fund at their high school: the SykesKids Scholarships. When he goes back to give talks, he cites the unexpected turns his life has taken. “See the blessing in the closed door, and just stay open to where God is leading you,” he urges them. “Don’t get tunnel vision on your dreams.”

The post Ephraim Sykes Is the Toast of Broadway and Beyond appeared first on Dance Magazine.

But that outwardly spectacular performer has always nurtured her inner voice, too. In her post-performance life, Boykin has begun to share that voice through choreography, spoken word, and writing. Her Joyce Theater choreographic debut in New York City this month—during which her company, HopeBoykinDance, will premiere the evening-length, scripted dance-theater work States Of Hope—promises to reveal yet more aspects of Boykin’s distinctive creative language.

“It almost doesn’t feel real,” Boykin says. “[The Joyce] stage is so important to me. I’ve been able to work for so many names that have put me on that stage—but now it’s my name.”

Boykin grew up in Durham, North Carolina, where she began to nurture her creative vision as early as the fourth grade, helping to choreograph her school production of Willy Wonka. “My teacher told me she knew that I danced and asked if I wanted to help her make some steps,” Boykin remembers. “I have loved making things since then.” 

She started classes at Howard University but left to take a leap of faith, moving to New York City in pursuit of her dance dreams. She now refers to that period of her life as “sacrifice vs. need”: She lived on a friend’s couch, running from classes and work-study at The Ailey School to her part-time job at Capezio on 51st and Broadway. “I have done things that looked like sacrifice, but looking back, I see that it was a need,” Boykin says. “I didn’t understand the reason—I just knew that there was a reason.”

Boykin was invited to perform in the first Complexions concert by co-artistic director Dwight Rhoden, after he saw her in The Ailey School’s annual January performance. The next day, she took a bus to Philadelphia, where she auditioned for Philadanco. She danced there for six years under director Joan Myers Brown, who gave Boykin tools she would later use both inside and outside of the studio. “I learned so much from her about how she did her business, from working in the offices to steaming costumes and more,” Boykin says. 

While at Philadanco, Boykin also joined the faculty of University of the Arts, where she assisted the legendary Horton teacher and former Ailey dancer Milton Myers. She started honing her choreographic voice, too, creating works for Philadanco’s company choreography showcase. “It was here that I really started to get the ‘Hope-isms,’ ” Boykin says—the signature components of her dance language.

Boykin never let go of her desire to join Ailey. “It was the ultimate dream,” she says. In 2000, Boykin auditione­d for the company and was invited to join by then-artistic director Judith Jamison. During her tenure at Ailey, Boykin performed in a wide variety of works, a standout figure every time she walked onstage. Matthew Rushing—then an Ailey dancer and now the company’s associate artistic director, who has choreographed multiple leading roles on Boykin—describes her as explosive, timeless, and impactful. “I just remember her being able to articulate my dreams,” Rushing says. 

Though Boykin prioritized her performance work, she believed­ her time at Ailey served a bigger purpose. “By the time I left, I wanted to make sure that whoever crossed my path, whether a new artist, new choreographer, or guest teacher, that they felt welcomed and protected,” Boykin says. 

The ups and downs of a dance career don’t always foster self-love and reassurance. While performing, Boykin at times felt underappreciated due to her body shape and complexion. “I’m a petite woman that’s bald and undeniably Black,” she says. “I was up against a measuring stick that wasn’t even mine”—that measuring stick being the dance world’s problematic beauty standards. 

One of Boykin’s gifts to the dance world, and to those around her, has been her determination to never alter herself to fit a mold. Rather, with tenacity, resilience, and humor, she’s carved out her own space. Her uniqueness has become her superpower; her boldness has empowered the many dancers coming up after her. And her confidence to be unapologetically Black in every space has liberated others to do the same.

Despite the challenges of her performing life, “I was supposed to be there, and everything was on purpose,” Boykin says. “The time I spent hurting and growing was all organized. My steps were mapped out, decided, and ordered.”

Boykin’s deep passion for creation led to her founding HopeBoykinDance in 2016. Since then, she has made works for Ailey, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, BalletX, Philadelphia Ballet, and American Ballet Theatre’s Studio Company. In 2018, Damian Woetzel and the Kennedy Center commissioned Boykin’s MomentsUponMoments, which she choreographed, wrote, and performed with then New York City Ballet principal and current Paul Taylor Dance Company resident choreographer Lauren Lovette. “Hope is the sort of artist whose light fills a space,” Lovette says. “She knits a tight physical bond to what you are saying with your body, and that force feels nothing short of cathartic after the curtain closes.”

Boykin’s dances often have a personal dimension. But States Of Hope—which features seven characters that represent her inner world, coming together like a memoir of sorts—is both personal and universal. “The parts of my life that have made me uncomfortable are fueling the creativity to share a story that I know is not just my own,” Boykin says. “I’m supposed to tell this story. I have to climb on top of this uncomfortable mountain and scream.”

Like much of Boykin’s choreography, States Of Hope also includes both an original score (by Ali Jackson) and Boykin’s own poetry. “I like to see movement through the music, like the nuances of trumpet, or a drum,” Boykin says. “I also tend to choreograph like I talk. And because I use my words in my movement, when setting it on a dancer, the choreography and text come together. It never fails.”  

Boykin’s future options seem endless, given her versatility, talent, and determination to leave a mark on this world. One definite goal? “I want a Tony or an Oscar,” Boykin says, with a chuckle. The two-time Bessie Award winner also recently received a New York Emmy Award nomination for her PBS ALL ARTS special “Beauty Size & Color,” which considers beauty ideals in the first two decades of this century.

Awards aside, Boykin’s most deeply held aspirations are characteristically generous. “I want to walk into a room and change the environment to the most productive, truthful space possible,” she says. “I want to carve away the things that didn’t work for my spirit, give the things that did, and leave that space with a little more hope.”

The post First As a Performer and Now As a Choreographer, Hope Boykin Has Nurtured Her Unique Voice appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Their plight is understandable. You could situate Batten Bland amongst the icons she’s danced for, like Pina Bausch and Bill T. Jones. You could list the varied settings in which she works: with her own troupe, Company SBB//Stefanie Batten Bland; in buzzy, immersive shows like Sleep No More; on commercial projects for brands like Hermès and Louis Vuitton; in her game-changing classes at Montclair State University. Or you could highlight the elements that animate her transformative dance-theater pieces: the balance of abstraction and narrative, the dazzling theatricality, the shifts in space and time.

All of those descriptions are accurate. But no list of adjectives or accolades or resumé highlights can fully capture Batten Bland and the entrancing worlds she creates on stages and beyond. 

For Batten Bland herself, it’s not so com­plicated: “I’m a professional collager,” she jokes. “I put a lot of stuff together and it works out.”

Though Batten Bland is talking about the micro—the way she blends genres and mediums and influences in her choreography—the same could be said for the macro of her life: how she moves through the world, weaving together her disparate artistic and personal experiences and forging connections through her preternatural charisma.

To collage is an inclination that Batten Bland comes by naturally. She grew up in a former paper factory in New York City’s SoHo, the daughter of a writer and a jazz composer. “The neighborhood was a cacophony of colors, sound, texture, scent,” she says. “It’s not at all lost upon me why I do what I do now, how I can inhabit a single space and yet turn it into so many at the same time.”

When Batten Bland was 9, gentrification pushed her family out of SoHo, and they relocated to Los Angeles. She spent her teenage years immersed in political activism and studying dance at Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, trekking back to New York City during the summers to train at The Ailey School and the Joffrey Ballet School.

After two years at SUNY Purchase, Batten Bland left to pursue professional work with choreographers like Seán Curran, Kraig Patterson, and Jones. It was while on an international tour with Jones that Batten Bland connected with Bausch’s company, Tanztheater Wuppertal, which was also touring. When visiting Wuppertal, she received a last-minute request from Bausch to audition to replace an injured dancer. Batten Bland learned a solo over the course of a few hours, then performed it for Bausch, who sweetly asked if she could do it again, but “better.”

Guesting with Tanztheater Wuppertal unlocked­ the European dance scene for Batten­ Bland. “I came out of that feeling like I had cracked the door into a space that had different types of making that I hadn’t had access to before,” she says. She relocated to France, and danced for artists like Hungarian physical-theater giant Pál Frenák and modern African choreographer Georges Momboye. She also began to choreograph. Her first evening-length work, Let’s Hang Out Like Wet Clothes, was a success and toured Europe. “The joy that I got from actually seeing that work live was the same pleasure that I received being inside of work,” she says. “I didn’t know that transference was possible. It was intoxicating.”

In 2008, Batten Bland founded her company to support her growing choreographic projects. Before long, she began feeling the call to come back stateside: Her parents were getting older, and she felt she had reached her ceiling in France. Batten Bland worried that her work wouldn’t be understood, as dance theater wasn’t nearly as popular in the U.S. as it was in Europe. But in 2011, she made the move, encouraged by her longtime supporter Mikhail Baryshnikov, whom she’d met early in her performing career in New York City. He predicted—correctly—that dance theater was growing in the New York scene, and offered her the support of his Baryshnikov Arts Center.

When Batten Bland auditioned for the then-recently opened Sleep No More in New York City, she knew that she had made the right decision. “It was like, duh, this is exactly what I’ve been made for,” she says. “It was another extension of how I already coexist inside that amazing hyphenation of theater-and-dance.” Batten Bland was in Sleep No More off and on until 2018, performing two of the show’s most iconic roles, the Bald Witch and Lady Macbeth.

Simultaneously, her company—now binational, with both American and French performers—was slowly gaining recognition stateside. Its visually stunning, highly tactile pieces appealed to both downtown dance insiders and first-timers. “Her work is incredibly accessible,” says Mia Yoo, artistic director of La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, where Batten Bland is a resident artist. “Even if you’re not somebody who goes to see abstract dance—the community that she can speak to is vast and across the spectrum of performance-goers.”

But it wasn’t until 2017 that her work received widespread acclaim, with Bienvenue뻑短WelcomeBienvenidoكب‭ ‬الهأ, a La MaMa commission exploring immigration and featuring striking cardboard walls graffitied by audience members. The next few years marked one breakthrough after another, with 2019’s Look Who’s Coming to Dinner, an inventive reimagining of the 1967 film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and 2022’s Embarqued: Stories of Soil, her Brooklyn Academy of Music debut. Embarqued—which explores African ancestral stories and transforms the stage into the deck of a ship—sold out its run, and the standby line wrapped through the building. “That made me feel like, wow, this scene is taking me seriously,” says Batten Bland. “I don’t feel like I have always been seen the way I thought I would have been here.”

This idea of being seen is a choreographic interest of Batten Bland’s—she likes to play with presence and absence, visibility and invisibility. Ensuring that the artists she works with are seen fully is also something of a mission. “She wants you to be who you are,” says Jennifer Payán, Company SBB’s associate artistic director. “She sees the heart and the imagination in someone’s choices, and then she amplifies it.” As longtime company member Emilie Camacho puts it, “She knows how to reveal people.”

Sometimes, she reveals people more literally. At Sleep No More, to which she returned in 2021 as a performance and identity liaison, she has worked with designers to properly light artists with darker skin tones. She’s also helped the show rethink its casting practices, inspired in part by her own experiences of being typecast throughout her career. “The world was saying, ‘Hey, has anybody noticed that Black women keep getting hired as witches?’ ” Batten Bland, who has an inviting energy and a gentle sense of humor, thrives when helping collaborators find common ground. “She shows everyone their bridge to each other,” says Kayla Farrish, a former Sleep No More performer and rehearsal director who has also performed with Batten Bland’s company.

Immersive theater has not only a diversity problem but also a training problem, Batten Bland says. Though the genre has exploded in the past decade, few collegiate programs prepare artists with the highly specific skills needed to be cast in a show like Sleep No More. Batten Bland, who recently earned an MFA in interdisciplinary arts from Goddard College, is starting to change that. Last year, she launched a physical-theater class at Montclair State University that links the dance and theater departments­. She is also working with MSU to pilot an immersive-theater summer intensive, which will include classes like clowning, acting for dancers, and physical theater, as well as opportunities to work with immersive-theater makers.

Batten Bland’s latest piece for her own company is also her most immersive yet. Coup d’Espace, which will have a residency at La MaMa next year before its premiere, asks what it takes to make communal change, to overthrow a space. It’ll take place inside of nine distinct rooms—depending on the setting, it may take over an entire theater building, or overflow onto the street.

This year, Batten Bland will also be working as the casting and movement director for a new show from the creators of Sleep No More, and taking Embarqued on tour. When not on the road, she’ll return to her home base, which is back where everything started: She lives with her family in SoHo.

“I’ve never seen someone ahead of me,” she says. “There is no template for me to follow. I’m not stepping into anyone’s shoes. I’m just stepping.”

The post The Magic and Magnetism of Stefanie Batten Bland appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Chicago’s leading repertory company struggled, as all dance companies did, during the pandemic. But years of turnover and financial challenges had been creating uncertainty well before COVID-19 lockdowns began.

In March, Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell rounded the bend on two years in the artistic director’s chair. Picked to usher Hubbard Street through the turmoil and into a new era, Fisher-Harrell has proved a savvy and steadying leader, leaving her mark on the company while honoring its past. 

Fisher-Harrell is just the fourth director in Hubbard Street’s 46-year history—the first woman and first person of color to serve that role. Founder Lou Conte was artistic director for 23 years, followed by Jim Vincent and Glenn Edgerton.­ The company was not new to Fisher-Harrell; she had danced with Hubbard Street prior to a storied performance career with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

When Fisher-Harrell auditioned for Hubbard Street in 1989, “I couldn’t take my eyes off of her,” says Conte, who was director at the time. “Nobody was as charismatic as her.”

Fisher-Harrell spent three seasons with the company. Though brief, her time there left an impression. The 19-year-old woman who arrived in Chicago in 1989 is often in her consciousness today.

“I was [at Hubbard Street] during the Tharp era,” she says, referencing a transformative multiyear commissioning project adopting new and existing works by Twyla Tharp. “When I envision Hubbard Street into the future, that’s the image that grounds me.” 

Fisher-Harrell leaned on Conte and former Ailey artistic director Judith Jamison as mentors as she navigated company leadership for the first time. “They were so powerful to me as artistic directors,” she says. “I’m asking for guidance or perspectives that I may or may not take. Either way, those relationships anchor me.”

A key priority from the get-go has been reconnecting with audiences. Before Fisher-Harrell’s directorship, a handful of highly entertaining programs were keeping the bills paid, like The Art of Falling (2014), a collaboration with The Second City, and Decadance/Chicago (2018), an evening-length assortment of Ohad Naharin works. But a critical mass of working-class Chicagoans failed to keep up with the company’s evolution toward a predominantly European aesthetic, culled from Vincent’s and Edgerton’s histories with Nederlands Dans Theater. Audience numbers had dropped off well before the pandemic, leaving some in the administration to question if they could continue to support a home season at the 1,500-seat Harris Theater for Music and Dance.

A cascade of additional challenges included several key staff turnovers. Executive director Jason Palmquist had left in 2017, replaced by ex-politico David McDermott. And when McDermott got his hands on the ledger, it was apparent that cuts were needed.

The company roster shrank, as did dancers’ contract lengths. In March 2020, the company’s affiliated Lou Conte Dance Studio closed. Perhaps the most symbolic loss was the sale of the company’s building at 1147 W. Jackson Blvd., its home since 1998.  

“It needed $3 million in roof fixes alone,” says McDermott.­ “From an investment perspective, it didn’t make sense.”

Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell assumed leadership in 2021 at the height of the pandemic with her company in a beleaguered state. McDermott was on the selection committee. “She just got it,” he says. “She got Hubbard Street and she got Chicago—the richness and diversity of Chicagoland. It was clear to me that she was going to connect with Chicago and that the art she wanted to present was going to connect with Chicagoans.”

Fisher-Harrell was aware of the challenges. “This is the thing I was looking for, but I knew the state of affairs,” she says. “It felt like a reset, and I’m not afraid to create something out of nothing.”

As one of the few long-running repertory companies not named for its founder, Hubbard Street is in many ways unburdened by an obligation to honor Conte’s legacy. Still, Fisher-Harrell is committed to tapping into Hubbard Street’s roots. Conte, now age 81, is happy to be a mentor, but all parties are clear: Hubbard Street is Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell’s company.

“I care a lot about what happens, but I don’t have any control of it,” he says. “I told her to follow her own lead and do what she thinks is right. She has good instincts.” 

A top priority for Fisher-Harrell was to turn her gaze westward and engage more American choreographers, particularly^­ choreographers of color. “I’m building a repertoire,” she says. “There are things in the past that I want to ­revisit…like taking out your old albums. There are going to be those reaches back. But as I reach back, I still want to build.­”

In two seasons, that catalog has included first-time commissions­ from in-vogue choreographers such as Amy Hall Garner, Hope Boykin, and Rennie Harris. Fisher-Harrell has also reengaged the company’s stake in Chicago, programming works by city natives Lar Lubovitch, Randy Duncan, Rena Butler, and Conte, who restaged his signature duet, Georgia, in May. And in rebuilding the dancer roster, now back to 14, Fisher-Harrell favored versatility—a necessity given the wide-ranging rep.

“I don’t want to turn my back on the European road,” she says. “All of the roads that were open to Hubbard Street, I feel like, are fair game.”

One of those roads was a relationship with Canadian American choreographer Aszure Barton, who set BUSK on the company in fall 2021. Barton will be Hubbard Street’s next choreographer in residence, beginning a three-year commitment this fall. Her residency looks like The Tharp Project: She will stage previous works on the company as well as make new ones. 

When Barton last worked with Hubbard Street, the company was rehearsing in a temporary, out-of-the-way warehouse space near the expressway, adjacent to a loading dock. It now occupies a sparkly, retrofitted storefront (previously an Adidas store) at the Water Tower Place mall on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. 

The new space is a vast improvement, but still a temporary solution. As the company rebuilds, a permanent home is part of Hubbard Street’s long-term planning, as is reopening a school. Fisher-Harrell also hopes to add more dancers; perhaps reinstate a second company, apprentices, and a trainee program, to create more pathways to professional performance opportunities for promising young dancers; and to protect company dancers from burnout. 

All of that, she acknowledges, will take time.

“That’s dreaming big,” Fisher-Harrell says, “and I realize that we have to be fiscally responsible. I want us to approach [those dreams] the right way, so they last.”

Hubbard Street’s Next Generation

Alexandria Best

Raleigh, NC

BFA in dance, Pace University

Joined Hubbard Street in 2021

“Everyone is really here for the vision of Linda. The way that she has been involving so many different aspects from the Chicago community—I’m like, ‘Wow, this place is so fruitful.’ ”

Aaron Choate

Lexington, KY

BFA in dance, The Juilliard School

Joined Hubbard Street in 2022

“Hubbard Street is not one thing at all. I think that’s what is unique. I’ve never seen or felt a company that is so comfortable going so many different directions at the same time.”

Shota Miyoshi

Kanagawa, Japan

BFA in dance, SUNY Purchase

Joined Hubbard Street in 2022

“[Linda-Denise] always says, ‘The party’s on the marley.’ She always gives me a new mindset.”

The post Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Is Returning to Stability—And Its Roots appeared first on Dance Magazine.

That said: We need to talk about Kolton Krouse. Specifically, we need to talk about Kolton Krouse in the Trumpet Solo.

The solo arrived in the middle of “Sing, Sing, Sing,” DANCIN’s second-act opener, set to music made famous by Benny Goodman. A virtuosic three-minute wiggle originally created for Ann Reinking, it requires a finely calibrated combination of introspection and extroversion—“like you’re in a back room dancing for yourself in the mirror,” Krouse says. In the wrong hands (and, especially, legs), it can wilt. But Krouse teased and tickled and va-va-voomed it into full flower. By the solo’s climax, the audience was eating from the palms of Krouse’s impeccably manicured hands.

“Trumpet Solo needs an artist who can play outside of the boundaries of the steps,” says DANCIN’ cast member Dylis Croman, a Fosse veteran who memorably performed the number in the 2002 recording of Fosse. “You immediately feel that Kolton has that freedom and joy, that sense of fun, like a tiger getting ready to pounce. And let me just say: Their kick layouts are outlandishly good.”

The list of artists who’ve tackled the Trumpet Solo is short—and before Krouse, it featured only cisgender women. In DANCIN’, 27-year-old Krouse, who is nonbinary, performed the routine as part of a track that included roles in both heels and flats. (Their other big solo, “Spring Chicken,” used some of the “Mein Herr” choreography immortalized by Liza Minnelli­ in Cabaret.) It was a significant step toward inclusivity that also felt natural. Fosse asked dancers to be themselves onstage; DANCIN’ simply showed Krouse as Krouse.

“The thing about Kolton is that they are truly comfortable in their skin, which is what Bob always wanted,” says DANCIN’ director Wayne Cilento, who performed in the original 1978 production. “And that actually made it really easy to figure out the tracking. Like the Trumpet Solo: The question was, who was the best person in the room to do it? Kolton was the one.”

Krouse’s secure sense of self has been evident from a young age, bolstered by well-founded confidence in their own talent. A star of the dance competition and convention circuit, they became the first four-time National Outstanding Dancer at New York City Dance Alliance, winning the Mini title in 2007, Junior in 2009, Teen in 2012, and Senior in 2014. There were bullies in their conservative Arizona hometown, but Krouse largely shrugged them off. “My feeling was, this is such a small chunk of our lives,” they say. “Sure, you can yell at me. But pretty soon, I’m going to get out of here, and you’re probably going to stay in Arizona, and, you know—bye.”

As a student Krouse felt the pull of New York City, which had “an energy that made me feel like I belonged,” they say. Looking for ways to channel that energy, they enrolled at The Juilliard School. 

They admired the abstract concert dance repertory that shaped much of Juilliard’s­ curriculum. But soon they realized that what they really wanted to do was tell stories. “I started to focus on the idea of Broadway because it brought all the pieces together—the acting, the movement, everything I loved best,” Krouse says. They also had a difficult time with the school’s culture. “I got this sense that in order to become­ an artist, they had to break you down and then build you back up, which was not it for me.”

So Krouse was ready to leap when they heard that Andy Blankenbuehler, an acquaintance through NYCDA, was choreographing a Broadway revival of CATS. Though Krouse initially asked to audition just for the experience, they ended up booking the show. They spent their sophomore year doing double duty: full-time Juilliard student by day, Broadway feline by night. 

The show—and the (ill-starred) 2019 film, which Krouse booked some months later—marked both a professional and a personal turning point for Krouse. Wearing the full-face CATS makeup every day opened the door to further play with cosmetics, nail art, and fashion; playing a creature rather than a person allowed them freedom to explore the feminine qualities that had always been part of their dancing. 

“I started to think about, Who is Kolton Krouse?” they say. “After a lot of experimenting, everything morphed into this androgynous situation—the masculine and the feminine all bled into each other, in my dancing and offstage, too. And that’s when I found Kolton.”

Krouse dropped out of Juilliard in their senior year, after they were denied a deferral to accommodate the CATS film’s production schedule. They landed a few more high-profile commercial dance jobs—including, in a bit of foreshadowing, the FX series “Fosse/Verdon.” Finding another­ ­Broadway role proved more dif­­fi­cult. “It was really hard to get into the room as me,” Krouse says. “There were a couple projects where they said, ‘No, you can’t show up in makeup and heels.’ It felt like a constant battle.” Frustrated, they switched agencies in search of better support.

When COVID-19 shut the world down, Krouse moved back to Arizona and drifted—not not intentionally—away from dance. “I just figured I’d take the time to work on other things I’d always been curious about,” they say. They explored voice training and songwriting with the musician Mario Spinetti, a longtime friend, recording covers and filming music videos for fun. Watching Nathan Chen and Yuzuru Hanyu compete at the 2021 World Figure Skating Championships re-sparked Krouse’s childhood figure-skating dream, previously snuffed out by dance commitments. They started taking classes; a teacher channeled them toward ice dancing, where, unsurprisingly, they excelled. (You can see skating’s influence in their dancing today: the way they throw themselves up into a saut de basque as if it were an axel, the way they wrap their foot in coupé to increase their turning speed.)

In the fall of 2021, as theaters began to reopen, Krouse got the call for the DANCIN’ audition. “I was like, Bob Fosse? Yes. Immediately, yes,” they say. They’d grown up watching Cabaret, and had loved learning the nuances of Fosse style on “Fosse/Verdon.” “With Fosse, the intention is always so clear,” they say. “Even in more abstract pieces, it’s almost like a silent movie—the audience understands what the people they’re watching are feeling or thinking, and sees them as humans instead of characters.”

That emphasis on the humanity of the performers feels consistent with a more flexible approach to gender. “Bob was very forward-thinking in that way,” says Corinne McFadden Herrera, DANCIN’s associate director and musical stager, who also helped with choreographic reconstruction. “Already in Cabaret, in the ’60s and ’70s, he was creating characters with an androgynous fluidity.” The DANCIN’ team didn’t seek out gender-nonconforming performers or plan to cast roles against gender “type,” but they embraced the fullness of Krouse’s identity—and skill set. 

“If Bob had had a Kolton in his life, he would’ve loved it,” Cilento says. “He would never have hidden that talent.”

Though the show made little fanfare about its casting choices, it sat at the middle of a conversation unfolding across Broadway about how the industry can better include nonbinary performers. Onstage celebrations of artists like Some Like It Hot’s J. Harrison Ghee and & Juliet’s Justin David Sullivan belie ongoing concerns about gendered awards-show categories and casting processes. 

“I think change could be coming, and I think it’s definitely getting better with certain directors and choreographers, but it’s still really tricky,” Krouse says. They’ve been unsure, for example, about how to navigate recent calls for “female-presenting” and “male-presenting” performers. Usually they end up essentially auditioning twice. 

“If it feels right, you can show them the combo in a heel and then the second time do it in a flat,” they say. “It’s hard. But if they’re not allowing space for you, you have to make space for yourself.”

Eventually, Krouse hopes to carve out space in other fields, too. They’re still studying voice, and plan to return to skating at some point. You might see them onscreen someday, acting in a horror film (“Wouldn’t that be incredibly fun?”) or a superhero movie (“I could do all the stunts”). And they hope to walk in fashion week—a dream that, for a person seemingly born to wear heels, feels eminently attainable. 

The DANCIN’ cast included some of the best movers on Broadway, yet Krouse was repeatedly singled out by critics. (The New York Times review called them “the one with the face-slapping kicks,” an epithet since featured in Krouse’s Instagram bio.) That attention, Krouse says, was a nice surprise. But they were more excited about the visibility than the praise. 

“Honestly, I wouldn’t even have cared if everyone hated it, as long as I could connect with that one person who hadn’t seen themselves onstage before,” they say. “What I really want for my art is for people to come away from it saying, ‘That makes me want to be more me.’ ”

The post Kolton Krouse Blazes Their Own Trail On Broadway and Beyond appeared first on Dance Magazine.

As they prepared for the leadership transition, Johnson and Garland spoke with Dance Magazine about their deep, shared history with DTH, their commitment to continuing the work of Arthur Mitchell, and their hopes for the future of Dance Theatre of Harlem’s company and school. 

What were your early experiences working together?

Robert Garland: For a memorial for a friend we lost during the AIDS epidemic, I choreographed a solo for Virginia to a Stevie Wonder song. It was kind of a precursor to my ballet Higher Ground.

Virginia Johnson: It was a wonderful, wonderful piece. But that wasn’t the first thing that you’d choreographed.

RG: It was the first I choreographed for you. I had done some work at Juilliard. I thought of Virginia in my early choreography, because she was a part of beautiful theatrical works at DTH, like Fall River Legend, which is a masterpiece. Our Creole Giselle is another masterpiece, and I think that our Streetcar Named Desire was a masterpiece as well. The work of that time definitely influenced my early ideas; we were doing a lot of opera house dancing then, so that’s how I grew up.

VJ: That’s so interesting, that insight of you understanding DTH in the context of the opera house and the narrative ballets that I was doing. When you came to do Return, Arthur Mitchell said to you…

RG: “Lights and tights.” I had done a ballet called Crossing Over that was quite beautiful…

VJ: It was beautiful. It had a set, it had costume changes.

RG: But it was horrifically expensive. At the time, I had a lot of people in my ear, other than Arthur Mitchell, telling me what they thought was best, and I unfortunately listened. When it came to Return, he was like, “Lights and tights. That’s all you get, young man.” That’s actually where he was from, being a Balanchine dancer.

I love George Balanchine. And I love City Center. If you look at his work from that era, in terms of resources, Balanchine was a genius. I tried to copy him, as a creator. Virginia has another perspective as a manager and director.

VJ: This is something that is very, very serious. Dance Theatre of Harlem has had a history of ups and downs. We have a really brilliant executive director Anna Glass right now who’s managing how to make sure that we never stumble again. 

It is a constant reality that you have your desires, your dreams, your expectations—and then you have your reality. You better keep those two things balanced. I appreciate that Anna understands that the bottom line is important, but the art is important as well. Sometimes you have to make a choice that’s not friendly to the bottom line, because the art needs it. You do the other, too, of course.

RG: Exactly. I purposely did a small cast for a work I did recently for San Francisco Ballet. Everyone had a chance to dance, and they loved having that opportunity. Even though we’re in this under-resourced space, you make things happen.

Will you continue to choreograph?

RG: I would like to. I have a particular style that I think is good for the dancers of this organization. But there are other considerations as well. I don’t want to lose the Balanchine legacy here, or our classical legacy of Karel Shook and Frederic Franklin. It’s going to be a balancing act.

Virginia, you agreed to come back to lead Dance Theatre of Harlem in 2009 after having retired from the stage in 1997 and having launched and edited Pointe magazine. What brought you back?

VJ: When Arthur Mitchell set you to a task—and this is something that Robert knows so well—you make sure you do it. When he said to me, “Your job is to bring the company back,” then that was my job.

Dance Theatre of Harlem had not been on the stage in people’s minds for almost 10 years. So just creating that entity again was the most important thing.

And, of course, finding the dancers. Later on, it dawned on me that my experience was very much like Arthur Mitchell’s had been when he created Dance Theatre of Harlem in 1969. You have dancers from all over, with all kinds of disparate training, that you have to make into a unified company. 

How was the company different than before the hiatus?

VJ: In 2004, there were 44 dancers. We had national and international tours, we had theater cases, and we had a truck and a sprung floor on that truck. It was a very luxurious enterprise—and so many dancers. There were generations of dancers in the company at that point. When we came back, we had to build a new repertoire because we were so much smaller than the original company—we were 18 dancers. 

How has the company since evolved?

VJ: One of the reasons that we’re doing this baton passing is that now we have a company that exists again. I looked at the company in 2019 and I realized that the dancers needed new challenges, they needed another vision. Robert is the perfect person to step into that place.

How are you similar and different as leaders?

VJ: I think the male/female thing is real. It’s an essential difference. It doesn’t mean that we are typically either one or the other, but there’s a different way of being in the world being male and being female.

RG: I think we’re similar in being able to anticipate things. Because we’ve worked here over the years, we know what the potential pitfalls are before they happen.

And, actually, I’m a traditionalist. Virginia has done a great job at expanding the horizon of what the artists experience here. I’m not quite as experimental, but I will be trying to keep that up, so stay tuned!

VJ: There’s also a difference in that Robert is a choreographer. He’s used to working with dancers and making sure that his intention is understood and fulfilled. That’s going to be a wonderful new thing for dancers to experience.

How is the leadership transition happening? 

VJ: We talk about how things are going and where there are gaps. I’m not saying, “You should do this,” but if something comes to me, I’ll think: I’ve got to tell Robert about this, because­ he’s going to be blindsided if he doesn’t know.

RG: I did have the opportunity to watch Mr. Mitchell for years, as well. That also prepared me quite a bit. And I’m going to be really crazy and say that I find running the school more challenging than the company.

VJ: As he says now…

RG: Well, let me just say the school is its own thing. I don’t want to jinx myself.

With the company, you won’t have parents involved…

RG: Yes, there is that element, where you have people who are paying money that express their expectations.

VJ: They’re now called presenters. 

[Dissolves into laughter.] 

RG: That was good, Virginia! Presenters as the new parents.

Virginia, what will be next for you?

VJ: Sleep! I haven’t had a minute to really dig down deep into what’s happening next for me. I like to say I’m looking forward to being an artist again, rather than an arts administrator. That’s going to be a completely different experience, solving smaller problems on a much more basic level.

Did it surprise you how much of that was required for the job?

VJ: Well, Caitlin, you know that being at Pointe was really an education. And so I was not surprised at how much other stuff besides the art I had to deal with—and I was grateful for that experience.

Would you agree that the mission of DTH seems increasingly important in the current cultural and political climate?

VJ: This idea, I think it’s an important one, because I don’t see ballet or the company’s work as being separate from the world that we’re living in. In fact, I think that we have a purpose to keep people steady in this climate. That’s an essential part of what we’re doing.

RG: Dance can be put into the “it’s an ephemeral thing that no one should be thinking about in this time” category. But I do believe, as Arthur Mitchell said, that “the arts ignite the mind, they give you the possibility to dream and to hope.”

There are things that impact us, like gentrification. In my day­, you could live in Harlem in a three-bedroom apartment for $150 a month. Now there are families in Harlem moving out because it’s too expensive. It’s here, it’s Philadelphia, it’s any urban center where Black people have been for generations. In our school, we now have more Caucasian or white students, and we have many more West Indian students and African students. That’s been fascinating.

Equity has a price tag, and that’s the part that no one wants to talk about. We’ve had lots of panels, and we talked about everything, but there’s a price tag. I’m hoping that what the DEI conversation will produce is a cabinet-level arts person. That is a real aspiration and it just makes sense.

Do you find that the conversation about DEI has not turned into funding?

RG: It has not, because most of the solutions have been representational. I’m all for representation—you know I love the Obamas. But there has to be some support behind it. We, as an organization, have unfortunately been under-resourced as compared to our competitors for decades. It’s still a struggle, and it shouldn’t be at this point in time.

VJ: People have come to think of Dance Theatre of Harlem as some kind of exception. When Arthur Mitchell created this enterprise, it was really to be a model for what an arts organization should be.

People celebrate us and love us, but they haven’t taken on that idea that being important in your community, being a trailblazer in the art, and being an institution of training are things that every company should do. I want DTH to be the example, not the difference. So, while the need for an institution like Dance Theatre of Harlem remains very true, I also wish sincerely that we had more people copying what we’re doing. Rather than thinking “DTH can do it,” instead thinking “I should do this too.”

What are your thoughts on the idea of legacy?

VJ: I care not one shred about my own legacy. You do what you love, you do it as long as you can, you try to make a difference, and you try to create something.

We are carrying Arthur Mitchell’s vision forward. He was a brilliant individual, a tireless visionary. It’s a legacy that’s bigger than one person, in terms of the ideas that he started and what he wanted to create in the world. It’s still to be realized. That’s to me what this should be about—less about the person in the role and more about the work that needs to happen and how it can happen.

It’s clear that Arthur Mitchell’s ideas continue to be at the heart of this organization.

RG: Definitely. It was his body. The body of color in this country has been the site of some really bad things and some really beautiful things. And his body was dedicated to this space, first to George Balanchine and then to Dance Theatre of Harlem, and I take all that very seriously.

We’re a unique organization in terms of our whole trajectory, culturally, in our community and artistically. Twenty-five years ago, people didn’t understand that you could have an artistic vision and a social vision in the same space. Arthur Mitchell often heard, “Arthur, is it a community-based organization or is it a ballet company?” The newer generations get it; it’s no longer anathema to have this high art form in a place where it heretofore did not exist.

Is your hope to cultivate future leaders from within the organization?

VJ: Arthur Mitchell really was about modeling the future, so developing leadership from within to carry these ideas forward is an essential part of what he was creating.

RG: There are a lot of leaders today who were Arthur Mitchell protégés: Melanie Person at Ailey, Alicia Graf Mack at Juilliard, Dionne Figgins at Ballet Tech, Endalyn Taylor Outlaw at University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and Theresa Ruth Howard at MoBBallet, to name a few.

What are your priorities for DTH?

RG: One priority is to create a space, in the daytime, for dancers that really want to aspire to be the best to work on their ballet technique. That will not only give dancers to our company but also to the field. And, of course, to develop choreographers that have a consciousness of the mission of the Dance Theatre of Harlem.

VJ: DTH is a touring company, which is a very special entity in this world right now. It affects the way that we work and the kinds of works that we can do. And so, we want to dig down deep into how to make that a more effective way to reach people around the country and around the world.

If anything was possible for this company, what would you like to see?

RG: I would like a larger company, and a larger New York season.

VJ: Dance Theatre of Harlem forever. It must continue, and thrive, and become more and more, and be that beacon. It really must. 

The post Dance Theatre of Harlem’s New Leadership: A Conversation With Virginia Johnson and Robert Garland appeared first on Dance Magazine.

How did you get started in dance?

I arrived here on the earth in Rochdale Village, Queens. My mom says that I just never stopped dancing. I wound up in a little local neighborhood school where all of my other little girlfriends from Rochdale Village went, run by Joan Millen Mesh, who I believe was a graduate of Juilliard—and she was a Black woman. 

Miss Joan had a group of advanced dancers who were quite accomplished. When I was 9 years old, my mother got a call from Miss Joan, who wanted me to start taking class with the advanced dancers. I was this little kid and they were teenagers, so I became, like, the mascot. Miss Joan told my mother about the School of American Ballet. I went to SAB for four years. 

How was that transition?

I went from being in a predominantly Black environment to being­ in a predominantly white environment. This was 1987. I had heard that ballet was a European art form; my own exposure to it, though, had been with Black people. Even when I got there and social issues started to happen—I didn’t understand. I didn’t have the language to express what I was feeling.

When my mother said, “You can give up,” it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. One day she said, “You are going to have to be so good that they can’t help but look at you.” And that was the end of the discussion.

How was your experience at SAB?

After not getting cast in Nutcracker and knowing in my head that I had the potential to be Marie, it hit me that they didn’t see me the way they saw everyone else. It was a shattering experience. I was 10 at the time. 

I had also taken classes at Ailey, and my mother had maintained a communication with Denise Jefferson, who ran The Ailey School. She told my mother about Madame Gabriela Darvash, a Romanian immigrant who had trained at the Kirov Ballet. At 14, I left SAB and went to train with Madame, as we called her. The studio was very Black-friendly. There were all kinds of people at her studio. 

Under Madame’s guidance, I could let go of that constant self-awareness. She would force me to stand in the front of the classroom. And it was after SAB—where it was the opposite. I had already been through hell. I was grateful for Madame’s attention and her tough love, and I could see that she was extremely intelligent. 

What brought you to Dance Theatre of Harlem?

While I was still at LaGuardia High School, I auditioned for Dance Theatre of Harlem, when they still had a second company. I actually met Robert Garland for the first time at Madame Darvash’s. Then we both found ourselves at Dance Theatre of Harlem. He said to me once, “Nobody gives a damn about watching you dance. They want to see themselves through you.” It was one of the best pieces of advice I ever got—that, to a certain extent, you have to get out of the way in order to dance.

After 12 years touring with DTH, in 2006 you joined Boston Ballet. What was dancing for that company like?

I got into the company and I realized the gift of the context that Mr. Mitchell had created. Boston Ballet is an extraordinary company. But there wasn’t a common ethos that bound us together. Mr. Mitchell constantly said you are in service to something much larger than yourself, impressing upon us that people were looking up to us, and that we were role models setting an example for future generations. Other places weren’t necessarily driven by that. It all seemed so small to me.

Can you share your vision for the school as an extension of Arthur Mitchell’s legacy and your role in it?

I think about Mr. Mitchell every day and what he achieved. I’ve had a lifetime in dance because of the opportunities that he provided. He inspired so many, to be in this position feels like a huge honor.

He created a family. And I hope to as well. When I go back to that building it is like rejoining a part of my family… my dance family. I want to preserve Mr. Mitchell’s vision of providing a space for Black and brown dancers to thrive. But, just as was always the legacy of DTH, it has to be everybody. Like a lot of Black families, we have people of every color and shade. 

Inclusivity is about making everyone feel seen and valued, not just for being a dancer but for being a person. Not everybody is going to be a professional dancer, but everybody can benefit from it. Dancing is its own reward.

I definitely want to reopen the pathway to a professional career. We don’t have a professional training program anymore, and we don’t have a second company. I also want to help people reconnect to their own capacity to heal, their own capacity to feel joy, because I want to inspire beauty and creativity.

The post Tai Jimenez on Leading the DTH School appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Arthur Mitchell created Dance Theatre of Harlem in New York City in 1969. Mitchell had made history as the first Black principal dancer at New York City Ballet, where he danced from 1956–69, with Balanchine creating ballets on him, notably roles in Agon and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. When Mitchell heard of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the radio while in Brazil in 1968, he decided to return home to start a dance school in Harlem. He enlisted the mentorship of Balanchine and the partnership of dance teacher Karel Shook.

Mitchell started the DTH School in a converted garage in Harlem, followed by the touring company, of which Virginia Johnson was a founding member. Mitchell created a haven for dancers of all colors who craved training, performance experience, and an opportunity to excel in classical ballet. 

Though DTH began touring in 1969, it had its official New York City debut in 1971 at the Guggenheim Museum, with chamber ballets choreographed by Mitchell. With Mitchell’s­ vision,­ the guidance of Balanchine, who gave Mitchell­ access­ and rights to perform his ballets, and the partnership of Shook, the foundation of the company was laid. In addition to commis­sion­ing works from Black choreographers (he named Robert Garland as DTH’s first resident choreographer in 1995), Mitchell­ updated classical ballets, such as with Creole Giselle, staged by Frederic Franklin and set in 19th-century­ Louisiana, and John Taras’ Firebird, set in a lush jungle. 

In its more than 50-year history, DTH has received international acclaim, performing in 44 states, 250 cities in North America, and in 40 countries on 6 continents. DTH’s pioneering efforts to integrate stages and spread the art of ballet through outreach programs at home and abroad made it a beacon for Black dancers worldwide. In 2004, the company went on hiatus because of financial challenges, and in 2009, Mitchell asked Johnson to bring the company back. Over the past 13 years, Johnson has led the company’s renaissance.

Watching DTH today, the impact of this trailblazing organization is clear. From its diverse international dancers to the dynamic classical and contemporary repertory, the many stars who began their careers with DTH now dancing in ballet companies around the world, and its reemergence in the global ballet scene, the company reflects today what Johnson exalts as “the prevailing sense of self-affirmation behind DTH” that was integral to Mitchell’s vision.

The impact of Dance Theatre of Harlem extends far beyond the stage. The company represents the amalgamation of culture present in evolving art forms and what it looks like when the reality of a diverse country is in fact exalted in its most expressive art form. Art, like that of DTH, is indeed the resistance to the facade of elitism representing only a portion of the population and culture. As Virginia Johnson passes the torch to Robert Garland to become the third artistic director in the company’s 54-year history, she leaves the organization poised to expand upon Arthur Mitchell’s extraordinary vision. 

The post Dance Theatre of Harlem’s Enduring Impact appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Both settings evince Chan’s abundant curiosity: The 30-year-old dancer is perpetually searching for new ways to express himself fully and authentically. Though he makes a natural prince, he has also sought out contemporary perspectives on classical ballet, a pursuit that has led him across oceans and countries. He has learned an array of languages—spoken and danced, onstage and online—with astonishing speed. As the first principal dancer from China at NYCB, he has embraced his role model status, hoping to help reimagine a Eurocentric art form for an international age. 

“Chun Wai is the ultimate sponge,” says Houston Ballet first soloist Harper Watters, Chan’s friend and former colleague. “He’s always on the hunt, always hungry, always looking for new information.”

Born in Huizhou, in China’s Guangdong Province, Chan followed one of his three older sisters into dance class at age 6. His parents, busy running their sweater importing and exporting business, and envisioning a future for Chan as a doctor or lawyer, saw the studio as mostly “a great daycare,” Chan says. But in dance he found freedom from the pressures of his academic classes, which were huge (“imagine 70 of us, all sitting right next to each other,” he says) and intensely competitive. 

The stakes changed considerably when Chan earned acceptance­ to Guangzhou Art School’s selective ballet program at age 11. His tight-knit family held a vote on whether or not the young dancer should be allowed to attend. The nos from his parents and grandparents outweighed his sisters’ yeses. 

Chan recognized that this was an inflection point. “In China, once you decide not to pursue the art form this way, you have to focus on academic school,” he explains. He wrote his father a letter pleading his case. “I just knew that if I didn’t dance, I wouldn’t be me anymore,” he says. 

His parents agreed to let him go. Determined to make the most of the opportunity, Chan worked hard at the Vaganova-based Guangzhou school. But he kept his eyes open, too. At 16, he began attending ballet competitions abroad, which gave him a taste of the international ballet scene, a world he’d glimpsed through the 2009 film Mao’s Last Dancer. 

At the 2010 Prix de Lausanne, Chan received nine offers­ from ballet companies and schools. He chose Houston Ball­et II,­ partly because he’d been impressed by the Houston dancers who had performed at the Prix—“their energy, it was shining,” he says—and partly because Houston Ballet was where Li Cunxin, the Chinese ballet star at the center of Mao’s Last Dancer, had spent much of his career.

Chan arrived in Texas knowing little English, and found himself overwhelmed by Houston Ballet II’s heavy touring schedule. After earning a spot in Houston Ballet’s corps in 2012, he hurt first his thumb and then his ankle, forcing him to take breaks from performing. Feeling unmoored, Chan considered leaving the company to attend the University of Arizona, where he’d received a full scholarship. 

Then artistic director Stanton Welch cast him as Romeo—fifth string—in Romeo and Juliet. “The happiness of covering Romeo in the fifth cast, for me, was more than the scholarship to the university,” Chan says. “And so I realized, I think I belong to the dance world.”

Over time, Chan made a home for himself in Houston, where he danced featured roles in a range of classical and contemporary repertory, particularly works by George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins. He and Watters bonded during backstage tapings of Watters’ playful YouTube series “The Pre Show,” which introduced the internet to Chan’s goofball side.

“Chun Wai picks up on so many things, not just when it comes to the dance elements, but also in terms of social interaction,” Watters says of their rapport on “The Pre Show.” “He imme­diately found a way to bounce off my sense of humor. I can be pretty fast, I can push people that way, but he always kept up.”

Watters encouraged Chan to develop his own online presence, pointing out that the hours Chan spent playing Candy Crush Saga—he’d become fixated on the game—could be put to better use. Chan says, “I started thinking, What if I play Instagram, play social media, as the game instead?” After his brother-in-law, a policeman in China, asked for some stretching tips, Chan began posting fitness and technique tutorials to YouTube. Simple, useful and endearingly unstuffy, they earned his Chunner Studio channel a large following.

In 2017, Chan became a principal at Houston Ballet. Soon after, he and Welch worked out a special arrangement: Chan would sign half-year contracts with Houston Ballet, allowing him to spend a good chunk of each season guesting with Hong Kong Ballet—much closer to his much-missed family. The pieces of Chan’s professional life seemed to be clicking into place. 

But when NYCB resident choreographer and artistic advisor Justin Peck cast Chan in Reflections, a new work he was creating for Houston Ballet in 2019, Chan unlocked something new. “There was a sense of freedom in Justin’s movement that made me think, Oh, I’m craving more of this!” he says. Peck kept expanding Chan’s role in the ballet: Initially part of a trio, he gained a pas de deux and then a solo of his own. “He’s really the ideal collaborator,” Peck says. “He’s incredibly present, and he brings his full self.”

Ahead of the premiere, Chan—being “an excellent Houston host,” as Peck says—took Peck and lighting designer Brandon Stirling Baker out for Peking duck. The dinner conversation turned to New York City, and NYCB. “Chun Wai was very curious about New York as a broader place,” Peck says, “but also as this kind of mecca for dance.” If Chan was interested in NYCB, Peck said, he was the guy to talk to.

Chan was interested. But he was also conflicted. He felt attached to his community in Houston, and appreciative of Welch’s support and flexibility. In a full-circle moment, Chan’s family once again helped him make a crucial career call—this time, from a very different perspective. “They said go!” he says. “Go to another company, another city, to fight for what you dream for. No matter what position they offer you, go.”

In early 2020, Chan traveled to New York City to take class with NYCB. Though the company almost never hires dancers who haven’t trained at its own School of American Ballet, Chan was offered a soloist contract for that fall. 

The pandemic paused that plan. During COVID-19 shutdowns, Chan returned home to China. While there, he appeared on the second season of “Dance Smash,” a popular Chinese reality-television show, where he performed a range of styles—ballet, contemporary, Chinese folk dance. He made it to the competition’s final four, gaining thousands of new fans along the way, and enjoyed learning how to perform for the camera. Chan signed with an agency in China­ that urged him to capitalize on his “Dance Smash” success by pursuing more television, film and commercial work. But he was itching to get back to professional ballet, and to New York.

Chan arrived at NYCB in August 2021. His first few months at the company were a full-immersion course in the Balanchine style, to which he’d had relatively little exposure. That might have been overwhelming to a different initiate, but Chan says he appreciated the big dunk. “It’s like learning a different language,” he says. “Once you’re working in this environment where it’s all around you, it’s much easier.” 

Now Chan is using everything in his varied technical arsenal to attack a swath of NYCB’s repertory. He has become a particular muse to Peck, who created a leading role for Chan in his recent premiere, Copland Dance Episodes. The ballet’s abstract, contemporary storytelling allowed Chan to dance as his 21st-century self, rather than inhabit an old-world ideal. “He realized that he didn’t have to kind of put that crown on,” Peck says.

Chan was first surprised, and then touched, when young dancers of color began saying that his career gave them hope for their own. A flurry of press attention accompanied his promotion to principal last May—at the time he was the first Chinese dancer and only the fourth Asian dancer to reach that rank at NYCB (Mira Nadon’s promotion in February means there have now been five Asian principals at the company). He says he tries to bring aspects of his heritage into his art. “Growing up in China, I learned a lot about Confucius’ ideal, the Chinese culture of being humble and polite,” he says. “And that’s how I want to work and interact with people.” 

Chan is modest about the scope of his influence. But Georgina Pazcoguin, NYCB soloist and co-founder of the advocacy organization Final Bow for Yellowface, which aims to improve Asian representation in ballet, says Chan embodies change every time he steps onstage. “It’s really exciting to see someone like Chun Wai as the Cavalier, as Prince Désiré,” she says. “And now he’s being given chances to not play the prince, too. He’s showing that he can be all of these things.”

What else might Chan be someday? Maybe an artistic director. He has been taking classes in organizational leadership at Fordham University. “Who knows if I’ll get director offers—maybe in 10 years!” He chuckles. “But I want to be prepared.” He has also been studying acting in case Broadway or Hollywood come calling, which “would be a fun adventure,” he says.

Chan piles those courses atop a furious performance schedule, often dancing five shows a week when NYCB is in season. In March, he also returned to Houston Ballet for his COVID-delayed farewell shows, playing Romeo (first cast, this time) in Welch’s Romeo and Juliet. But he still makes time for decompression sessions with Jovani Furlan and Gilbert Bolden­ III, two of his closest friends at NYCB; for karaoke outings, where he favors songs by Sam Smith and Justin Timberlake; and for exploring New York City. “He’s not a tunnel-vision ballet person—he’s taken to New York with such enthusiasm,” Peck says. “He goes out, he sees shows, he goes to restaurants. He’s expanding his community here.”

However expansive his horizons, Chan thinks he has plenty more to learn inside ballet. “One of the reasons ballet is so fun to me is because there’s always something to fix next time, always something to work on, always new challenges, if you’re looking for them,” he says. “You’re always growing and growing and growing.” 

The post Chun Wai Chan, New York City Ballet’s First Chinese Principal, Brings Hunger and Humility to His Multinational Career appeared first on Dance Magazine.

“When you have an idea for a new musical,” she says, “it usually comes from someone handing you a novel or a screenplay. Or you can even have a vision—of a girl in a yellow dress or something.” New York, New York arrived in a less predictable way, as Stroman, 68, and her longtime friends and collaborators, composer John Kander and writer David Thompson, were trying to come up with another project to do together. Although her five Tony Awards—Crazy for You, Show Boat, Contact and The Producers (2!)—were for work with other creative teams, her history with Kander and Fred Ebb began in 1977, when she played Hunyak in the touring company of Chicago. Her first Broadway credit with Thompson was 1997’s Steel Pier, with music and lyrics by Kander and Ebb. All three (and Ebb, who died in 2004) earned Tony nominations for The Scottsboro Boys, the daring and brilliant 2010 musical about the notorious railroading of nine young African Americans falsely accused of rape in Alabama in 1931, after which the trio went back off-Broadway, breathing audacious theatrical life into Henry James’ novella The Beast in the Jungle (2018). Which brings us to New York, New York.

Moving Beyond the Movie

“We thought if we could get the rights to the movie,” Stroman says, “and permission to do a new story, we would be able to use the songs to tell a story that would be more palatable for a contemporary audience.” MGM said yes, and so did producer Sonia Friedman when they presented the idea. So they decided to make a new New York, New York, emphasis on the word “new.” They augmented the creative team, enlisting Kander’s buddy Lin-Manuel Miranda to add lyrics for many of the 13 new songs and Stroman’s friend Sharon Washington, who was in Scottsboro Boys and is also a writer, to work on the book with Thompson. They started in March 2021, and the result, Stroman says, is “suggested” by the film and “inspired” by Ebb’s lyrics to the title song: “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere.”

Like the movie, the show centers on the relationship between an aspiring singer and an ambitious musician who come to the city in the heady, exuberant moment after World War II. But the new couple is interracial (Colton Ryan as Jimmy and Anna Uzele as Francine), and their story intersects with those of freshly invented characters—two Cuban immigrants, a Polish refugee, an English theater producer, an African American just back from the war, a violin teacher and the know-it-all native New Yorker who’s Jimmy’s best friend. And nobody leaves the city. “The movie took place in L.A. and down South,” Stroman points out. “It wasn’t really in New York much.” 

For the Broadway rendition, New York is the whole point. “It’s the story of people coming from everywhere to do something they couldn’t do anywhere else,” Stroman says. “People come to New York to change their lives”—as she had when she left Delaware, and as Kander (Missouri) and Thompson (Illinois) had as well. In 2023 New York, she sees echoes of the story’s post–World War II time frame: “People were hopeful, and they were also pulling plywood off of storefronts and giving smallpox vaccinations,” she explains. “After what we’ve all been through with the pandemic, it’s as if New York needs this show—to show how resilient the city is, to show that we will come back. We have the worst snowstorms, we have the worst plagues, we have the worst terrorist attacks. But we always come back.”

The Creative Process

A three-week workshop at the start of 2022 went so well that only a year later, Stroman was starting rehearsals, posing her signature opening question to the assembled cast: “What’s better than putting on a Broadway show?” A week later, when I ask how things are going, she exclaims, “Glorious! I am lucky to have many beautiful dancers to work with.” But luck has nothing to do with it. From Akina Kitazawa, a swing taking her first Broadway bow, to Clyde Alves, a Broadway veteran who debuted in Stroman’s Music Man in 2000 and worked for her again in Oklahoma! and Bullets Over Broadway, the dancers (see “Meet the Dancers” below) are there because she is. The show resonates, too, of course—much of the cast, like much of the Broadway community, came to New York from elsewhere. Kitazawa says she fell in love with Stroman as a girl in Japan, watching a video of Crazy for You; Alves says that he’s never experienced a more disciplined, professional rehearsal room, or Stroman’s way of balancing thorough preparation with spontaneity. “It creates a really beautiful platform for you to jump off of,” he says.

Chita Rivera Award–winner Ashley Blair Fitzgerald (The Cher Show) hasn’t worked with Stroman before and was shocked to find her already considering the timing of costume changes during pre-production. “I’ve never seen a director-choreographer go that far into detail and have that much respect for their actors and dancers onstage. They get to it eventually, in tech, but they don’t think about it seven weeks before setting foot in the theater!” And she echoes Alves’ admiration for Stroman’s­ mix of efficiency and openness. “She does not waste a second of your time—every second is carefully thought out,” she notes. “Even if a curveball comes in, she’s allowed time for curveballs. She gives performers the ability to bring themselves to the room, as opposed to feeling like they have to fit into a cookie-cutter world.” 

Making New York Dance

Cookie cutters aren’t Stroman’s style—this is the artist who choreographed the lighthearted Big and conceived, directed and choreographed the dark and difficult Thou Shalt Not, who went from Young Frankenstein to The Scottsboro Boys. If you ask what she looks for in auditions, she replies, quite logically, “Every show is different.” But she does admit to favoring “the dancers who are able to act.” For New York, New York, she gave a combination and then told the dancers, “These are pedestrians in New York—I need to see how you walk down a street in New York City.” Some chose to be funny, others tried to look busy or annoyed—it didn’t matter, she says, as long as they took a chance and danced in character.

And a cookie-cutter approach wouldn’t work for this show anyway, given the diversity of its characters. “There are vast amounts of varied styles of choreography,” Stroman says, “because our city is varied, with many different types of people.” Expect salsa, ballet, jazz, “and good old musical-comedy character dancing,” she says—as well as tap-dancing construction workers, who reflect the urban soundscape—“the sound of metal, everything that goes on with building construction.” The ballet moves are for Fitzgerald and former New York City Ballet principal Stephen Hanna, who play newlyweds having “lyrical romantic moments in the midst of the chaos of New York.”

Amid the chaos and the lyricism, there will also be the indelible, eye-popping dance sequences Stroman is known for. “I try to create some kind of image that people will remember even if they don’t remember the show,” she says. “They’ll remember girls as basses”—from Crazy for You, which she revives this July in London—“they’ll remember little old ladies with walkers”—The Producers—“they’ll remember the girl in the yellow dress”—Contact. She won’t elaborate, but she promises “a couple of moments that have never been seen before” in New York, New York. And then there’s that song, which closed the movie and then closed dozens of Liza Minnelli concerts, dozens of Frank Sinatra appearances, and still closes every Yankees home game. No need to ask where it lands in the show.

Meet the Dancers

Clyde Alves, Cast as Tommy Caggiano

Almost 25 years in the business, and he’d never gotten a show without auditioning. But Clyde Alves (rhymes with “calves”) picked up the phone, and Susan Stroman was telling him that she’d gotten the rights for a musical based on the film New York, New York, and that there was a colorful, street-smart character in it named Tommy Caggiano, and what did he think? After three Broadway outings with Stroman, they have “quite a working dialogue with each other,” he says. He told her, “Whaddya mean whaddoI think? I’ll do it.”  

With no audition stress, he found himself workshopping the show last year, and officially cast as Caggiano. The first read-through with the Broadway cast, some of whom hadn’t done the workshop, was “mind-blowing,” he says, the new actors opening new windows on the piece. 

It wasn’t Alves’ first light-bulb moment. His destiny hit him like a lightning bolt, he says, when, at age 7, he wandered into his basement in Brampton, Ontario­, and saw Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines on TV dancing in White Nights. “I’d never seen that before, men doing something equal parts athletic and artistic,” he says. He went upstairs to announce that he wanted to take dance lessons, like his younger sister. When his mother told him she’d signed him up for tap and jazz, he said “What about ballet?” and started crying. By 10 he was commuting to Toronto for class at Canada’s National Ballet School. But he wasn’t there long before the school asked him to quit taking tap and jazz to commit to ballet, and he was ultimately released from the program due to his other after-school activities. At 16 he was commuting again, this time to perform in the ensemble of the 1996 Toronto production of Beauty and the Beast. 

Alves’ days of learning ensemble tracks are long past, and he feels a bit sheepish about how quickly the career dominos fell into place for him. By 19, he says, “I could see that I wanted to make it on Broadway, maybe in five or 10 years.” Instead,­ he lucked into an audition in New York City when Stroman was casting her 2000 Music Man, and Alves made his Broadway debut at 20, as the teenaged Tommy Djilas. Gravity-defying young men became his specialty, culminating in his 2014 starring role in On the Town. Tommy Caggiano has a lot more mileage on him than those guys, he says, and “he’s got his head on straight.” 

The character’s maturity and steadiness resonate with Alves, who is married to Broadway standout Robyn Hurder, currently performing in A Beautiful Noise. It’s the first time in years that they’ve been on Broadway simultaneously—they’d been alternating so that one could be home with their son, Hudson, now 9. New York, New York takes its characters through 12 months of a year, as their lives and the  seasons change. “There are so many themes in this show that are speaking to me,” he says.

Ashley Blair Fitzgerald, Ensemble

When she first heard about Susan Stroman’s New York, New York, Ashley Blair Fitzgerald declined to audition. “I can’t tap like Stro wants someone to tap,” she supposed. But unbeknownst to her, the director-choreographer had caught Fitzgerald’s Chita Rivera Award–winning turn as The Dark Lady in The Cher Show and wanted to work with her. Short story shorter, Fitzgerald didn’t just join the cast; she got to work with Stroman for two weeks of pre-production.

The crash course in Stroman’s style gave her “some intimate time with her, to see how she works, what she likes, what she doesn’t like,” says Fitzgerald. “Once you get in the big room, it’s a different scope.” When a step gave her a bit of  trouble, the vibe was “We’ll get there, we’ll figure it out.” 

Fitzgerald started figuring it out in Columbia, Maryland, studying with Shannon Torres at Ballet Royale Academy, which had funneled dancers into American Ballet Theatre, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Dance Theatre of Harlem. But her heart was set on Broadway—her idols were Ann Reinking and Ann-Margret, and she spent six summers at Reinking’s Broadway Theatre Project, working with Reinking and Gwen Verdon and “everybody under the sun.” She did one semester as a dance major at the Boston Conservatory, but after workshopping what ultimately became the 2003 Burt Bacharach–Hal David revue The Look of Love (with Reinking) and getting an invitation to join the tour of Fosse, her school days were over. By age 19, she’d gone pro, doing Broadway tours, off-Broadway shows, regional theater and Radio City’s Christmas Spectacular. 

She finally performed in a Broadway opening night at 30, when Joshua Bergasse, who’d used her in the TV series “Smash,” hired her for Gigi. But the years she spent touring the choreography of Twyla Tharp, Andy Blankenbuehler, Jerry Mitchell and others, and working in New York with the Verdon Fosse Legacy, deepened her artistry, she says. Fosse’s work, in particular, feeds her soul: “Every time I dance it,” she says, “I discover a new story I haven’t told yet, that I didn’t know I had to tell. I discover who I am and who I can be.” In New York, New York, she and her dancing partner (and longtime friend), former New York City Ballet principal Stephen Hanna, play Utah newlyweds discovering New York City, and she says Stroman’s rapturous ballet, swing and soft-shoe moves make them “the pure heartbeat of the show.” 

Despite her bustling career and busy home life—she’s the mother of 5-year-old Eden and 2-year-old Rowen—she’s still a class hound. “I’m at Steps on Broadway five days a week,” she says, “taking ballet or jazz or whatever. Anything.” And she doesn’t mention tap.

Akina Kitazawa, Dance captain and swing

In 2014, after Akina Kitazawa’s flight from Tokyo landed at JFK airport and she’d dropped off her luggage where she’d be living during the Ailey Summer Intensive, she went directly to Times Square. She looked around with excitement and awe at the throngs and lights and traffic, thinking, This is it!

That flood of emotion overwhelmed her again as she read the opening number in New York, New York’s script, with its newcomers to the city picturing everyone in the crowd cheering for them in some imagined future. “I almost cried,” she says. “It’s about me!” And the future she imagined nine years ago is now upon her: She’s a swing and dance captain on a Broadway show directed and choreographed by her idol, Susan Stroman. With so much to learn, she feels her head “is about to explode.” 

“I’m the luckiest girl in the world,” she says. “It’s really hard to survive in this business, and, somehow, here I am.” It wasn’t all luck, of course—Stroman says her dancing is  “extraordinary.” Still, talent is only part of the equation for non-U.S. citizens who want to work stateside. Back in 2018, Kitazawa booked an ensemble role in The Phantom of the Opera, but the job didn’t meet the strict standards set by Actors’ Equity for immigrants (it helps to be a star), and she wasn’t allowed to join the union. But rule changes made during the pandemic allowed her to join for New York, New York with no problem. 

When Kitazawa came to New York City for the Ailey intensive, she was 21 and hadn’t been able to find a niche for her dancing in Japan, where she’d started out as a competitive ballet dancer. She found her niche that summer, not at Ailey but on weekends, which she spent taking classes at Steps on Broadway. She wasn’t totally surprised—YouTube videos of Broadway musicals had been “the start of me getting interested in New York,” she says. She returned home knowing three months hadn’t been enough, and she moved to New York at the beginning of 2016 as a student in the Steps International Independent Study Program. Juggling visas and union rules, she slowly built a resumé of regional musicals and non-Equity gigs in New York. One of those was another dream come true: After trying and failing to book Radio City’s 2018 Christmas Spectacular show, she passed the grueling audition and danced on the legendary stage up to 17 times a week during the 2022 season.    

With the ongoing pandemic, her parents weren’t able to see her perform, and she hasn’t been back to Japan to see them. Will they come to the opening night of New York, New York? “They have to,” she says. “It’s my Broadway debut!”

The post Susan Stroman and Her Team Put the “New” in <i>New York, New York</i>, Reimagining the Movie for Broadway Today appeared first on Dance Magazine.

There, at the American Ballet Theatre Collegiate Summer Intensive in New York City, she saw her work cut out for her. “I knew I was behind,” she says, describing the jarring effect of her classmates’ comparatively advanced skills. But she fell in love with ballet and the challenge of fulfilling her potential. Her late start, and the tenacity that helped her overcome it, would lead to an illustrious career with Dance Theatre of Harlem and Boston Ballet.

With her crisp, clear-as-a-bell technique, radiant stage presence and spellbinding command of an audience, Fentroy’s uncertain beginning is difficult to imagine now.

In a performance of The Nutcracker at Boston’s Citizens Bank Opera House last December, her Sugar Plum Fairy was met with cheers and a standing ovation. Dazzlingly emotive, Fentroy moves with intentionality, generosity and a sense of freedom. She was “overjoyed and in disbelief” after her promotion to the company’s top rank before a Sugar Plum performance the previous December. “It’s something that I don’t think a younger version of myself would have ever seen in my future,” she says. The achievement coincided with a newfound understanding of herself and the importance of her voice. “I was finally hitting a peak of self-discovery.” 

Starting Out

As a child, Fentroy had begun dancing as a matter of practicality more than passion. She took her mother’s ballet classes at the Peninsula School of Performing Arts in Palos Verdes, California, where both parents taught, to stay occupied. After the couple divorced when Fentroy was 7, she was raised by her mother, who danced with regional companies in California. “I was always backstage when my mom would perform,” Fentroy says. “I watched her all the time.”

In her teens, Fentroy became curious about other schools, leading to her pivotal experience at ABT’s intensive. She attended Joffrey Ballet School’s summer course the following year, and that fall, she moved to New York City alone to attend the school’s trainee program on scholarship. She did work-study to help finance her stay in the dorms and worked overtime in the studio to catch up.

“I became obsessed,” Fentroy says. “I had keys to the building, so I would go in and practice in my free time, and I watched a ton of YouTube videos.” She absorbed the versatile, energetic movement style of her JBS teachers, many of whom had been members of The Joffrey Ballet—the Chicago company that’s unaffiliated with the New York City school—and taught by Robert Joffrey and Gerald Arpino, who founded both organizations.  

Fentroy joined the school’s student company, now called the Joffrey Ballet Concert Group, giving her a taste of professional life, including touring. For the first time, she was exposed to a wide range of stages, audiences and choreography, and devoured modern, improvisation and contemporary ballet. Her tenure in the concert group served her well when she joined her first professional company, Dance Theatre of Harlem, which she entered during its return from a long hiatus. 

Going Professional

Without having risen through the Dance Theatre of Harlem School, Fentroy was in new territory at DTH. “It was a small group, and we were learning so many different pieces, so that we could quickly go on tour and prepare for the year to come,” she says. Despite her burgeoning success, Fentroy’s diligence was developing a dark side: perfectionism, and the harsh self-criticism that tends to accompany it. She felt pressured to prove herself as a new dancer. “I still had this super-studious mindset where I had to be perfect all the time,” she says. “I was really unkind to myself.” But it was also her first time in a predominantly Black ballet environment, where she often felt more at ease than in some previous settings. 

Fentroy—whose mother is white and father is Black—had always felt “other” in life as a biracial person but had a sense of belonging in dance. While her mother prepared her to navigate the challenges that her race might present in the ballet world, their conversations veered more toward building Fentroy’s­ confidence. In the Joffrey Ballet Concert Group, she had become acutely aware of being different: Once, while touring, her fellow dancers took their hair out of buns backstage before attending a reception. Fentroy felt she had to leave her hair in a bun. “No one said anything, but I looked around the room and thought, I am not like these people,” she says. DTH was a stark contrast. “After performances, when we were all pulling our hair out of buns, nobody looked twice,” she says. “I felt like I fit.” 

The second pas de trois in George Balanchine’s Agon was one of her formative roles at the company. “I was the solo woman, and it was the first time I was really featured,” she says. And Balanchine’s Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux built her strength and stamina. “It was the first really hard thing that I performed,” she says. “I thought I was going to puke every time we did it.”

Helen Pickett’s duet When Love had a profound impact. “That was the first time I started to find my voice as an artist; to feel comfortable making choices and not feel apologetic about it,” Fentroy says. It marked the beginning of her now-renowned ability to be intensely present and in the moment­ onstage. “There was something about the freedom the movement gave me—the way I could explore how to reach and push myself in different ways,” she says. “I think that helped me have a level of confidence in myself when I came to Boston­ and was doing things like Forsythe work.”

New Opportunities

In her fourth season with DTH, Fentroy began considering leaving the company. “I was at an age where I was like, ‘If I don’t take the leap now, I might not be able to do it later,’ ” she says. She was in her mid-20s. Several of DTH’s senior dancers had left, and she was being cast in more lead roles. Though the change pushed her to quickly prepare for the spotlight—which would also later help her in Boston—she felt she had more growing to do and dreamed of being in a larger company and performing work she hadn’t danced before. “I wanted to know what it felt like to be onstage with 50 other dancers,” she says. In 2017, she chose Boston Ballet for its rich, diverse repertoire, spanning classical, neoclassical and contemporary work. Immediately after joining, she began learning ballets by William Forsythe and the company’s resident choreographer, Jorma Elo, in addition to artistic director Mikko Nissinen’s The Nutcracker. 

“She’s a stunning dancer, period,” says Nissinen. Early on, he observed Fentroy’s willingness to take creative risks and find the malleability within the boundaries of a piece. “She’s willing to go wherever you want to take her in her dancing. That’s why the audiences get so excited,” he says, citing a performance of Forsythe’s Artifact Suite in 2022 as an example. 

Forsythe speaks to Fentroy’s thoughtful engagement with any part she takes on. “Chyrstyn has the capacity to create entirely new perspectives on the works she engages with,” he says. “Her meticulous, critical examination of the roles presented to her consistently produces innovative, definitive interpretations that actually alter the course of that ballet’s future.”

Coming Into Her Own

Treating herself more compassionately has strengthened Fentroy’s­ ability to do what might be considered a core purpose of art: to express being human. “Not everyone in your audience will know a perfect pirouette, or tendu, or high leg, but everyone can relate to memories and feelings, like anger, love and joy,” she says. She has learned to temper the self-judgment that can be a hurtful corollary to her strong drive. “It’s about being okay with crawling sometimes, and failing as you learn.” 

Fentroy uses her exceptional musicality to connect with audiences and execute her creative vision. “If I listen to the music enough, I can hear a different instrument that changes the impulse of how I do a step, and gives me more energy and something to look forward to while I’m dancing,” she says. Theatergoers and choreographers alike are taking notice. “She searches ferociously for the opportunity to musically differentiate any given moment,” says Forsythe. 

A prodigious work ethic and sharp attention to detail enable­ Fentroy to experiment with her art in a way that’s characteristic of masters of their craft. “She lets herself be spontaneous­ onstage in a delightful way, and my job is to keep up,” says fellow Boston Ballet principal Patrick Yocum, whose first partnership with her was in Elo’s Fifth Symphony of Jean Sibelius. “The moment we went onstage for the first time, she ramped up the performance to Chyrstyn levels, which shocked me at first, because she has this incredible strength.” It is clear that her dancing delves beneath the surface. “She’s doing it because she’s got something to say,” he says, discussing her ability to imbue each movement with meaning. As she has developed her artistry, she has also carried Dance Theatre of Harlem’s ethos of representing something larger than herself.

A Force for Change

Since the George Floyd–inspired social justice movement of 2020, Fentroy has taken on a larger role in championing diversity, equity and inclusion. “Becoming a principal dancer gives me the opportunity to utilize my platform a little bit more and be seen on a wider scale, not to be this famous principal dancer, but to be visible to more people who need to see someone who looks like me,” she says. “It’s exciting.”

In 2020, she launched Color Our Future, a virtual, DEI-focused mentorship program to support Boston Ballet School’s pre-professional students during the early pandemic period, and led it until it ended the following year. She remains close with her mentees, and the experience gave her confidence in her leadership ability. In the future, she sees herself creating a similar initiative independently. 

Two years ago, Fentroy danced the opening pas de deux in Balanchine’s Chaconne with her hair down, as is typical for the part. A watershed moment, her hair was in its natural, Afro-textured state. During her first year in the company, she’d danced a corps role in the same piece, and wore a wig for the first performance of the run to try to blend in. “To come back and do this iconic principal role with my short Afro was monumental,” she says. “I couldn’t stop crying because it was so full-circle for me.”

With everything she has accomplished, Fentroy continues to aim high. In the future, she wants to lead a full-length story ballet. Her sights are set on Kitri in Don Quixote and the title role in Giselle. Juliet is her ultimate dream part. “That score makes my heart sing,” she says. This year, Fentroy can plan to be as active as ever. “She will be a busy and happy dancer,” Nissinen says. “She is in the prime of her career.”

The post Boston Ballet Principal Chyrstyn Fentroy Steps Into Her Power appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Fenley created State of Darkness to Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring in 1988. In 2020, during the pandemic, she brought it back to the stage, first for online distribution and then, in 2021, for live performance. Seven dancers performed the solo, all exceptional. But Knight’s interpretation felt transformational, like a kind of molting. “The experience changed me,” Knight says. “You go through a full journey, and by the end you feel like a completely different person.”

What had helped propel him to that state, he explains, was a mixture of his admiration for Fenley—“She’s so ballsy, and I wanted it to be that ballsy too”—and his hunger to fully experience everything the solo threw at him. “I wanted to push myself to the max,” he says, “in every way.” He worked and worked, until the piece became part of him. “I think what was special about him,” Fenley says, “is that he found something very new for himself in it. There was a sense of exploratory delight.”

For the last 18 years, Knight has been a member of the Martha Graham Dance Company, where he has been a principal since 2014. And though he deeply loves the Graham repertory and technique, and has made strong impressions in many of Graham’s works, he is always looking for more. “I don’t want to be put in a box,” he says, “or to always have to move in a particular way, just because that’s how people see me. I want to be more than that.”

That hunger shines through his performances. In 2022, he collaborated with Twyla Tharp for the first time, on an evening made up of two of Tharp’s most celebrated and popular works: In the Upper Room, from 1986, and Nine Sinatra Songs, from 1982. Again, watching him dance, you could see joy radiating from him. Sweat poured down his chest, arms and back, but a smile crept across his face. “Dancing with him is just pure joy,” says Cassandra Trenary, who also danced on that program.

There’s a lot of preparation behind being that in the moment­ onstage; it’s something that Knight has worked toward his entire career. “Dance has always been demanding for me,” he says. “I always had to work hard, to fight for what I have.” 

He developed this determination as a dance student, first in middle school and then at New World School of the Arts in Miami, where he spent his college years. Knight came to dance late—he’s now 40—with a few stops and starts on the way. His family, British and Jamaican, moved to Miami from London when he was 8 years old. As a kid, he liked to dance and sing with his cousins and watch old Shirley Temple and Sammy Davis Jr. films: “I just loved the music and the fantasy of it all.” Then, in his first year at Norland Middle School, a magnet arts school, one of his teachers noticed him, gave him an informal audition and invited him to join the school’s dance program. 

The other students had been taking dance for years. “There was a lot of catching up,” says Knight. “All my life I’ve been playing catch-up.” It was also something of an adjustment for his family. “There had never been a boy in the family who talked about wanting to be a dancer,” he says. “I had to take karate at the same time to balance things out and make my dad feel a little happier.”

Knight studied jazz, modern dance and ballet at Norland, but when he graduated and wasn’t accepted into a conservatory program, he moved on. He loved to draw and was intrigued by architecture, so he enrolled in the architecture program at William H. Turner Technical Arts High School. 

But, as time went by, he started to miss dance. His architecture training, with its focus on computer graphics rather than actual drawing, began to lose its appeal. By his junior year, he had started taking dance classes on the side. One, a Graham class, was taught by Peter London, an African American dancer who was a member of the Martha Graham company from 1988 to 1997. (Graham created the role of the Shaman in Night Chant for him.) London became an important mentor. “To see a man of color, from the Caribbean, who had gone to Juilliard and become a principal at Martha Graham, was a great image of what hard work and determination looked like,” says Knight. “To see a man over 6′ 2″ demonstrating a whole Graham class full-out every day only made me more hungry to move in that way.”

London was equally impressed with Knight. “I can remember­ him simply walking across the campus,” he says. “He had this singular focus.” Knight applied to the college dance program at New World School of the Arts, where London was on the faculty. He got in, and it was catch-up time all over again. Knight still remembers his blistering first evaluation. “All the teachers were sitting on one side of a long table, and I was in a chair in front of them.” Though the criticisms hurt, he says that the experience crystallized what he needed to do: take night and weekend classes, apply for summer programs, read everything he could, watch videos, dig deeper. So that’s what he did. “He was a guy with a mission, completely dedicated, constantly improving,” says London, who, in addition to his classes at New World, invited Knight to his evening classes at a school across town.

Drawn to ballet, Knight spent two summers studying with the Dance Theatre of Harlem. Arthur Mitchell, then still the director, would come in to watch class and rehearsal. “I loved seeing those Black artists doing Balanchine,” says Knight. “I loved the approach to the movement—it made sense on my body.” But by 2004, the year before Knight graduated from New World, the company had been forced to shut down (temporarily) because of financial problems. Knight was also attracted to Ailey’s choreography, but in the end it was the Graham technique that fascinated him the most. What drew him in was the completeness of Graham’s world—as he puts it, “the theatricality of it, the power and the costumes, the Noguchi sets and the movement. I felt like I was watching Shakespeare in dance form. I loved it. I wanted to do it.” 

Knight joined the Martha Graham company in 2005, a tumultuous­ time not long after the company had emerged from an acrimonious and expensive lawsuit with Graham’s heir. The leadership had just transitioned from Terese Capucilli and Christine Dakin to current artistic director Janet Eilber. No sooner had Knight been hired, he had to be let go, for financial reasons, only to be rehired a few weeks later. “We had to rebuild from zero,” says Eilber, “and Lloyd was part of that.” 

Eilber has watched Knight develop from a young dancer fueled by passion into the consummate artist he is today. “Each year, he got better and better, and now he is a fully developed artist,” she says. Knight stands out for distilling the movement to its essence, without overlaying it with extraneous theatricality. “He doesn’t add anything,” says London. “Everything gives way to simplicity, and that is very hard.” 

Knight has performed many of Graham’s iconic male roles over the years: the Preacher in Appalachian Spring (created for Merce Cunningham when he was a member of the company), the seductive Stranger and Adam in Embattled Garden, Hippolytus in Phaedra, the Night Watchman and Paris in Clytemnestra, Oedipus­ ­in Night Journey. What he loves about these dance dramas is that they create a whole world onstage, in which he can lose himself. “Sometimes, when the curtain goes down, I think, My God, what just happened?” he says. “There’s nothing quite like it.”

As Eilber has commissioned new works for the company, Knight has had opportunities to expand his horizons in many of them, such as in full-scale commissions from choreographers Nacho Duato, Mats Ek, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and, most recently, the Israeli-born, British-based choreographer Hofesh Shechter. In 2019, he spent four months as a guest principal with Ballet Flanders at Cherkaoui’s invitation. While there, he took part in a remounting of Cherkaoui’s 2006 Mea Culpa, which focused on the legacy of colonialism. It was the first time Knight had danced in a piece that overtly took on the topics of race and slavery. “It was heavy,” he says, “but I thought it was so brilliant, and he created an important depiction of interracial love that I hadn’t seen before in dance.” 

Race is something Knight carries through everything he does. “It’s an important part of me,” he says. “I am a Black male, and that is something that is always with me.” He says that Peter London “always pushed me to carry myself with pride and reminded me that I not only represent myself, but every Black person.” 

Being one of the few Black men at Graham (and sometimes the only one) has been lonely at times. “Only because, you realize there haven’t been that many of us,” says Knight. He says Black audience members have approached him after shows to tell him how much his presence means to them. He feels the honor of that, as well as a responsibility “to produce something really great.”  

In his constant quest to grow and improve, Knight continues to train in multiple disciplines: Graham technique, of course, but also ballet, yoga, Gyrotonic, sometimes Gaga. He was a regular in Wilhelm Burmann’s class at Steps on Broadway until Burmann’s death in 2020, and he now takes class with Nancy Bielski, Heather Hawk, Espen Giljane and Zvi Gotheiner. Knight has also become close to dancers he’s met while working on projects, including both Cassandra Trenary­ and James Whiteside from American Ballet Theatre, and he remains connected with Jamar Roberts (until recently Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s resident choreographer), whom he knows from Miami. 

Because many of his friends are fellow artists, they often make work together. Knight collaborated­ with Jack Ferver, a downtown choreographer with a flair for the theatrical, in a work called Everything is Imaginable, in which Knight danced a very pure, Martha Graham-like solo while wearing a long, white dress, accompanied by the sound of Graham’s voice. The solo was embedded in an evening that explored the “lives, virtuosity, and fantasies” of its five queer performers. It was Knight’s first experience of overtly presenting himself as a gay artist onstage. 

As usual, he was ready. All those years of hard work, of opening himself up to new experiences and absorbing as much as possible, have prepared Knight for this current moment, when he is more in demand as an artist than ever. There’s no more need for catch-up. Knight is right where he needs to be, at the center of the dance world, ready for anything.

The post Lloyd Knight Illuminates the Stage at Graham and Beyond appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Dandara Veiga

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Doña Perón, created for Ballet Hispánico, does not shy from darkness. Its portrait of Eva Péron devotes ample time to the shadowy aspects of the controversial Argentine first lady’s life. But such is the brilliance of Dandara Veiga’s charisma that, should you see her in the title role, you’ll inevitably come out admiring Evita. 

The kind of dancer who can make psychological turmoil legible in her body, Veiga brings us not just into Perón’s world but into her churning mind. Her dancing and acting share a clarity of purpose: Every element is well-defined, though free of melodramatic overstatement. In Veiga’s hands (and limbs, and face), Perón becomes a person rather than a caricature.

Veiga has been a standout since joining Ballet Hispánico in 2017. But Doña Perón, the company’s first commissioned full-length work, gives her room to expand into her artistry. It’s a star vehicle, and Veiga is a star. —Margaret Fuhrer

Cameron Catazaro

Steady strength and lyrical pliability put a bloom on Cameron Catazaro’s dancing. His carriage—at over 6′ 2″, he stands tall in the corps of Miami City Ballet—adds nobility and romantic magnitude to his portrayals, a combination that has earned him a bouquet of eye-catching roles, with Prince Siegfried in Alexei Ratmansky’s Swan Lake at the forefront. Catazaro credits his Swan Queen, principal soloist Samantha Hope Galler, with inspiring him to build, through a diligent work ethic, dramatic dimension. His knack for characterization has also heightened the father’s solemnity in Prodigal Son and put youthful vigor into an old legend through Prince Ivan in Firebird.

Canton, Ohio–born and trained, Catazaro spent a year each at Ballet Academy East and MCB School fine-tuning Balanchine-style technique, which sped him, after joining the company in 2019, to featured roles in “Emeralds” and Stravinsky Violin Concerto. And his repertoire keeps growing. Just this fall he took the lead in John Cranko’s Romeo and Juliet. For the season ahead, he’s learning Jerome Robbins’ Afternoon of a Faun and is set to perform Martha Graham’s Diversion of Angels, in which he spread his first-timer’s wings at Jacob’s Pillow last summer. —Guillermo Perez

Guillaume Diop

Becoming the face of diversity at a venerable institution like the Paris Opéra Ballet is no small burden to bear—and can magnify the pressure of a high-profile debut. For a split second, early in Guillaume Diop’s first performance as Solor in La Bayadère last season, a flash of panic registered on his expressive face as the 22-year-old struggled to keep French star Dorothée Gilbert balanced in his arms.

Yet not only did Diop recover, but he improved as the evening went on, with supple elevation in Solor’s treacherous variations and unaffected poise. Born to a French mother and a Senegalese father, the young corps member—who trained at the Paris Opéra Ballet School, but credits a summer intensive with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater as a personal breakthrough—has handled every challenge with grace in his four years with the Paris Opéra.

In 2020, he was among a group of Black employees who pushed for progress around racial issues at the institution. The following year, Diop, who was still a quadrille—the lowest corps rank—was given the last-minute opportunity to replace an injured principal as Romeo in Nureyev’s Romeo and Juliet. Under heavy scrutiny, Diop’s joyful elegance won over the audience, a feat he repeated as Solor and as Don Quixote’s Basilio. This fall at the internal concours de promotion, he was promoted to the highest corps rank, sujet. The road to becoming the French company’s first Black étoile may be long, but Diop has all the makings of a trailblazer. —Laura Cappelle

Adelaide Clauss

As Terpsichore in Balanchine’s Apollo this summer, The Washington Ballet’s Adelaide Clauss mesmerized the audience—as well as Apollo—with adroit, sharp-edged dancing coupled with a flirtatious allure. Gifted with ribbonlike épaulement and an ardent work ethic, Clauss is a consummate artist.

A Buffalo, New York, native, Clauss trained at The Neglia Conservatory of Ballet and American Ballet Theatre’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School. Catching the eye of TWB artistic director Julie Kent shortly after joining ABT’s Studio Company in 2015, the now-24-year-old is currently in her sixth season with TWB and a bona fide company star.

“Adelaide has this mystery, imagination and luminous quality that allows her to lose herself in whatever roles she is performing,” says Kent. With Clauss having done so in plum roles including Odette/Odile in Kent and Victor Barbee’s Swan Lake and The Lilac Fairy in their The Sleeping Beauty, along with the Sugar Plum Fairy in Septime Webre’s The Nutcracker, Kent foresees her having many more opportunities to further develop as a storyteller in 2023 and beyond. —Steve Sucato

Andrew McShea

Rooted yet explosive, his wingspan like that of some ravenous bird, Whim W’Him’s Andrew McShea creates shapes that seem impossible. “His bones are like liquid,” says artistic director Olivier Wevers of this astonishing shape-shifter. McShea easily claims the focus onstage, evoking haunting narratives as he creates characters that are bold, vulnerable, unnerving. In Ethan Colangelo’s a vanishing thread, he’s a painter, the space is his canvas, and every part of his body adds color to his story and character. In Wevers’ Cannibalistic Sanctuary, it’s the torque of his torso, head, then limbs, all wildly flexible, that makes him become the crawling creature, the wounded son. The past three years with Whim W’Him have brought great leaps in artistry and confidence for this dancer, who is, more than anything, a storyteller. “He invites me into a dance fantasy,” says Wevers. “An incarnation of the contemporary dancer I wish I could have been.” —Gigi Berardi

Ishida Dance Company

It’s rare, in Texas, to witness the level of dancing and dancemaking that Ishida Dance Company consistently achieves in a single evening. Since debuting the company at the beginning of 2020, artistic director and choreographer Brett Ishida has recruited dancers with a flair for drama and rare movement qualities from top companies and choreographers from all parts of the globe. The result? One-of-a-kind shows in Austin and Houston, which project a boutique international festival vibe. Ishida, who has a background in literature, crafts evenings that alchemize into a cohesive whole. Creating a poetic structure that begins with her own work—which typically stems from a written script—and choosing guest choreographers and movers who complement the narrative thread, the gentle impresario orchestrates events that transcend what’s expected of the typical pick-up company model. The season ahead offers new works by European choreographers John Wannehag, Kristian Lever and Mauro Astolfi. Judging from the growth of audience enthusiasm, Ishida, who’s begun nabbing increasingly prominent commissions, and her eponymous company are enjoying a warm Texas embrace. —Nancy Wozny

Mac Twining

Choreographer Christopher Williams’ works often evoke both the immediate present and the mythical past, the earthly and the unearthly. While those oppositional forces might pull uncomfortably at some performers, Mac Twining, a dancer of great freedom and sweep, handles them with easy grace. As the Poet in Williams’ queer reimagining of Les Sylphides, Twining is a hero for both the Romantic and the modern era. Playful, breezy, open-hearted—shades of Timothée Chalamet—he becomes the perfect foil for the more introspective elegance of ballet star Taylor Stanley’s Queen of the Sylphs.

Twining also performs with Stephen Petronio Company, bringing the same relaxed naturalness to Petronio’s harder-edged, thoroughly contemporary works. Wherever he’s dancing, Twining seems very much himself, and right at home. —Margaret Fuhrer

Amanda Castro

Amanda Castro never wants audiences just to see her when she dances. “I want you to feel things,” she says. “It’s not about me. It’s about what you walk away with.” It’s a somewhat paradoxical desire for a dancer whose luminous stage presence is almost addictive—you fear you’ll miss a clever improvisation or a flash of joy if you let your eyes wander to another performer even for a moment. Her warmth, her vivacity linger long after the curtain closes. 

Castro usually practices her onstage magnetism in tap shoes, frequenting the works of the genre’s heavy hitters like Dormeshia, Ayodele Casel, Jared Grimes and Caleb Teicher. But that wasn’t always the case: Castro danced with Urban Bush Women for four years, taking tap classes whenever she could, before transitioning into musical theater (including a high-profile tour as Anita in West Side Story). It was while working on UBW’s 2015 Walking With ’Trane, inspired by the music of John Coltrane, that she had a realization: “The whole process, I just wanted to have my shoes on,” she says. It didn’t take long for Castro to become one of New York City’s most in-demand tap dancers (winning Grimes’ Run the Night competition in 2016 didn’t hurt). 

Recently, Castro has been expanding her “rhythmic storytelling,” as she puts it, through Soles of Duende, a collaboration with kathak dancer Brinda Guha and flamenco dancer Arielle Rosales that’s quickly amassing critical praise and institutional support. Broadway and an evening-length solo work are still on Castro’s bucket list—blink, and she’ll have already checked them off. —Lauren Wingenroth

Águeda Saavedra 

In flamenco it is not so much what you do as how you do it that is most important—and this is where Águeda Saavedra excels. She nullifies the need to perceive her movement as either contemporary or traditional; rather, she is a vessel of movement expression that recontextualizes time from moment to moment. Her deep backbend can go anywhere; with castanets it evokes an old style of decades ago, while with a head roll while seated on the floor, we are swept into today’s world. 

The 27-year-old has been described in the national Spanish press as the “present and future of flamenco.” Performing with top companies on international stages since her late teens, Saavedra has worked under the direction of award-winning contemporary flamenco choreographers Manuel Liñán, Daniel Doña, Marco Flores and Mercedes de Córdoba as well as the Ballet Flamenco de Andalucía, and regularly appears in Spain’s most prestigious tablaos. 

“I have a personal and artistic need to expose myself in a solo work, in a way that I have never done,” Saavedra says. With the coveted Best New Artist Award from the 2022 Festival de Jerez and what she describes as “an unbeatable team” in hand, it seems such a project is only a matter of time. —Bridgit Lujan

Vidya Patel

Following in the footsteps of Akram Khan and Shobana Jeyasingh, Vidya Patel brings together her knowledge of classical Indian and contemporary dance to mesmerizing effect. In a dance film created in fall 2021 as part of her two-year tenure as a Sadler’s Wells Young Associate, she executes quintessential kathak turns and gestural flourishes with her own personal twist. Delicate and intentional, she switches deftly between fluid, almost meditative motions and sudden staccato slices and foot taps. Performing an abstract piece of choreography, Patel’s earnest eyes follow each of her movements with an intensity that gives them narrative meaning. Her talent for storytelling is also evident in the film Trinity (2021), by visual artist Hetain Patel, where she was not only required to dance but also act.

Trained in kathak, Patel first caught the British dance scene’s attention when she represented the South Asian category in the Grand Finals of the 2015 BBC Young Dancer competition. Soon after, she was invited to work with a range of well-known companies and choreographers, such as Richard Alston and Gary Clarke. 

This October, she premiered Don’t Mind Me at Sadler’s Wells, using the children’s board game Snakes and Ladders—which originated in India—as a frame to explore themes of trauma and healing, luck and chance, power and society. It was her final piece as a Young Associate, and only whetted appetites to see how her work will develop. —Emily May

Ashton Edwards

A soaring jump, whirligig turns, refined pointe work, lines for days—Ashton Edwards has them all. But what makes the 20-year-old Pacific Northwest Ballet corps member an unforgettable performer isn’t their meticulous technique, musicality and apparently effortless physicality—it’s joy, pure and simple. Onstage, Edwards (whose pronouns are they/them) radiates a love for ballet that started at age 3, when they saw Brandye Lee dance the Sugar Plum Fairy. “I just wanted to be everything she embodied,” says Edwards. They started training a year later, and ballet quickly took on a deep personal resonance. “Growing up queer in the Black community, and also in a low-income community, it was this escape from reality,” they say.

Fast-forward 16 years and Edwards has garnered featured roles in Justin Peck’s The Times Are Racing and Dwight Rhoden’s Catching Feelings at PNB, and in Mango, adapted from Andrea Miller’s sky to hold, in Taylor Stanley’s Dichotomous Being program at Jacob’s Pillow. They’ve also had an impact as a nonbinary ballet dancer of color. “Ashton is so much more than their talent,” says PNB artistic director Peter Boal. “They are a thoughtful advocate for change within the company and in the world of dance.” Yet for Edwards, everything still comes down to The Nutcracker, and that magical feeling of ballet bliss. “Getting to perform the corps of Snow—my heart flutters every time!” —Claudia Bauer

Quinn Starner

Professional ballet isn’t where most comp kids—the contemporary-competition dynamos who dominate “So You Think You Can Dance” rosters—end up. But when they do turn their distinctive powers toward ballet, magic often happens.

Quinn Starner, an alum of the competition circuit, now cuts fearlessly through choreography of all styles at New York City Ballet. When she was a young teenager, her fantastically vivid solos earned accolades at both contemporary and ballet contests. In 2018, she changed tacks, enrolling at the School of American Ballet; last year, she joined NYCB’s corps. Professional ballet life has polished down some of her harder edges, but that has only enhanced her sparkle. As an original cast member in both Silas Farley’s Architects of Time last spring and Kyle Abraham’s Love Letter (on shuffle) last fall, she showed a new refinement in her épaulement and port de bras.

Starner seems more than ready for ballet’s technical challenges, and invigorated by its artistic ones—much like fellow comp-kid-turned-ballet-pro unicorns Tiler Peck, James Whiteside and Catherine Hurlin. That’s a good list to be on. —Margaret Fuhrer

Elijah Richardson

With quirky charisma and an infectious smile, Elijah Richardson burst onto Chicago’s dance scene in 2018. But it was last year that he made an indelible mark, delivering a masterful performance in South Chicago Dance Theatre’s smash hit, five-year anniversary concert at the Harris Theater—just two years and a pandemic after he worked there as an usher. The San Jose, California, native has long been insatiable, training in everything from figure skating to musical theater, ballet to Gaga. He booked a ticket to the Windy City the moment he graduated from Chapman University with a dance degree. Three seasons with DanceWorks Chicago solidified Richardson’s command of physical theater, but this dancer is as multifaceted as his interests: He pulls off impassioned lyricism and pinpoint precision as easily as slapstick comedy. Others outside Chicago have taken notice too: He recently guested with Memphis’ Collage Dance Collective and has had his work selected four times for the 92Y Mobile Dance Film Festival. —Lauren Warnecke

Dominic Moore-Dunson

“Urban Midwest storytelling” is how dancer and choreographer Dominic Moore-Dunson describes his approach to his works. The 33-year-old’s visceral, cross-disciplinary dance projects, themed around Blackness and social justice, pull from his personal experiences living and working in Akron, Ohio. Trained at Akron’s performing arts schools, Moore-Dunson performed with Cleveland’s Inlet Dance Theatre for 10 years. His 2018 The “Black Card” Project, billed as a “live-action dance-theater cartoon,” was developed during his time at Inlet; a solo work, CAUTION, was commissioned by Akron Art Museum that same year. A 2019 Jacob’s Pillow Ann and Weston Hicks Choreography Fellowship and 2019 Cleveland Arts Prize Emerging Artist Award for Theatre and Dance soon followed.

His current project, inCOPnegro, is a two-pronged exploration of the concept of “safety” and police relations in Black communities throughout America. “It’s me trying to understand what to say to my kids about police as Black people,” says Moore-Dunson, who has been wrongfully stopped some 45 times by police. The podcast inCOPnegro: Black and Blue, launched in April 2022, features the dance artist in conversation with individuals on both sides of the “blue line” as he tries to find answers to that question. The evening-length dance theater production, developed in part at the National Center for Choreography at The University of Akron, is set to debut in June. —Steve Sucato

Becca Robinson

When given the chance to perform on national television, most dancers flaunt their most impressive tricks. But as a contestant on NBC’s “Dancing with Myself,” Becca Robinson chose instead to make people laugh, sniffing her armpit and dropping into a sudden split. That’s not to say Robinson lacks real moves: Her eye-catching versatility has earned her impressive credits, including assisting choreographer Bo Park in creating a Virgin Voyages dance show, as well as dancing in the movies In the Heights and Isn’t It Romantic, Taylor Swift’s performance at the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards, and a flash mob at the premiere of Jennifer Lopez’s documentary Halftime.

No matter the job, the San Diego–born, New York City–based Robinson lets her sense of humor shine through. In a hypercompetitive dance world, her unapologetic quirkiness is refreshing. “If there’s not some sort of comedic element in my improv, the dance or my facials, then I didn’t do my job of being authentic,” she says. “It’s okay to be different. There’s room on the dance floor for everyone.” —Kristi Yeung

Tendayi Kuumba

The Lady in Brown in Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf is the choreo-poem’s emotional center, bookending the show with her utterances of the famous lines that give the groundbreaking work its title. But in Tendayi Kuumba’s interpretation of the role, it wasn’t just her monologues that both catalyzed and grounded last year’s much-lauded Broadway revival, directed and choreographed by Camille A. Brown. It was her dancing—electric, free, fearless—that established her as the show’s driving force and the standout in a cast full of standouts.

Kuumba’s Chita Rivera Award–winning performance was just the most recent example of the 34-year-old’s striking ability to bring her full self to all the vastly varying stages she dances on, from David Byrne’s American Utopia—her Broadway debut—to her time with Urban Bush Women. The work she creates with partner Greg Purnell as UFly Mothership is as multi-hyphenated as she is, combining music, movement and technology to create expansive sensory universes. (Their most recent work, The Adventures of Mr. Left Brain and Ms. Right, for the Stephen Petronio Company, premiered last month.)

Next up for Kuumba: choreographing one-third of a shared program with Annie-B Parson and Donna Uchizono that will premiere later this year in New York City and tour in summer 2024. —Lauren Wingenroth

Mikaela Santos

It’s her imaginative spark—along with pristine technique and bright musicality—that makes Mikaela Santos one of Atlanta Ballet’s most captivating dancers. Last March, Santos breathed startling freshness into Giselle’s peasant pas de deux, catching the music’s quickening pulse with fleet footwork while her upper body revealed buoyant flourishes with warmth and spontaneity. In May, Santos enchanted in Sergio Masero’s Schubertiada. She tripped along Schubert’s rolling rhythms with swift attack—each change of focus revealed new facets and feelings as she caught her partner’s eye and drew out the music’s playful sensuality.

Born in the Philippines, Santos credits her teacher, Effie Nañas, for preparing her to study and compete at the international level, where Santos developed an “inner presence” and the confidence to show her individuality, and with nurturing her natural expressivity. Santos often imagines she’s dancing in wind or underwater. “Once you finish a step, it breaks the moment,” she says. “I want people to feel that it’s not going to stop.” After her recent tour de force performance in Justin Peck’s In Creases, with more opportunities ahead, it doesn’t seem she’ll have to. —Cynthia Bond Perry

Simone Acri

Houston Ballet artistic director Stanton Welch has found a new muse in Simone Acri. In a jaw-dropping solo in Welch’s Sparrow, set to Simon and Garfunkel’s “Baby Driver,” Acri weaved through the driving beat, revealing the song’s bittersweet undercurrent. In Brigade, he nailed Welch’s tongue-in-cheek humor while dazzling with his freewheeling style. And it’s not just his artistic director’s work in which the newly minted soloist excels: He launched this season with a robust performance of Trey McIntyre’s Peter Pan, giving the hellion of a wild child ample charisma along with soaring flying skills. With an ability to both move with total abandon and mine the in-between places, Acri sources his spectacular technique to shape a choreographer’s vision. He’s like a fully charged battery—high-energy but precise, and solid with his bravado turns and jumps. But it’s how he does those things, with such nuance, joy and connection to the audience, that has him turning the heads of spectators and artistic staff alike. —Nancy Wozny

Elwince Magbitang

It’s not every day that American Ballet Theatre casts an apprentice in a soloist role. And yet, as Elwince Magbitang soared through barrel turns, 540s, tours and other feats in the second act of Don Quixote last June, it was clear that the company was introducing its audiences to a virtuoso talent. 

Powerful, musical and charismatic, the 21-year-old Magbitang has been creating buzz since he arrived in 2018 from his native Philippines to train at ABT’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School. As a student he was chosen to dance a small part in the premiere of Alexei Ratmansky’s The Seasons. Shortly afterward, in 2019, he joined ABT’s Studio Company, where he impressed in bravura roles like the folk-inspired Gopak variation. This fall, as a newly promoted corps member, he made his debut as Puck in Sir Frederick Ashton’s The Dream.

“Elwince’s dancing shows strength and panache,” says former ABT principal Stella Abrera, a close mentor. She spotted Magbitang, then a student at Manila’s Steps Dance Studio, in 2018 when he performed in a fundraising gala she organized in the Philippines. Impressed, she and her husband, Studio Company artistic director Sascha Radetsky, arranged his audition for the JKO School. “It’s been such a thrill witnessing his journey,” Abrera says. “He’s an inspiration to his hometown and beyond.” —Amy Brandt

Erin Casale

A compact powerhouse as much at home in leotard roles as she is in tutu-and-tiara ballets, Erin Casale is every bit a 21st-century dance artist. In an excerpt from Marius Petipa’s Le Talisman while she was a student at Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School, her buoyant steps, turns and extensions evoked visions of an ebullient Disney heroine. As a featured soloist in Nacho Duato’s Duende, she contorted her body into shapes resembling symbols from some ancient civilization. “Erin is very daring and dynamic when she moves,” says former Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre artistic director Susan Jaffe. “When I needed someone with presence and power to dance the lead in my Bolero, Erin was the perfect fit.”

A Johnstown, Pennsylvania, native, Casale trained at Virginia’s Academy of Russian Ballet and Johnstown Concert Ballet prior to going to PBT’s school, where she rose through its levels to be handpicked in 2019 by then–artistic director Terrence S. Orr to join the company. Now in her fourth season with PBT, the 23-year-old says her career goal is “to experience everything.” —Steve Sucato

Gianna “Gigi” Todisco

Gianna “Gigi” Todisco’s resumé is the picture of versatility. In the six years since she graduated from Loyola Marymount University, she’s served as movement director for Post Malone, ZHU, Islands and NIKI; performed in a series of operas choreographed by Jacob Jonas and No)one. Art House’s Chris Emile; appeared in music videos and commercials for the likes of Tinashe, Vans, OnStar and Hennessy; and made waves in the concert dance scene with Micaela Taylor’s The TL Collective. She recently wrapped up a run as choreographer and performer with opening act Kali Uchis as part of Tyler, the Creator’s world tour. Through it all, Todisco leaves her unique stamp on everything she does, imbuing each project with her gritty, avant-garde, effortlessly cool sensibilities—whatever corner of the industry she finds herself in. —Sophie Bress

Jordan Demetrius Lloyd

On a balmy evening early last June, a public school playground deep in Brooklyn became New York City’s hottest proverbial club: Droves of people—an equal mix of experimental-dance who’s whos and Bedford-Stuyvesant residents—flocked to a free performance of Jordan Demetrius Lloyd’s Jerome, an enchanting, elegant work that seemed to both capture and converse with the particular magic of golden hour in the neighborhood. 

Lloyd—whom New York audiences may also know as a performer in the works of David Dorfman, Beth Gill, Tere O’Connor and others—was as surprised as anyone by the massive turnout. But in retrospect, underestimating Lloyd’s skill as a community-gatherer, a self-producer or an artist is a mistake. The 28-year-old, who’s been receiving growing support for his work over the past several years (a New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks residency, a Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, commissions from Issue Project Room and Danspace Project), leaves little to chance, crafting dreamy, highly detailed works full of unexpected gesture and pedestrian virtuosity.

Inspired by postmodernism, Lloyd positions his work at the intersection of that canon and other contemporary performance aesthetics. But don’t try to put his work in any kind of box, or category: “I feel a deep aversion to branding myself as the artist that does a thing,” he says. “A unidirectional career does not feel like the one I’m after.” We may not know where Lloyd is going next, but the masses are sure to follow. —Lauren Wingenroth

Musa Motha

Musa Motha came into his own in the September premiere of Rambert’s Peaky Blinders: The Redemption of Thomas Shelby. Equally at home in flamboyant jazz club scenes as in opium-riddled dream sequences and fast-paced fight choreography, Motha seamlessly switches between cheeky, staccato, hip-hop–inspired solos and intimate duets in the role of Barney.

Motha dances with crutches; his left leg was amputated when he was 11 after he was diagnosed with bone cancer. While such a surgery could have been seen as career-ending for anyone in a physical profession, it propelled Motha into the world of movement. After starting off as a commercial street dancer—most notably featuring in Drake’s “One Dance” music video—Motha, originally from South Africa, first transitioned into contemporary concert dance when he joined the Johannesburg-based Vuyani Dance Theatre in 2018, before debuting with Rambert last May. While the UK is home to pioneering organizations like Candoco, which hires a mixture of disabled and non-disabled performers, the former rarely secure positions with mainstream companies like Rambert. Now, as a member of Britain’s oldest contemporary-dance company, Motha is helping to shift perceptions in the country’s dance scene, and is perfectly placed to continue growing as an artist in his own right. —Emily May

Madeline Maxine Gorman

Madeline Maxine Gorman doesn’t just live her values, she choreographs and dances them. Navigating the dance world as a queer, disabled and neurodivergent creative, she incorporates material from her intersectional identities into her intellectually probing, politically minded and personally revelatory works. Between Myself, a developing solo show, draws from her childhood diary musings, memories of terrible first dates and her ongoing experiences with hearing loss. Bitten Tongue, created when she was studying dance and communications at Towson University, probes the inner psyche of a working woman rebelling against holding her tongue in a male-dominated corporate world. Filled with flings and forceful tumbles, its androgynous choreographic language leans in. New this year, her Tooth and Claw will examine “tall poppy syndrome” (when successful people are criticized for succeeding), pointedly blasting American exceptionalism to an original score riffing on ABBA’s “Money, Money, Money.”

Gorman, who was selected for Dance Place’s Dance and Disability Residency, created GRIDLOCK Dance to reflect her values as an artist and person. Foremost, that means paying dancers for rehearsals and performances, and deep collaborative work. She strives for what she calls “concinnity,” a concept akin to harmony. In practice, that includes planning around dancers’ schedules and valuing other parts of their lives. “Real life comes first,” she says. “Not a part-time gig.” —Lisa Traiger

STL Rhythm Collaborative

The professional tap scene in St. Louis fizzled when Robert Reed, founder of the St. Louis Tap Festival and lead ambassador for the form in the Gateway City, died in 2015. But Maria Majors took up the mantle in 2021, forming the STL Rhythm Collaborative by combining her pickup troupe, moSTLy TAP, with companion group moSTLy JAZZ to reconnect tap dancers with their jazz music roots. Its first full-length show, which premiered in October 2021, pulled apart music by the Dave Brubeck Quartet and strung it back together with indulgently satisfying taps layered on top. That same year, the company launched the STL Rhythm Fest, modeled after Reed’s illustrious festival and reinvigorating the local scene. This summer’s edition brought heavy hitters like Chicagoans Nico Rubio, George Patterson III and Martin “Tre” Dumas III back to the city to shore up professional-level training, but the company itself has some serious chops—proving that St. Louis’ ongoing legacy as a city for tap is secure. —Lauren Warnecke

Header photo credits, left to right, top to bottom: Alexander Iziliaev, courtesy Miami City Ballet; Mike Esperanza, courtesy Castro; Rosalie O’Connor, courtesy Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre; Michelle Reid, courtesy South Chicago Dance Theatre; Farruk Mandujano, courtesy Mandujano; Olivia Moon Photography, courtesy Moore-Dunson; Amy Gardner, courtesy Todisco; Paul Court, courtesy Richard Kornberg and Associates; Laurence Elizabeth Knox, courtesy Houston Ballet; Agathe Poupeney, courtesy Paris Opéra Ballet; Paula Lobo, courtesy Ballet Hispánico; Liv Battista, courtesy Robinson; Camilla Greenwell, courtesy Rambert; Whitney Browne, courtesy Lloyd; Rosalie O’Connor, courtesy American Ballet Theatre; Clarence Alford, courtesy STL Rhythm Collaborative; xmbphotography, courtesy The Washington Ballet; Bill Gorman, courtesy Madeline Maxine Gorman; Erin Baiano, courtesy New York City Ballet; Allina Yang, courtesy Whim W’Him; Kim Kenney, courtesy Atlanta Ballet; Spelman College, courtesy Kuumba; Angela Sterling, courtesy Pacific Northwest Ballet; Camilla Greenwell, courtesy Patel; Amitava Sarkar, courtesy Ishida.

The post Introducing Our 2023 “25 to Watch” appeared first on Dance Magazine.

“This was a complete culture shock to us,” Harris said in a recounting of the experience at a Stanford University talk. Accustomed to the audible energy exchanged at cyphers and other social dance settings, the cast had been unaware that traditional theatergoers remain quiet to be polite. Bridging that divide between the cultures of street dance and concert dance has since become a defining element of Harris’ influential career.

Harris founded RHPM in Philadelphia in 1992, and while it’s often labeled a hip-hop company, the choreography largely channels other street dance forms. Harris distinguishes between the two, defining hip-hop dance as nationwide social dances anyone can do—like the cabbage patch, soldier boy or nae nae—and street dance as city-specific genres with their own techniques, like house, popping, locking and breaking.

“I used to believe ‘street’ gave it a lower connotation. Then I realized it was a lower thing according to white dance and Western culture standards. However, it’s not coming from that. Because of its Africanness, it stands alone,” clarifies Harris.­ “ ‘Street’ is a slang term for community. It’s not the literal street.”

Though hip-hop music rarely appears in Harris’ work, it grounds his company culturally. True to hip hop’s three unspoken laws—individuality, creativity and innovation—Harris pushes into new territory. After touring internationally throughout the 1980s with music artists such as Salt-N-Pepa, Run-DMC and LL Cool J, Harris turned to theater, feeling as though “I had already done it and was retiring,” he says. “My mindset was ‘I’m going to make what I make, and either you like it or you don’t.’ ” The resulting works precipitated the invention of “street dance theater,” and their influence can be seen in many of the hip-hop and street dance productions on stage and screen today. 

Fusing street-dance movement vocabulary with original music and writing, Harris developed narrative-driven pieces exploring racism, sexism and other cultural issues. Though his work was—and, disconcertingly, still is—sometimes met with an audience reception that questions the rigor of street dance and the authenticity of staged hip hop, it broke the barrier for new African diasporic dance forms to appear in traditional performing arts establishments. “In those days, if you saw a dance piece, it was ballet or contemporary,” says James “Cricket” Colter, an RHPM founding member. “This was our dance, something from the Black community that was high art, just like ballet, being used to tell a powerful story.”

For his part, Harris feared the work was getting attention for the wrong reasons. Playwright and stage director Ozzie Jones recalls, “At the time, he was frustrated. The men are all really beautiful and in great shape. Because it’s a lot of breakdance movement, like flying through the air, he was starting to feel like they were objectified strippers.” Harris enlisted Jones, along with composer Darrin Ross, to collaborate on his first evening-length work, Rome & Jewels. With this hip-hop adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, which began rehearsals in 1997, Harris set out to prove RHPM was “not just a rinky-dink company doing cute work,” he says.

To get invited into the company, Rodney Mason danced his way through Philadelphia’s nightclubs, battling against RHPM members. After he joined in 1996, he remained shy, quietly learning from the other dancers, until Harris announced­ his plan to create Rome & Jewels. An experienced actor and lifelong Shakespeare fan, Mason stood up and shouted: “Yo, Rome, the hate that I have for you can afford no better term than this: Thou art a villain—so what’s up?” 

Though Mason had recited a variation on Tybalt’s lines, he emerged as the production’s Romeo, or Rome. Juliet, or Jewels, was harder to cast; while RHPM is diverse today, at the time it was predominantly men. As the search for Jewels continued, Mason began rehearsing with an imaginary woman.

“He was doing it with so much detail that you felt like you could see her,” says Jones. “It ended up being a brilliant expansion of Rennie’s idea of displaying this macho, hip-hop, gang culture and the sexism that is inherent in that. Because these young wolves are out in the world by themselves, their idea of women, love, honor and justice is not really based on much outside their imagination.”

“I didn’t know until later that somebody saw what I was doing,” says Mason. “If I would’ve known, I wouldn’t have been so free, but I guess that was the whole point.”

Harris rarely prepares choreography on his own beforehand, preferring to workshop phrases with the dancers in the room. “He likes you to bring your own individuality to it, so it doesn’t look overly rehearsed,” says current RHPM member Joshua Culbreath. “He tries to coax out the best in everyone’s personality by giving solos or having parts of the choreography be from a specific person’s movement technique.”

Since RHPM productions often feature concrete story­lines, the dancers’ unique styles also inform their acting. “Character development gives your dancing so much more texture,” says current RHPM member Emily Pietruszka. “You get to bring something to life rather than just do a bunch of moves someone told you to do. There’s a difference between putting street dance movement onstage and really telling a story through street dance that people can find themselves in.”

While theatrical hip hop may not feel groundbreaking in a post-Hamilton world, Rome & Jewels was the first production of its kind. “Rennie was thinking far out,” says Raphael Xavier, a renowned dancemaker and educator, as well as a former RHPM member. “A lot of the young companies coming up now are utilizing his blueprint.” When Rome & Jewels premiered in 2000, it received critical acclaim and won three Bessies, and in 2008, Harris won the William Shakespeare Award for Classical Theatre. This year, to kick off celebrating its 30th anniversary, RHPM will remount the production with many of the original cast members. The revival premieres in Philadelphia this month before touring to Boston, The Joyce Theater in New York City and Providence.

For Harris, dance was “cultural, so we don’t look at it as something extracurricular or outside the norm,” he says. Growing up in an African American community in North Philadelphia, he first learned a style unique to the city called GQ, followed by popping, locking and breaking. He performed these dances with a neighborhood crew called the Scanner Boys, at venues like the local roller-skating rink and train station. 

Joan Myers Brown, founder of Philadanco! and the International Association of Blacks in Dance (IABD), remembers driving her two daughters to watch these performances. “When those kids first started doing it, people would say, ‘Get those kids and their cardboard boxes off the street corner,’ ” she says. Then, “the times caught up with Rennie.”

Years later, Brown asked RHPM to perform at the 1995 IABD Festival in Philadelphia, where they impressed legendary African dance practitioner Baba Chuck Davis, who invited RHPM to tour nationally with his festival, DanceAfrica. Gaining visibility and momentum, RHPM was soon touring its own repertory internationally. Meanwhile, Harris began receiving choreographic opportunities from other companies, including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. 

“When you think of street dance and hip hop, you’re really talking about our history,” says Ailey artistic director Robert Battle, who has commissioned Harris for three works, including the company’s 60th anniversary and its first full-length, two-act production, Lazarus. “Rennie takes us back to the origins, being a celebration of life in and of itself, and I believe that’s what Alvin Ailey did in his work, not using street dance per se, but in that way that he was able to utilize modern dance and make it accessible,” says Battle.  

That said, with hip hop getting increasingly commercialized and its progenitors growing older, preserving its origins has become urgent. “There aren’t that many authentic voices that didn’t learn the culture but lived the culture,” says leading hip-hop practitioner Emilio “Buddha Stretch” Austin Jr., who says that Harris “has been part of the culture for 40 of its 50 years in existence.” 

To assist Harris in codifying his movement practice and cultural knowledge, the Mellon Foundation granted RHPM $1 million, to be awarded over the next three years. Though gifted in time for the company’s 30th anniversary, “it’s long overdue,” says Emil Kang, the foundation’s program director for arts and culture. “Not only is he making remarkable work, but he also holds so much history and culture. We’re really trying to help him build out synergies between resourcing work for his company and creating a pedagogy that contextualizes all those factors.”

Educating artists, critics and audiences about hip hop’s roots has been a major motivation in Harris’ career. In Philadelphia, he organizes Illadelph Legends, the first street dance festival of its kind. Begun in 1997 to provide hip-hop pioneers, many of whom were no longer active in the industry, with a platform for sharing their knowledge, it’s now an annual­ weeklong intensive that features both established and emerging street dance icons from across the globe. 

And as an artist in residence at the University of Colorado, Boulder,­­­­­ with honorary doctorates from Bates College and Chicago’s Columbia College, Harris has helped shape hip hop in higher education. He recently founded Rennie Harris University to “lay down the foundation of hip-hop culture and help people create a curriculum to teach responsibly and respectfully,” he says. The certification program aims to empower the next generation of dancers to truly advance—and not merely appropriate—the art form by using it as a medium for telling personal stories.

“You’re making it more authentic by bringing your culture to it,” he says. “That’s what hip hop has always been about: your own individual take—your own individuality, creativity and innovation.”

The post Rennie Harris Bridges the Past and Future appeared first on Dance Magazine.

The T-shirt and the smile are an apt segue into the conversation that follows. Directness and lack of pretense seem to be part of Trenary’s DNA, particularly at this time in her life. If you ask Trenary a question, she answers it as straightforwardly and honestly as she can. And she’s open about the things that bug her about classical ballet, her chosen profession: the unexamined conventions, the fact that so little of the repertory reflects the lives of people today, and the tradition of quiet obedience in the studio. But she’s also a welcoming interlocutor, engaging and engaged. Her thoughts come from a place of conviction and devotion.

Trenary loves ballet—“I love it very, very much,” she says—she just wants it to show a little more flexibility and openness to different perspectives. She wants it to move forward. “I’m desperate to bring more humanity to it,” she says, “and I want to see something that feels universal. I think it’s time we start talking about how we can tell these stories, and about how we can tell new stories, and different stories. I want this art form to survive.”

This past year was her 11th with ABT, where she became an apprentice in April 2011 and a member of the corps before the end of that year. She was named a principal dancer in 2020 and turned 29 in August of this year. By any measure, she’s in her prime, armed with the physical and mental tools to take on just about any role.

But despite the recognition, her emergence into the classical repertory has been gradual. She has yet to cut her teeth on Odette/Odile in Swan Lake or Kitri in Don Quixote, though ABT performed both ballets during its summer season at the Met. Instead, she had one very important debut during that season, as Juliet in Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet. It’s a role Trenary says she’s been pining for since she first saw a video of it as a student. “It was the first time I had been moved by a ballet in the way I felt moved when I watched a movie or a play. And I thought, Oh, my word, that’s it, that’s what I want to do.” Telling stories through movement is central to how she sees herself as a dancer. “I want people to feel like they’re watching life happening in front of them and that the dialogue happens to be classical ballet.”

During ABT’s fall 2021 season at Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater, she danced her first Giselle, a role that daunted her in part because of the character’s shyness in the first act. “I suppose I didn’t see myself in it,” she said a few weeks before that performance. As with her Juliet, she approached it by delving into the character and into the story and finding images and sensations she connected with. “She is such an interesting actress,” says Alexei Ratmansky, ABT’s choreographer in residence, who has cast her in a wide variety of roles, ranging from a magical bird in The Golden Cockerel, to a hearty spirit of the harvest in The Seasons, to the breathless young princess Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty. For each, Trenary “dived into the role with her whole heart,” he says.

That total investment in whatever role she’s creating is one of the things that makes Trenary so compelling onstage. You’re less aware of each step and its execution, and more aware of the way a scene or passage makes you feel, what it’s trying to convey. Often, her take on familiar roles is different from what you’re used to, infused with aspects of her own spirit. Trenary puts thought and effort into these interpretations. In addition to working with an acting coach, Joan Rosenfels, she does a lot of outside research.

In the case of Romeo and Juliet, this hunger for information took her to London in 2019, where she met with Lynn Seymour, the ballerina on whom MacMillan created the role of Juliet in 1965. Seymour, who is now 83, invited her into her home. They discussed the ballet over several days while watching videos and running through the steps in a space they created in Seymour’s living room. Seymour shared what MacMillan had told her and how she had seen the ballet change over time. “One of the biggest takeaways,” says Trenary, “was that there was more freedom in the role than the way it’s danced now. She gave me permission to play.”

As with her Giselle, Trenary wanted her Juliet to be more forceful, to stand her ground more and to avoid the prettiness that creeps into some performances and takes the viewer out of the story. But when she returned to the rehearsal studio ready to apply what she had learned, she encountered pushback from the people staging the ballet for ABT. When a certain interpretation takes hold, it becomes difficult to change. “At first the reaction was, ‘Um, that’s one way to do it, but we do it this other way.’ And I would say, ‘Can I ask why?’ ”

“It took a lot of courage for her to take these roles and bend them,” Amanda McKerrow, a former ABT ballerina who recently began coaching at the company, said after a rehearsal of Romeo and Juliet. In a way, Trenary has made things harder for herself by not simply putting her head down and following a familiar path. “She has to work hard in order to convince the decision-makers that her interpretations could be valid,” says Ratmansky, who admires her tenacity. “I think she can get there.”

That drive, which was clear early on in her career—you could sense it even when she was simply leading a long line of Shades in La Bayadère—has blossomed more recently, particularly since the start of the pandemic. The early months were difficult. She moved back home to Florida, and experienced a major personal relationship change. “I had so much time alone,” she remembers. “I was writing, taking photos, challenging myself to do choreographic improvisation exercises every day. And I found that I was really, really happy doing that.”

Over the ensuing months, she made two short dance films, dove deeper into her interest in photography, and interviewed her grandmother for hours about her experiences growing up and, later, living on a farm in Colorado. “I dove down into a rabbit hole of family stories, informing myself about the women in my family, and why they are the way they are, and why I am the way I am.” At an April residency sponsored by Works & Process LaunchPAD at Chautauqua, she used some of that material as the basis for movement explorations that led to about 25 minutes of solo choreography and a series of self-portraits with a Nikon F camera (film, not digital).

Trenary is an eager collaborator, with a particular affinity for contemporary dance, which she describes as “my happy place.” Back in 2020, during The Joyce Theater’s digital seasons, she worked with the postmodern choreographer Molissa Fenley, performing her arduous 1988 solo State of Darkness. Here, her dancing revealed a rough edge, an aggressive, even punk, sensibility. It was the Johnny Cash coming out. Trenary didn’t look at all like a ballerina. More recently, under the auspices of Works & Process at the Guggenheim, she collaborated with Sonya Tayeh on a piece called Unveiling, full of muscular, fluid choreography and partnering. In it she shared a pas de deux with another female dancer, Ida Saki, something that seldom happens in her day-to-day practice at ABT. (Unveiling was performed as part of Restart Stages at Lincoln Center in June 2021.) “It was so hard at first for me to share my weight with her,” says Trenary. “I had to learn how to use my whole body to partner, not just my arms, like we do in classical ballet.” This summer and fall brought collaborations with choreographers Jenn Freeman and Twyla Tharp, including performing in Tharp’s company at New York City Center in October.

The more Trenary learns in outside projects, the more she brings back to her work with ABT. And the more her mind opens to new possibilities. She jokes that she would love to dance the role of Espada, the swashbuckling toreador in Don Quixote. “It’s one saut de basque and the rest is like jazz dance. I think I could accomplish that,” she says with her mischievous smile.

The past few years—the isolation of COVID-19, her promotion to principal and the immersion in multiple creative projects—have fueled a sense of urgency about her profession, and her place within it. She finds that she questions a lot of things. These questions have helped her emerge as an artist with not only a strong point of view, but also the willingness to do the work required to make interesting, informed artistic choices.

That work bore fruit in her Juliet debut. Her performance was intimate, vulnerable and unadorned. As an audience member, you almost forgot that these were choreographed ballet steps, and instead were caught up in the story as it unfolded. No pretty poses, no lying on the bed with her feet pointed or arching her back over the tomb in the Capulet crypt. “We weren’t trying to project or tell the audience to look at us,” says Calvin Royal III, her partner for the performance and a close friend. “It was almost like we were in a movie.” For Trenary, that’s a step in the right direction.

The post Cassandra Trenary Comes Into Her Own appeared first on Dance Magazine.

“I never knew where dance would take me, but I knew that dance, and the art of it, was my life,” says La’Donna. That passion kept young La’Donna motivated while growing up in Compton, California, propelling her past a challenging upbringing to become one of today’s most sought-after choreographers, a burgeoning musical artist and a role model for young women. “I never back down, take no for an answer or allow anything to stop me from pursuing my dreams,” she says.

But talent, ambition and drive are rarely enough to achieve La’Donna’s kind of success—her multifaceted career is equally due to her generous spirit and collaborative nature. Although choreography is the most prominent aspect of her career, “I’ve always been a creative director,” says La’Donna. “But there was a point in time when there was no title.”

Even as a young dancer, La’Donna thought in a matrix of ideas, visualizing costumes and production elements during her middle-school dance shows. “I was never just worried about the eight-counts. I was always the person asking ‘What are they wearing?’ ‘How are you shooting that?’ Because I always wanted to get the best out of the bigger vision.”

Indeed, from the moment 3-year-old La’Donna told her mother she wanted to be a dancer, it was go time. Her mom, Debbie, found a local rec center that offered dance activities for children. “You wanna be a dancer?” one of the counselors asked La’Donna. She responded without hesitation: “No, I’m gonna be a dancer!” Another counselor told Debbie, “Your daughter is one out of 100. She needs to go learn the art,” and referred them to Regina’s School of the Arts in Compton. “I took her there, and we never looked back,” Debbie says. From there, she moved to Miss Monica’s Dance School.

Luck plays an element in every artist’s career, and it was by chance that La’Donna’s first audition, at just 10 years old, for a Ma$e music video, was led by Fatima Robinson, the legendary hip-hop choreographer for artists like Aaliyah, Michael Jackson, Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys. “Most people don’t know how far back Fatima and I go,” says La’Donna. New to the commercial world and in a room full of sparkles, leotards and tights, the young La’Donna stood out, sweatpants and all, and she was cast out of 300 hopefuls. 

Suddenly she was part of an industry she and her mom knew nothing about. Debbie, who held down a rigorous schedule as a bus driver for the city of Gardena, used vacation hours to take La’Donna to performances and recitals, and volunteered at Miss Monica’s so that she could provide one-on-one support.

Though the La’Donna of today, now in her early 30s, is in command of her artistry and her career, on the set of that first video shoot she was as unsure of herself as any other young dancer. “I was killin’ it at first!” she says. But when Robinson walked in with Ma$e, everything went blank and she forgot the choreography.

“Fatima pulled me to the side and said, ‘It’s okay. Go home and practice. I know you got it.’ ” It was clear that the seeds of La’Donna’s drive were already taking root: She practiced so late into the night that Debbie had to remind her to sleep. “She was so into what she wanted to do,” Debbie says. “She was exceptional in school, too. Her mentality was so mature for her age.” The next day on set, her confidence had returned and she realized how much fun the artistic process was.

Even then, Robinson saw La’Donna’s raw talent. “Her choreography skills were always stellar,” Robinson says. “She’s both street and trained, which made her extra-special. Her musicality­ has always been great, and it’s wonderful to watch how she commands the room with calmness and confidence.”

Robinson’s validation has nurtured La’Donna’s creative voice, her ambition and a positive, generous approach that draws other artists to her. “My very first job in L.A. as a dancer was under the choreography direction of Robinson, assisted by Charm La’Donna,” says JaQuel Knight, the movement director for H&M Move and the choreographer behind Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” and “Formation” videos, as well as her iconic 2018 Coachella performance. “For 16 years of my career, I’ve been connected to Charm, and I’m so proud of her, to be able to grow alongside her, and witness all the beautiful and impactful things that she’s doing.”

La’Donna made another big impression, at 13, during her audition for the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. The dancers were tasked with creating their own routines, and La’Donna thought to herself, I’m just gonna do what I feel, and dance my life away. Looking back, she says that LACHSA is where her real training began, where she began to dive deeply into dance and dissect it. “It became not just modern, but Horton. Not just jazz, but Luigi. I started to learn different styles and adapt my body to new things. I fell in love with dance in a different way.”

At LACHSA, she set her sights on a conventional career path. “My teachers and peers definitely thought I’d be going to a school like Fordham or University of the Arts. They thought I was going to be that trained theater performer,” says La’Donna. “And I thought so too! You couldn’t tell me I wasn’t gonna be a principal at Ailey one day.”

Debbie insisted on college, and La’Donna got into UCLA. But fate intervened again, toward the end of her senior year of high school, when she got hired on Madonna’s 2006 Confessions tour—at just 17. Transitioning to homeschooling, she was the tour’s youngest dancer. Madonna took education as seriously as Debbie did, and on top of providing tutors and study time, she encouraged La’Donna to stay focused on college. “I knew if I didn’t get all my schoolwork done, I couldn’t be on tour, and Madonna made sure of that,” La’Donna says. For four years, she attended UCLA while assisting Robinson with music videos and Super Bowl halftime shows, and building her own relationships and reputation. By the time she earned her bachelor’s degree in world arts and cultures, she was ready to dive into the entertainment industry. 

Compton may have been the site of some of La’Donna’s biggest challenges, but as luck would have it, it was also the source of one of her greatest opportunities: Fellow Compton native Kendrick Lamar, the Grammy- and Pulitzer Prize–winning­ rap artist, hired her in 2017 as the choreographer and sole female dancer for his DAMN tour, and she went on to choreograph and dance in his 2018 Grammy performance—both deeply personal experiences. “For us to be from the same place, and for him to give me the opportunity to be creative, is an experience that I can never take for granted,” La’Donna says. “Being onstage with him gave me that feeling again, the same one that I had when I was 10 years old at that audition. I loved it.”

As her collaboration with Lamar continues this year, choreographing for his The Big Steppers world tour, she reflects on that pivotal experience. “It showed me that I could be onstage and offstage. And in the pursuit of my own music, it showed me that I can be a performer and a creative,” she says. It has also opened the door to more opportunities, including choreographing the El Mal Querer tour for Spanish pop star Rosalía in 2019, plus, this year alone, tours for Dua Lipa, Lil Baby and The Weeknd. When it came to making her own music, though, “my own self-doubts allowed me to believe that releasing my music would interfere with what I was doing at the time, or that it would somehow inter­fere with the artists I was working with,” she says. With the encouragement of her older brother, in 2020 she dropped her debut single, “So & So,” and the follow-up, “Westside,” from her self-titled album. (She’s even choreographed and co-directed music videos, with Emil Nava, for her own tunes.)

“It’s beautiful to see Charm really shine as a choreographer, an emcee and a performer,” says Emmy-nominated fellow­ Los Angeles choreographer Chloé Arnold. “It’s exciting to see a young Black woman creating beautiful works for mega-superstars, creating powerful performances and representing young Black women choreographers.”

And just as she was mentored by her mother, Robinson and Madonna, La’Donna takes other aspiring women under her wing. When teaching, she invites conversations that allow her students to grow beyond the eight-counts. “For me, dance is a discipline, our common language,” she says. “But we don’t just talk about dance. We talk about life.” She hopes to one day develop a program for dancers that focuses on arts, business and making empowered choices.

As La’Donna’s vision for the future continues to expand, she stays grounded by her upbringing—and still embraces the sense of wonder she felt as that determined kid. “When I think back, I had no clue about how vast dance was beyond physical movement,” she says. And she doesn’t get caught up with titles. “I am who I am. I’m a creative director of life! I design my life, so I just walk in that truth.” 

The post Charm La’Donna Is Choreographing Her Life—and Conjuring an Empire appeared first on Dance Magazine.

At a rehearsal for Emily Johnson’s Being Future Being earlier this year, she and the cast decided to wander from Abrons Arts Center, on New York City’s Lower East Side, to the nearby East River Park, where Johnson is involved in protecting 1,000 trees from a demolition project.

As they began rehearsing, trucks rolled up. “All of a sudden, we were having this moment of defending the park through dancing,” says cast member Stacy Lynn Smith. With their path blocked by land defenders as Johnson’s cast continued dancing, the trucks eventually gave up and left.

That wasn’t a performance per se. But it had all the elements that make Johnson’s work and that of her company, Catalyst, so transformational: a quiet power that gathers artists and audiences towards her vision; an uncanny alignment with the natural world; a deep connection to her Yup’ik identity; a disregard for the silos of art versus activism, performance versus protest, dancemaker versus land protector.

Raised in Alaska on Dena’ina land, Johnson grew up not dancing but playing in the woods outside her home, and hunting and fishing with her family. She also played basketball, an early instance of the love affair with endurance that has defined much of her choreographic work.

Her freshman year at the University of Minnesota, Johnson signed up for a modern dance class for fun. Midway through that year, her roommate and close friend passed away unexpectedly. After taking a break from her dance class, Johnson returned to find that students were working on improvisation. As she began improvising, with her eyes closed, “I could see the grief shift away from my body a little bit,” she says. “I remember thinking, Oh, this must be a very powerful form.”

After graduating in 1998 with a dance degree, Johnson began choreographing in the Minneapolis area, with a group of collaborators that would become an early iteration of Catalyst. A clear lineage can be traced back to those early works, which, like her current projects, were concerned with endurance, climate change and Indigenous-centered futures. Her interest in “busting up the idea that the audience is coming into something very precious, or that they’re not involved in” started early too, though in simpler terms—she recalls one piece for which her mother made popcorn from a rented machine and shared it with audience members.

Johnson came to national attention in 2011 with her Bessie-winning immersive work The Thank-you Bar, the first part of a trilogy that included Niicugni, featuring a cast of dancers and community members within an installation of handmade fish-skin lanterns, and SHORE, a multiday event involving dance, storytelling, volunteerism and a feast.

As Johnson’s work has grown in scale, it has also expanded­ beyond traditional ideas about what performance entails and where it happens. But when her pieces include a meal, or a walk, or an action, these are not peripheral side events propping up the part that is more recognizably dance. To Johnson, they are all equal—they are all performance, they are all dance.

Take Then a Cunning Voice and a Night We Spend Gazing at Stars, her most ambitious piece to date. An outdoor gathering for 300 participants—it premiered on Randall’s Island in New York City in 2017 and has toured to Calumet Park in Chicago—the piece takes place over the course of an entire night and connects moments of dancing, preparing food, eating, storytelling and sewing. When an audience member fell asleep, others would help by providing one of 84 quilts designed by Minneapolis-based textile artist Maggie­ Thompson. The quilts served as the “home” for the show and were crafted by volunteers from around the world.

In this piece, as in much of Johnson’s work, boundaries between performers and audiences collapse. This is true even in more traditional performance spaces: In The Thank-you Bar, for instance, Johnson slaps the name of everyone in the audience onto her chest with nametags. “Every person watching her work feels seen,” says Rob Bailis, artistic and executive director of BroadStage in Santa Monica, a commissioner of Being Future Being. “Emily collaborates with her audience in a way that very few choreographers do.”

Johnson’s work is at its most transformational when this collaboration with the audience intersects with the radical universes she creates. “For most artists who make that kind of destabilizing work, they intimidate their audiences to the point of not knowing how to be there,” Bailis says. “Emily does that in a way where you feel so held, so trusted and so believed in as a human being that you are drawn all the way into the possibility of seeing things without the structures that cause you to imagine that the world is fixed. She gets such trust from you within minutes.”

The new world Johnson envisions in her work is the same one she is working towards offstage (though to even draw this distinction likely goes against Johnson’s ethos). She has been integral in partnering with institutions in New York City, where she moved in 2014, in decolonial action, including acknowledging the stolen Indigenous land on which their theaters sit. (Today, it has become more common for dance venues in New York City to include a preshow spoken land acknowledgment, a shift that many attribute directly to Johnson’s influence.) She continues to work with several venues, such as Abrons Arts Center, on decolonizing their institutions, and co-leads an eight-month track with Ronee Penoi for presenters on decolonization as part of First Nations Performing Arts, a new initiative focused on capacity building for the Indigenous and non-Indigenous performing arts sector.

Decolonization processes have always been interwoven with her work, and in 2021 Johnson formalized her desire for her presenters to be a partner in not just her dancemaking but her values, crafting a decolonization rider that asks venues to take steps beyond land acknowledgment, such as paying a land-use tax to local Indigenous communities. The rider came to fruition after Johnson penned her “Letter I Hope in the Future, Doesn’t Need to be Written,” detailing her experience with Jedidiah Wheeler, the executive director of Peak Performances at Montclair State University in New Jersey. The letter describes Wheeler’s anger towards Johnson when she asked him to work towards decolonization, and calls Peak Performances “an unsafe and unethical place to work.” It was circulated widely, with scores of presenters signing a statement of solidarity with Johnson.

“I don’t believe that she deviates,” says IV Castellanos, who works as an “InterKinector” on Being Future Being, forging relationships between the artists and communities where the work takes place, with the intention of offering support, amplification and awareness for local land defense efforts and more. Castellanos describes Johnson’s approach to making, creating and gathering as a fusion of care and conviction, giving the example of Johnson requesting that the organizations that invite her think about how every dollar is spent and thus not ask her to stay in a hotel that “funds the pipeline destroying the Indigenous folks’ land that we’re on,” says Castellanos. “A lot of people would overlook that.”

A few years ago, Johnson decided that envisioning a better future through her dancemaking, and working towards it in her activism, was no longer enough. “It started to feel like we need that better future now,” she says. Being Future Being, which premieres at BroadStage this month and tours to New York Live Arts in October, attempts to conjure that future in real time through what she calls “the Speculative Architecture of the Overflow,” which has the goal of building direct response, support and action with local land rematriation and protection efforts. In the work, the quilts from Then a Cunning Voice and a Night We Spend Gazing at Stars become striking “Quilt Beings,” designed by Korina Emmerich, that transform dancers into moving sculptures. Woven into those quilts: thousands of messages from the volunteers who made them, each containing their own vision for the future. As the dancers slowly walk and rotate, the quilts trailing behind them, they could be royalty from another universe. They are literally embodying the future; dancing it into being.

The post Emily Johnson: A Catalyst for Art, Action & Promoting Indigenous Identity appeared first on Dance Magazine.

It all started in May 2018, with the surprise announcement of a young director-in-waiting, Michael Novak, selected to take the reins after the eventual death of the company’s founder and creative force, Paul Taylor. Novak was only 35, and still at the height of his dancing career. 

The decision, made by Paul Taylor himself, turned out to be judiciously timed: That August, Taylor passed away at the age of 88. Six dancers, many of whom had been dancing for Taylor for over a decade,­ announced their departures within the year. “There was a sense that Paul would live forever,” says Eran Bugge, who had joined the company in 2005 and opted to stay. With Taylor’s passing, one era ended and a new one commenced. For several of the dancers, this seemed like a natural moment to retire.

But just as a group of dancers chosen by the new director—one that included the quietly engrossing Devon Louis and the focused and incisive Maria Ambrose—was finding its place in the company’s ranks, the pandemic hit. Novak, a thoughtful, measured person in general, was still in the process of shaping his leadership and making plans. The question now was not just how to lead the company into the future, but how to keep it alive in the present. There was no precedent, no model to follow. “I was reaching out to older friends and mentors in the field, and asking for advice,” he says, “and these people, in all their wisdom, didn’t know what to do. No one had navigated anything like this before.”

This moment of truth became his crucible. “I felt an immediate responsibility for the survival of the artists in the company,” Novak says. The immensity of the task sharpened his sense of purpose and focus, and led to a series of initiatives designed to keep the dancers in touch with each other and engaged­ with the work. The results were apparent at the company’s spring season at New York City Center this March: a reinvigorated company, full of new faces, buoyed by a youthful energy and a freshness of approach. “It’s a whole new group of personalities,” says Andy LeBeau, one of three rehearsal directors at the company, along with Bettie de Jong and Cathy McCann. “They’re passionate and open, not tied to doing things a certain way. And they really get along well.”

The process of forming bonds in a company like Taylor usually happens during rehearsal periods and, especially, over the course of long tours, when understudies get to try out new roles and watch their colleagues night after night from the wings. Newer dancers learn from more senior artists, who help to transmit choreographic details and subtleties of style. It is, Bugge says, one of the reasons she decided to stay. “I wanted to make sure that the things that make the work and the company special, like the way the dancers look at each other or take each other’s hands onstage, got passed on.”

When performing and touring became impossible because of the pandemic, Novak came up with new ways to keep the dancers engaged. There were homework assignments via Zoom, in which dancers learned solos at home and then received virtual coaching from LeBeau, McCann and Taylor’s longtime right-hand-woman de Jong, who joined the company in 1962. Additional dancers from the Taylor alumni network were also brought in to coach and give virtual advice. At times, “We’d Zoom with the person who originated a particular role, and hear their stories,” says Bugge.

The online sessions proved crucial to newer company members like Louis, who was able to try out Taylor’s fluid, muscular solo from his 1962 dance Aureole. Learning it, Louis says, gave him a new insight into the coordination and flow that undergirds much of Taylor’s choreography. “It’s like you’re learning from the master himself,” he says. 

Other Zoom workshops focused on the best approaches to teaching Taylor style and repertory, and in weekly discussions with alumni, the dancers would delve into a certain work from the repertoire, teasing out what made it tick. While the Taylor company has always had a particularly robust relationship with former dancers, technology took it to a new level—a large screen is now permanently available in the rehearsal studio to facilitate remote coaching sessions as needed.

Just as importantly, Novak was determined to get the dancers back in the studio as soon as it was feasible and safe. To this end, he created rehearsal and choreographic bubbles as early as fall of 2020. In-person participation was voluntary, and the sessions took into account the contingencies of life during lockdown. “We had dancers who needed to be home taking care of family members,” remembers Novak, “but we also had dancers who needed to be in the studio.” The dancers who were able to take part were put in groups of six, rehearsing in alternating sessions throughout the day. It was in this setting that the choreographer Lauren Lovette first began working with them.

Novak had had his eye on Lovette since seeing Not Our Fate, a piece she created in 2017 for New York City Ballet, then her home company. (Lovette retired from her principal dancer position there in 2021.) “I saw musicality, I saw craft, and I felt there was a rebel in there that was trying to push the artform forward,” says Novak. “I remember wondering what she would do with modern dancers.”

It turned out that Lovette clicked, both with Novak and with the company. “It’s a joy to have her in the studio,” says Louis. “She comes in very fresh and excited to try things.” The feeling, Lovette says, is mutual: “The Taylor company is like a focused playground. Every time I leave that studio, I feel lighter and more inspired and alive.” She is amazed by the dancers’ individuality, the way each shapes the movement according to their physicality, phrasing and personality. This, in turn, shapes what she choreographs for each of the dancers. (Taylor was famous for doing this as well.)

The relationship flourished to such an extent that in mid-March, Lovette became the first choreographer in residence in the company’s 68-year history, a position that commits her to creating at least one work per year for the next five years. Both she and the dancers have much to gain: For the dancers, it means having a continuous presence in the studio, someone who understands the way they move. For Lovette, it is a laboratory in which to hone her voice and explore movement far beyond the ballet vocabulary in which she was trained.

But she is hardly the only choreographer the dancers will be working with. Creation plays a central role in the company’s new mission, and the pandemic, with fewer tours and performances, offered a particularly fertile period in which to bring in choreographers. “I wanted to come out of the pandemic showing audiences and patrons that this is a new era of the Taylor company,” says Novak. In 2022, the company is premiering works by Michelle Manzanales, a Mexican American choreographer and teacher associated with Ballet Hispánico; Peter­ Chu, who heads his own contemporary company in Las Vegas; Amy Hall Garner, a Juilliard graduate who has made work for Ailey II and the ABT Studio Company; and  Puerto Rican choreographer Omar Román de Jesús. The diversity is intentional. “Paul Taylor brought many facets of humanity to the stage,” says Novak, “but I don’t think he brought all of them to the stage.” 

This desire to open the company to a wider range of experience is also reflected in the selection of new dancers. The world of American modern dance has historically been more white than many care to admit, and though the Taylor company has always included dancers of diverse backgrounds and ethnicities, Novak is actively putting diversity at the forefront. “I want to create a company that offers opportunities for students and patrons to see their own stories on the stage,” he says. There are currently more dancers of color at the company than ever before. 

The dancers’ backgrounds are also varied, and in many cases do not include passage through the traditional Taylor II pipeline. Shawn Lesniak danced for a variety of choreographers and companies, including Trey McIntyre and Parsons Dance, before joining. John Harnage was a member of Jessica Lang Dance. Louis, who studied at The Ailey School and was a member of Ballet Hispánico’s junior company, had taken a single summer intensive in Taylor technique before joining; in hiring him, Novak was less interested in Louis’ Taylor bona fides than in his personality and a particular quality he saw in his dancing: “I hired Devon because of his warm spirit, quiet confidence, stunning ballon and remarkable fluidity,” Novak says. With his subtle intensity and silken way of moving, Louis made a strong impression in Kyle Abraham’s 2019 work for the company, Only the Lonely. 

The upshot of all this change is the emergence of a company that is more diverse, and more versatile, than ever before. Taylor dancers are ready to take on the movement style of any creator, and to tackle works from different eras and traditions. In April, for example, the company performed Kurt Jooss’ expressionist work The Green Table, an impor­tant antiwar ballet created in Germany in 1932, the year before Hitler was appointed­ chancellor. The elegant Lesniak was riveting in the role of Death. (Sadly, this ballet has become newly relevant.) And in June, the company revived some of Taylor’s very earliest dances, including Events II, from his first-ever full evening of dances in 1957, and an excerpt from Images­ and Reflections, from the following year. These youthful experiments in movement, theatricality and response to music require a very different approach than that involved in dancing Aureole or Esplanade, or in Lovette’s creations, for that matter.

All this change represents an important evolution for the company as it navigates a new era, without the comforting presence of Paul Taylor. And, it seems, the company is ready. The fundamentals have not changed, Novak assures. But “what feels different for me,” he says, “is that there’s a sense of ownership of the fact that we are the post-pandemic company. This is the dancers’ company now. They are ready to show up and welcome people into their world.” 

The post Moving Into the Future: A New Era Dawns at Paul Taylor Dance Company appeared first on Dance Magazine.

That moment—which Barnes says was one of the proudest of her life—encapsulates much of what has been at the heart of her dance career: Joyfully embodying the legacy of Black vernacular dance in America, from early jazz dances to steps she learned at family gatherings to house and hip hop. 

Barnes not only excels in each of these dances, she also makes visible the connections between them, both historical and physical. In May 2021, Barnes expanded an investigation that was already happening in her own body with The Jazz Continuum, a performance commissioned by Works & Process at the Guggenheim that traces jazz dance and music to their artistic offspring, with a cast of Black dance and musical artists of varied specializations, including jazz, house, hip hop, funk and disco.  

“I just wanted more people to play with,” she says of the show, which got a second iteration at Jacob’s Pillow in August 2021 and will be at The Joyce Theater this fall, ahead of its tour. She got much more than people to play with: Barnes, who is 42, was showered in long-overdue acclaim—including a Bessie Award for Sustained Achievement in the Outstanding Performer category and a nod from The New York Times as one the best dance moments of 2021—after years of relative anonymity outside the Lindy Hop and house communities, where she was already legendary. 

Some of the press Barnes has received recently has labeled her as just a Lindy Hop dancer, or just a house dancer. It’s something she actively resists, because it is her multiplicity, both in the styles she dances and the roles she plays—dancer, culture bearer, teacher, scholar—that makes her so very singular. “I’m proud that I trusted the universe to make space for all of me,” she says. 

Born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, Barnes excelled academically and at a laundry list of after-school activities, including­ track and field, choir, student leadership and JROTC. “Even before I understood what it meant, my life was always full-tilt, in all the things,” she says. 

Her dance training began at home—her father was a deejay, and movement flowed through all of the family’s gatherings and daily activities. One of her earliest memories is of her great-grandmother guiding her through the “run, jump, squat” that she now recognizes as a Lindy Hop step. She also remembers learning the Barnes family line dance—which made its way into an iteration of The Jazz Continuum—and “being fascinated by how my family moved in sync, and how some of them had extra embellishments,” she says. “It wasn’t so much about perfection, just not being a distraction to the overall groove.”

Barnes took several years of dance classes in elementary school, but eventually stopped, her eyes opened by her teacher’s warning that the dance world wouldn’t be welcoming to her. As she puts it, “My formal dance training concluded, but the most rigorous dance training had just begun.” This consisted of swapping moves with her cousins and friends, who brought steps from New York City and Washington, DC, and the roller skating parties Barnes would attend after track meets, parties where, eventually, the skates would come off and everyone would dance. 

After high school, Barnes followed in the footsteps of her father, who was an Army First Sergeant, passing on college scholarships for track and engineering to quickly progress to sergeant first class. While stationed in Belgium, Barnes and her best friend became staples in the club scene, so much so that a camera crew filming promotional footage would follow them from club to club.

Back in the States two years later, Barnes was selected for an assignment at the White House. Meanwhile, she was entering fitness competitions, at one point placing second in the National Physique Committee’s Junior Nationals. While practicing a high kick in preparation for one competition, Barnes suffered a tear in her left glute, which necessitated a year of recovery. Then, just as she was getting back into the gym, she was hit by a car and dislocated her hip, injured her low back and fractured her wrist. 

It was while in recovery from that set of injuries that Barnes took up formal dance training again, starting with a class that was billed as hip hop but which Barnes immediately recognized as popping. “The popping actually was what I needed to regain mobility and control of my body,” she says. “And it’s also something that I’m now known for within the context of other forms, my ability to use a hit.”

Recognizing Barnes’ gifts, and the “residual boogie” in her body, her teacher introduced her to Junious Brickhouse, a house dancer and founder of the Urban Artistry company, based in the DC area. Barnes began training extensively in house, eventually joining the company’s leadership team—a position that required dancers to be proficient in at least five styles. This prerequisite very much aligned with Barnes’ natural inclinations. “It gave me the tools to organize that facet of myself,” says Barnes, who sought out mentorship in styles like waacking. 

In 2011, Barnes and her house partner Toyin Sogunroplaced first at Juste Debout in Paris, one of the biggest battles in the world. “We were almost mobbed at the airport in France, and then we came back to the U.S. and nobody knew anything,” she says. But Barnes knew she was at a turning point—just before leaving for Paris, she’d given notice at her job. “I could feel the universe pulling me back to dancing,” she says. “I felt like I also needed to make some grand gesture to be like ‘I receive it.’ ”

It was around this time that Barnes was becoming more interested in jazz dance—Lindy Hop in particular—and more aware of its origins as a Black art form. She began to feel its connectedness to the other styles she danced. She exchanged movement with Lindy Hop champion Bobby White, for instance, sharing her knowledge of house and other styles and learning about authentic jazz and Lindy Hop. True to form, she caught on quickly. At the International Lindy Hop Championships, which Barnes now co-owns, she won accolades for her dancing. But these experiences also reiterated to Barnes the need to bridge the communities of house and Lindy Hop, “that are so tethered to one another, yet have no awareness of each other,” she says. 

Barnes began exploring this in her dancing—she’d throw in a deconstructed jump Charleston during a house battle, and afterwards people would “acknowledge something different in there.” Switching between styles can sometimes look forced, or disjointed, but never with Barnes: The ease with which she layers them on top of one another is masterful, and a powerful illumination of their shared lineage. Michele Byrd-McPhee, founder of Ladies of Hip Hop and a Jazz Continuum cast member, says that before working with Barnes, she “thought of authentic jazz dance as something that was in the past.” Barnes’ work, Byrd-McPhee says, grounds her “in who we are as Black people.”

But investigating the ways that hip hop, house and other Black vernacular dances evolved from the work of early Black jazz dance pioneers left Barnes with questions. Why weren’t Black dancers more aware of or engaged with jazz? Why were jazz and Lindy Hop so disconnected from those other forms that had sprung from it? 

As Barnes was becoming a culture bearer in Lindy Hop, paving the way for the form to be reclaimed by Black dancers and accepting the proverbial torch from legends like Norma Miller, she was also digging for the answers to these questions in her self-designed master’s program at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. When she realized how few Black dancers outside of Eurocentric dance forms had been cited in existing scholarly resources, she began interviewing them for her thesis, canonizing their experiences as she did so. 

“I thought when I started my master’s program it was going to be about figuring out how to bring Blackness back to Lindy Hop and jazz,” she says. “But you can’t make something more Black that was Black already.” 

You could see The Jazz Continuum as the ultimate embodied­ thesis. “People are certainly lecturing about this,” says Melanie George, founder of the Jazz Is… Dance Project and associate curator at Jacob’s Pillow. “But she’s doing it onstage,­ drawing that line very clearly to say that jazz, funk, hip hop, house—they are all of a family. If there isn’t an embodied aspect of that, we’ve actually broken part of the continuum.”

Barnes is currently on tour with SW!NG OUT, where she is both a performer and a core collaborator, and this month, she’ll teach and rock cyphers at the Ladies of Hip-Hop Fest. In the fall, she will be a guest artist in residence at Point Park University and will return to teaching at Arizona State University, where she’s been on faculty since last year and where she models what it means to be a tradition bearer for her students, says her ASU colleague Dr. Christi Jay Wells. “It’s about responsible stewardship of what she’s been given by her elders, her ancestors and her peers,” Wells says. 

Indeed, you’d be hard-pressed to speak to Barnes about dance for more than a minute or so without her naming a mentor or teacher who’s shaped her path, or a jazz forebear who never got their rightful flowers. She vacillates between deflecting praise, careful that her success doesn’t fall into a false narrative of individualism, and proudly accepting it on behalf of herself and her predecessors.

“I’m recognizing that by running away from those moments,­ I’m not making space for those who came before me who didn’t get the chance to be acknowledged,” she says. “Because I absolutely carry them with me. And so, I have no problem standing in it now.”

The post LaTasha Barnes: Reclaiming Black Vernacular Dances, One Performance at a Time  appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Situated on a property the Emmy-nominated choreographer shares with her business partner and younger sister, Maud Arnold, the home—more specifically, the converted garage—is also the new rehearsal site for the Syncopated Ladies, the all-women tap band Arnold created in 2003. It’s early February, and the company is rehearsing numbers from its touring production, “Syncopated Ladies Live!” A celebration of sisterhood, female empowerment and Black-girl magic, the high-energy multimedia show toured through 12 U.S. cities in early 2022 and will continue touring this fall.

Just days before their first show, five dancers, including Arnold and Maud, are running through the top of the second act . Arnold’s choreography for “Savage” incorporates tap, hip hop and moves from the viral TikTok dance challenge created by Keara Wilson. In another piece, danced to rapper O.T. Genasis’ “Everybody Mad,” the group’s hard-hitting steps match the energy of the song. After the eight-hour rehearsal, the dancers pack up, sanitize their black-and-white tap shoes—designed by the Arnold sisters with Bloch—and head home while Arnold, perched on a plush couch in the studio, takes time to reflect on this incredible moment in her life.

“It starts with this idea of having a dream, and then all that it takes to get to that dream,” she says. “The adversities you face, the obstacles you face, the necessity of building a team and the unity and the community it takes to realize something that is so challenging. Then ultimately how, as a collective, we have found our freedom—the ability to express ourselves and to make sure our voices are heard.”

Arnold is thriving in that freedom. Even during the pandemic, she continued to perform, and she appeared in the 2021 movie musical In the Heights, mentored young tap dancers around the world and has grown an even bigger audience online with Maud. She also found ways to build her Hollywood resumé, which already included choreography for numerous live events and TV shows, like “So You Think You Can Dance” and “The Late Late Show with James Corden.” Her choreography will appear on film for the first time in the upcoming Apple TV+ Christmas musical Spirited, starring Will Ferrell, Ryan Reynolds and Octavia Spencer.

Last year, Arnold and Maud purchased their property, which includes two houses, one for each sister. For years, the two shared an apartment in Los Angeles as they worked tirelessly to carve out their own lane and create space for tap in the entertainment industry. So their dual homes, where they not only live but also store costumes, rehearse and hold production meetings, symbolize their hard work and faith in themselves.

“The thing I’m most proud of in my career is that regardless of how much people didn’t believe in us—people doubted the vision, judged the vision, whatever it may have been—we were really clear about our purpose and who we are, and we just were steadfast in being committed to that,” Arnold says.

Raised by a single mother in Washington, DC, Arnold began dancing at 6 years old, taking ballet, jazz and tap. After auditioning for the National Tap Ensemble’s youth company at 9, she had the opportunity to train with tap legends, including the Nicholas Brothers, Gregory Hines, Eddie Brown, Dianne Walker and Savion Glover. Arnold’s passion for tap inspired Maud to follow a similar path.

At 16, Arnold earned a role in Debbie Allen’s production Brothers of the Knight, a children’s musical presented at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. “She auditioned for me one time, and she wasn’t quite ready for me that first time, but when she came back, she was a ball of fire,” Allen says of Arnold, who acted, sang and danced tap, jazz and swing in the show. “And so I respond to that. I respond to people who go and get the skill and craft, and go and do the work. She was always beautiful and spirited. She just came back and she was everything. And so before I knew it, she was in almost every show that I was doing.” Maud later became a scholarship student at the Debbie Allen Dance Academy in Los Angeles, where Arnold taught, and the sisters blossomed. Under Allen’s mentorship, they came to understand that, like Allen, they needed to become fluent in all styles of dance—and to learn filmmaking, directing, singing and acting. They needed to be versatile, fearless and ever-expansive in pursuit of their dreams.

Taking Allen’s guidance to heart, Arnold decided to major in film at Columbia University. She took film classes during the day, and at night brought her portable tap floor to jams around the city, where she was often one of the only female dancers. In New York City, Arnold was on track to pursue a traditional path in theater, but quickly realized its limitations: While there are very few opportunities for tap dancers on Broadway stages, there are even fewer for women of color. “It’s a very critic-driven experience,” she says. “If I had stayed in that paradigm, I would never have succeeded, because that paradigm did not celebrate the Black woman’s voice at all.

It was Allen who encouraged the Arnold sisters to chart their own path in Los Angeles. Arnold shadowed her on TV and film sets as she directed, acted and choreographed in Hollywood. In 2003, during a tap improv jam at the Debbie Allen Dance Academy, Arnold noticed something rare—the makeup of the room was primarily women. That evening inspired Arnold to create the Syncopated Ladies.

The Syncopated Ladies started out by staging free shows, simply for the love of tap. Then, in 2012, the sisters harnessed the power of the internet to reach new audiences  by creating highly stylized tap videos set to popular music. The videos were self-funded and sometimes cost thousands of dollars to produce, but they paid off. The troupe’s 2016 YouTube video tribute to Beyoncé’s women’s-empowerment anthem “Formation” was shared by Queen Bey herself, which catapulted the Syncopated Ladies into the stratosphere. Since then, they’ve racked up more than 100 million views online and attracted a diverse fan base around the world. The sisters also co-direct and produce the annual DC Tap Fest and run a foundation that offers scholarships and mentoring to ensure children around the world have access to dance.

“Brilliant, fearless, relentless, hardworking and kind” is how Maud describes her older sister. “She has always given back as she has climbed the ladder of success,” Maud says. “She also isn’t afraid of hard work, all-nighters and learning skills on the internet. She has vision and she executes.”

In the last decade, Arnold began choreographing for the small screen. Allen helped Arnold land her first audition to choreograph for the HBO dramedy “The Comeback,” starring Lisa Kudrow. After choreographing for the sitcom in 2014, a producer recommended Arnold to choreograph a series of commercials, springboarding her onto yet another new path. A student of all styles of dance, Arnold estimates that 80 percent of her TV choreography is in genres other than tap. “Being able to speak other languages of dance and express those on TV and film has been so incredible,” she says.

Arnold is both creative and savvy, Allen says. “She has a pulse on what is working, what’s happening in the industry, what young people are doing, what they need. That is something that everybody doesn’t have.” Arnold has contributed her unique style to more than 50 episodes for “The Late Late Show with James Corden,” and in 2018 scored an Emmy nomination for her work on the show’s wacky dance-sketch segment, “Crosswalk: The Musical.”

Recently, Arnold fulfilled another goal. As a child, she was enamored with the 1989 dance drama Tap, starring Gregory Hines, and has made it her mission to bring tap back to film. She got that opportunity in 2021, when she was up for the choreographer job on Spirited—despite never having choreographed a film. Co-director Sean Anders, though a newcomer to dance, knew he wanted to work with someone who had a “distinct flavor.” “I was watching some of Chloé’s videos on YouTube with Syncopated Ladies,” he says. “My mind was completely blown. I thought, Oh, my god, this is the thing. This is the special sauce that I was looking for.”

After getting the gig, Arnold brought on Ava Bernstine-Mitchell and Martha Nichols as associate choreographers and hired 90 dancers to perform in the film. Arnold is thrilled that tap dance is back on the big screen in a big way, some 30 years after Tap. “And this time led by a Black woman, and featuring the voices of so many tap dancers, including Syncopated Ladies—it was like the fulfillment of this grand dream that I had for us,” she says.

A classic overachiever with colossal dreams, Arnold still doesn’t quite feel like she’s made it, even as the accolades continue to stack up. “But I can say that for the first time in my life, I do feel accomplished,” she says. “I feel like all of the work and the sacrifice and financial investment, and the time investment, and the blood, sweat and tears, and honestly the sexism we endured, the racism we endured—this moment that we’re sitting in feels so rewarding because we are making these magical things happen on our terms and from a place of true authenticity.”

She’s quick to add that there’s more work to be done. The Arnold sisters are currently pitching tap-centered TV shows and films that they would executive produce. They’re working on a Syncopated Ladies album. They hope the tour will become a mainstay, like Blue Man Group or STOMP—an example that young girls in tap can aspire to.But for now, at this moment, she says, “I can sit in the sunshine in my front yard and feel really good about what we’ve accomplished.”

The post Chloé Arnold: The Star Choreographer Amplifying Tap in Hollywood appeared first on Dance Magazine.

As this anguished Creature, Cirio pushed the boundaries of ballet, perhaps even of dance as an art form. His slightest movement—the trembling of his fingers, a backbend, a crawl, a breath—swept the audience into the journey with him. In the nearly two hours that Cirio was onstage, you experienced every feeling and emotion along with him, from frigid cold and despair to grief and love.

“He’s extremely gifted as a mover,” reflects Khan. “But it’s more his mindset—what he wants out of dance and where he wants to take himself. A lot of dancers just want to dance. They just want to remain on the surface of the body. There are a rare handful that are willing to go not just physically, but emotionally and psychologically, into characters, and that’s what Creature demanded.”

Cirio, who turns 31 this month, has reached the top rank of three world-renowned companies—Boston Ballet, American Ballet Theatre and English National Ballet. But despite his credits, Cirio isn’t the type to settle. “I am such a stubborn person inside,” he explains. “When I am interested in something, I have to do it the best I possibly can. I just want to continue learning and being better for myself, not for anyone else. It’s a never-ending process.”

Khan calls Cirio a “rare beast” who can fluidly move between classical, neoclassical and contemporary repertoire. Whether he’s portraying a fiery Basilio or heart-torn Siegfried, or interpreting an abstract work by Balanchine, Forsythe or Kylián, Cirio brings pure artistry to his roles­—not just dazzling technique. “Jeff is a beautiful dancer of extraordinary versatility,” says ENB artistic director Tamara Rojo. “He has performed with the company in such a broad range of roles, from Creature to Abdur in my Raymonda. It’s a joy to see what he brings to both the studio and then the stage with each role he takes on.”

After joining Boston Ballet’s corps in 2009, Cirio skyrocketed through the ranks and was promoted to principal by 2012, at just 21. Hungry to keep growing, he joined ABT in 2015 as a soloist and was promoted to principal the following year. During his time at ABT, Rojo invited him to guest with ENB, and he moved across the pond in 2018 to join the company as a lead principal.

When the dance world came to a pause during the COVID pandemic, Cirio was finally able to step back from his fast-paced career and reflect on what mattered most to him. “Being away from my family in the U.S. throughout the whole isolation process really made me miss home, and I felt like I was being called back,” he says. This month, Cirio returns to where it all began, performing with Boston as a guest artist in MINDscape and Swan Lake, then rejoining full-time as a principal starting with the 2022–23 season.

A Pennsylvania native, Cirio began ballet at 9 years old after watching his older sister, Lia, take classes at Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet. His innate talent was apparent from the get-go. “He started learning so quickly and catching up with technique within weeks,” recalls Lia, a Boston Ballet principal herself. “There was almost something magical or spiritual with the way he approached art.”

It was during those early years that Cirio also began taking classes in hip hop with Brian Scott Bagley, a fellow student at CPYB. Cirio credits the freestyling fundamentals he learned from hip hop as one of his biggest influences in mastering versatility, which served him well later as he took on contemporary work. It also helped him develop a love for improvisation, something he still enjoys as a way of exploring new ways of moving.

Cirio eventually began entering competitions, but in his typical form, he never chased after medals. One of Lia’s favorite early memories is of her brother at the USA International Ballet Competition in Jackson, Mississippi, in 2006. Jeff says he went into the competition thinking, “I probably won’t make it past the first round.”

“He told me that he wanted to participate just to see Daniil Simkin dance,” laughs Lia. “I later got a call from my mom, and she says, ‘Jeff got the bronze medal!’ ” Cirio and Simkin, who is now a principal with Staatsballett Berlin, eventually became close during their time together at ABT and have remained friends ever since.

Cirio went on to become a trainee with Boston Ballet School, and at 15 was invited by artistic director Mikko Nissinen to join Boston Ballet II for the 2007–08 season. For someone who has maintained such a swift trajectory throughout his career, it’s hard to imagine that when Cirio joined the junior company, he felt unprepared for the demands of professional life. He calls it a “light-bulb situation.”

“Having my older sister already in the company, I was well aware of the professionalism required and how difficult it is,” Cirio recalls. “I knew I wasn’t there yet mentally. I didn’t want to be learning choreography or doing corps de ballet work when I knew I should still be progressing in my technique and maturity.”

That realization led Cirio to enroll in the Orlando Ballet School, where he sharpened his skills under the guidance of Peter Stark and Olivier Munoz. He also picked up more medals along the way, earning silver at the Seoul International Ballet Competition and becoming the first American to win gold at the Helsinki International Ballet Competition. A more grown-up and experienced Cirio returned to Boston in 2009. “It’s the ‘wow’ factor. His dancing is contagious,” says Nissinen, whom Cirio has often referred to as his “ballet father.”

During his first stint in Boston, Cirio also began to choreo­­graph, creating works like of Trial, for Boston’s BB@home series, and fremd, which premiered in the company’s 2014–15 season at the Boston Opera House. He counts Boston Ballet resident choreographer Jorma Elo as one of his early inspirations who opened his eyes to contemporary work. In the summer of 2015, he and Lia launched Cirio Collective, a troupe of artists who gather during the off-season to create new contemporary work and perform. Having other creative interests outside of dance, such as music, deejaying and fashion, provides further inspiration for his choreography.

“I love different genres of music, especially house, and the technique and trickiness of making everything seamless when deejaying ties a lot into how dance works,” says Cirio. “I’m interested in a lot of things, and the connections I make through these other hobbies can ultimately help me when working with Cirio Collective or at Boston Ballet in the future.”

It’s easy to envy Cirio’s talent and success, but anyone who meets him soon realizes he is refreshingly down-to-earth. “He’s such a positive person, and other people in the room are able to feed off that,” says Blaine Hoven, a former ABT colleague and current Cirio Collective artist, of Cirio’s team-player personality. “He surrounds himself with people that are not toxic,” adds Lia. “I think he draws people to him that are around the same wavelength and that want to grow with him.”

As grounded and level-headed as he is, one thing that isn’t lost on Cirio is the impact he could have on aspiring dancers. Being Filipino American, he looks up to artists like Khan, who is of Bangladeshi descent, and hopes his own success will inspire other dancers from underrepresented communities.

“As an Asian male, seeing someone like Akram be at the top of his game and taking me under his wing makes me so grateful,” says Cirio. “Hopefully I can also be someone to look up to for the next generation. It doesn’t matter what your race or skin color is. You can be where I’m at too.”

As he returns stateside, Cirio already has his eyes set on new goals, including shadowing Nissinen on the aspects of directorship and learning the business side of a ballet organization. He also has a list of dream choreographers to work with, one of whom is Crystal Pite. “I have really loved the contemporary choreographers that are out right now. I would also love to continue working with Akram.” And now that he is settling into a new home base, he is excited to prepare for another major step—marriage. He and ENB junior soloist Anjuli Hudson got engaged in February.

“Jeff’s made good choices,” says Nissinen. “He wanted to learn and experience things in New York and London. Now he’s made the choice to come back to Boston, and I am happy that the circle is completing.”

The post Jeffrey Cirio: The Adventurous Artist Returns to Boston Ballet appeared first on Dance Magazine.

“Look at me now,” she says, with a jolly, infectious laugh that lights up the Zoom screen. Even someone without her sunny disposition would be smiling. Because this month, as she turns 32, she will be making her Broadway debut as lead choreographer with not one but two major musicals opening—the Billy Crystal vehicle Mr. Saturday Night, based on his 1992 movie about an aging comedian, and the long-awaited revival of the 1964 smash that made Barbra Streisand a star, Funny Girl. And this ebullient dynamo, whose first Broadway credit came a scant six years ago, is as surprised as anyone at the twists and turns that brought her here.

The journey included small contemporary companies—one of them her own, currently on hiatus—and television shows, pop concerts and dance conventions. “Who’d a ­thunk?” she asks.

It all began in her early teens when she did the Ailey summer program and faculty member Christian von Howard recommended that she come to New York City for further training. She was accepted­ for the Ailey fellowship program, and her mother, her stepfather, their cat and their dog relocated from California. After a special audition for recent arrivals, she got into New York’s performing arts high school, LaGuardia, and was heading straight for concert dance. She started auditioning—just for practice—in her senior year, and after graduating in 2008, she got some work in von Howard’s company and several others. “Okay,” she remembers thinking, “now I’m gonna book everything.” But she didn’t. “It began to feel like for the entire year I was just being told no. ‘No, you’re too young,’ ‘No, we went with someone else,’ ‘No, you need to lose 15 pounds.’ I went into a dark space where I was just going to quit.”

In the midst of that darkness, she and her mother were watching “So You Think You Can Dance”—“because it was just the fun TV show that you watched when you were a dancer so you could talk about it with your friends.” When she heard on air that there would be another season and that tryouts were imminent, Scott told her mom: “Nothing else is really working out. I might as well audition. Maybe I’ll get a free ticket to Vegas and I can go see my dad.”

Scott’s father, Michael, “an old-school pop-and-locker,” she says, had been performing with his brother, Robert, as The Scott Brothers since their teens. He met and married her mother, Michelle Ramos, a ballet dancer, when both were performing in SeaWorld San Diego’s City Streets show. Scott paints a hilarious picture of her mother playing a pregnant woman with what everyone thought was pillows under her costume. It was Ellenore. “And my mom says that every time I would hear the music start for the number, I’d go…”—she hikes her shoulders and drops her head in a protective curl—“because I knew I’d be bouncing around.” Not long after, The Scott Brothers (who retired their act just last year) got an offer in Las Vegas, where Scott’s mother found work as a showgirl. Between that, and the comic elements in her father’s dance routines, Scott feels a karmic connection to the Ziegfeld world depicted in Funny Girl, which centers on the vaudeville star Fanny Brice, played by Beanie Feldstein, and her lover, the gambler Nick Arnstein. When her parents divorced, Scott and her mother moved back to California, where Ramos taught at Dancenter in Capitola, a beach town near Santa Cruz, so that Ellenore could attend for free.

Looking back, Scott believes she got on “SYTYCD,” and made it to the finale and third runner-up, because she didn’t really care. “There was this element that I wasn’t bringing to my other auditions: ‘It won’t matter if I get another no.’ It had always been ‘I have to book this.’ Now there was no stress, I was able to relax. ‘If I get it, great; if I don’t, whatever.’ ”

Doing the show did more than relieve her funk. It opened her eyes to the dance opportunities that lay beyond the New York–centered worlds of Broadway and contemporary dance. “I had never for a moment considered that I would want to dance on TV,” she says. But now she was ready “to try as many different things as possible—to see what would stick, what I would like best.” She taught at dance conventions, which she’d never attended while a student. She did the Oscar telecast, she danced behind Janet Jackson, she even performed on “One Life to Live.” “I would jump from gig to gig and be like, ‘This wasn’t it. That didn’t fulfill me. This isn’t what I wanted.’ ”

When she landed “Smash” in 2011, she was told that Joshua Bergasse wanted her for pre-production. “I didn’t even know what that was,” she recalls. “I was nervous.” But the validation she felt coming up with moves that he liked thrilled her. “I recognized that maybe I want to be a choreographer more than I want to be a performer.”

Of course, choreographing is easier said than done. “No one was taking me seriously, because I was 22,” she says. “People were like, ‘Wait to do that when you’re in your 30s and 40s.’ ” Her mother, who by then had gone into the administrative­ end of dance (she was the director of Dance/NYC for several years and is now executive director of Alternate ROOTS, which supports community arts initiatives in the South), told her that she needed to hone her choreographic­ skills on other bodies, not just her own. She guided Scott as she used the convention money she was making to start ELSCO Dance, a “contemporary-fusion” company. Whenever she got the chance, she let people know that she was available to assist on musicals. A boyfriend who’d been cast in one of Andy Blankenbuehler’s shows mentioned her name when he was looking for women to help on a new one—which is how Scott ended up “working on Hamilton before it was Hamilton” and assisting Blankenbuehler on the 2016 revival of CATS.

Blankenbuehler remembers running into her socially here and there long before, and being struck by that captivating personality. In pre-production, he says, he found that her “generosity of spirit came out in her dancing” also, singling out her “rhythm and syncopation,” her “exceptional line” and “how she masters so many styles of dance.” On CATS, he watched her “put out fires, solve problems and bolster the cast”—abilities he says will serve her well as a Broadway choreographer.

Funny Girl director Michael Mayer met her two years later, when she was Spencer Liff’s associate on the Go-Go’s musical Head Over Heels. When Mayer looked at her Instagram videos, he says, “I was really taken with her own work. It seemed very fresh—I love when I see a choreographer making shapes and responding to music and rhythms in ways that are surprising.” And surprise was what he was seeking for the current off-Broadway revival of Little Shop of Horrors, “because everybody’s seen it so many times and I just didn’t want to do the same thing. I knew Ellenore hadn’t done a ton of shows on her own, but I thought she would be a really great fit. She brought the physical life of the show to a great, exciting, funny place.”

When Funny Girl came along, it was natural for Mayer to turn to her again. But the show has some tap numbers, and she wasn’t a tap dancer, like his friend Ayodele Casel. So he asked the producers if they were open to having two choreographers, one for tap and another for everything else. They agreed, and so did Scott. The ensuing “balancing act,” he says, has been “fun to watch. Neither of them is a pushover, but they’re both such lovely human beings. If you’re going to do something with two choreographers, it should only be that pleasant.”

Scott’s collegial spirit also gets high marks from her co-artistic director at ELSCO, Jeffrey Gugliotti, who took her class at a college workshop and then went straight from school into her company as a dancer. He’s followed her into musicals, as well, as the associate choreographer on Little Shop and Funny Girl. And the ELSCO dancers are now her pre-production team. “It’s still a very vulnerable place,” she admits, “to be the choreographer of a Broadway show and say, ‘I don’t know what I wanna do here—let’s figure this out.’ So I like having dancers with me that I’ve known for a long time. If they say, ‘This doesn’t really feel good,’ I’ll trust their judgment.” That’s a large part of why dancers love working with her, Gugliotti says. “She’ll come into the room with an idea and some movement, but she really allows the dancers to influence where the choreography will go. She thinks about what will look best on them, what will make them enjoy what they’re doing and feel the most comfortable—especially on Broadway. Doing a show eight times a week can be tough, so that’s something she really tries to take into account when we’re creating work.”

Some of that solicitude may stem from her experience on “SYTYCD.” “It jumpstarted my career,” she concedes, “so I have no regrets. And I did spend the last 10 years trying to be a choreographer on the show.” The show also became a pivotal part of her personal life: A few years ago she was starting to chat with a guy on Tinder, who initially didn’t recognize her as the dancer he’d adored back in college, watching the show with his buddies. “I’m going to marry that girl,” he’d told them, to which they replied, “Even if you ever met her, she’d never date you.” Another big Ellenore Scott grin lights up the Zoom window: “They were all at our wedding, eating their words.”

But looking back at “SYTYCD” now, she feels that had she not been so young, she would have made some noise about “the way things were run”—the grueling schedule, the manufactured tension, what she saw as disregard for the physical and emotional well-being of the contestants. So she was careful, starting ELSCO, not to replicate that kind of atmosphere, and Gugliotti, Mayer and John Rando, who hired her to choreograph Mr. Saturday Night after seeing Little Shop, all rave about how much fun she brings into the studio. “The humor and joy infects the room in such a lovely way,” Rando says. “And she has such a wonderful laugh. That’s really important on a show like ours.”

That winning personality is on vibrant display in the jaunty videos about theater, clothes and her passion for anime that she posts on TikTok, which provided her a much-needed creative outlet during the pandemic. Scott also contributed the choreography for the app’s crowdsourced musical version of Ratatouille, and has, to her amusement and amazement, amassed more than a million followers and lots of influencer swag—“I got this mattress for free!” she crows. She continued posting even as she plunged into the juggling act that is birthing two Broadway musicals simultaneously, because she doesn’t know what’s next after this month’s openings. She’s hoping that doing three comic musicals in a row won’t pigeonhole her, but she won’t mind if she becomes the go-to choreographer for comedies. “My favorite thing in the whole world is to laugh,” she says. “Making people smile is one of the greatest gifts, and if I can do that, then my work here is done.”

The post Ellenore Scott: The Dynamo Choreographer With Two New Broadway Shows appeared first on Dance Magazine.

But when she entered the room, Wendy Whelan and Justin Peck popped out from behind a corner where they had been hiding, all three leaders grinning behind their masks: Woodward, too, was being promoted to principal. With six veteran company members retiring, Phelan and Woodward marked the first female dancers elevated to NYCB’s highest rank since 2015. 

While for Woodward the news came as a surprise, for NYCB audiences it was anything but. Since joining the company in 2012, Woodward, now 28, has delighted onlookers with her mix of elegant classicism and ebullient pluck. Both offstage and on it, she brings a warmth and generosity that make her appear just as at home in the Sugarplum Fairy’s mint-green tutu as it does in the minimalist gold lamé leotards of Pam Tanowitz’s Bartók Ballet. Described by both Stafford and Tanowitz as a “bright light,” Woodward seems an integral part of NYCB’s new future. Yet she stumbled upon Balanchine’s legacy somewhat by chance. 

Woodward’s versatility can be attributed in part to the bevy of cultures in which she was raised. Born in Paris to a French filmmaker father and a South African dancer mother, she moved to Philadelphia at age 3. When her parents separated four years later, Woodward moved to Los Angeles with her mom and younger brother while her father returned to Paris, where Woodward visited him regularly. 

Though she herself was teaching dance, Woodward’s mother encouraged her to try a variety of pursuits. Along with ballet, Woodward took ice skating, tennis, swimming and karate lessons.

It wasn’t until age 10, when Woodward switched from Westside Ballet to study at the more intimate Yuri Grigoriev School of Ballet in Venice, California, that ballet became central to her life. “He was just a master of dance,” says Woodward of her beloved teacher. “He didn’t speak any English, but we understood everything.” Studying with Grigoriev, a Russian émigré who’d danced for the Stanislavsky Ballet in Moscow, Woodward found herself firmly planted in Russian technique.

The summer that Woodward was 15, she received a scholarship from the Bolshoi Ballet Academy to train in Moscow for two months. But though she’d grown up traveling regularly to see her father, this was her first time taking on a foreign city—and language—alone. “It was the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Woodward reflects.

But as she slowly adjusted to the studios’ raked floors and rigorous stretching practices, Woodward started learning Russian together with another scholarship winner, Gabe Stone Shayer—now a soloist with American Ballet Theatre and still a friend. She also fell in love with her character-dance classes. “The teachers would ask us to be very aware of our fingertips or the placement of our port de bras to explain a story with movement, which is such a delicate thing,” she says. These skills remain evident in Woodward’s emotive approach to roles like Princess Aurora and Juliet.  

On the way to Moscow, Woodward had stopped in New York City and London to audition for the School of American Ballet and the Royal Ballet School, respectively. She’d had her sights set on more classical programs, and had tried SAB solely on a friend’s recommendation. But upon receiving a scholarship to Balanchine’s famed school, she jumped at the chance for another adventure. “I didn’t really know too much about City Ballet, being on the West Coast,” says Woodward.

Just a few weeks into her first summer at SAB, Woodward was invited to stay year-round. She knew she’d found her place: “I felt so free, and able to dance in all the ways that I wasn’t able to in Russian technique.” Two years later, then-ballet-master-in-chief Peter Martins invited her into the company. “It’s so helpful to be open-minded and not get stuck into narrow tunnel vision of where you think you should be,” says Woodward of her unexpected path. 

With her classical training and small stature, over her nearly 10 years with NYCB Woodward has often been lauded for her work in romantic roles. Frequently compared to French ballerina Violette Verdy—a likeness Woodward finds extremely flattering—she shines in the elegance of “Emeralds” and La Sylphide. Stafford refers to her entrée in The Sleeping Beauty as “the most impressive Aurora debut in recent memory,” and fondly remembers her first turn as the Sugarplum Fairy. “We all had smiles on our faces,” he says. “It was just such a pleasure to watch her artistry in that role.”

But for Woodward herself, working with living choreographers has proved just as thrilling as taking on the greats. She remembers learning Soirée Musicale from Christopher Wheeldon as one of her most influential early opportunities, and cherishes each chance she’s had to work with Peck and Alexei Ratmansky; she loves entering the studio as a blank slate, ready to create. For a few years she pushed past her comfort zone with a weekly Gaga class downtown at Gibney, which she credits with teaching her to move from a place of sensation. And she wowed with sharp exactitude in Tanowitz’s Merce Cunningham–influenced 2019 Bartók Ballet.

“She’s just up for anything,” says Tanowitz, who reworked the ballet to highlight Woodward’s solo for its return this February. “She’s very human but just an incredible technician. She has a strong curiosity, and all movement feels equal to her.” 

Woodward approached the setbacks of the pandemic with her trademark sense of equilibrium and positivity. She gave up her New York City apartment and moved in with her mother in California for four months (she and her rescue dog, Luna, are now settled in a new home on the Upper West Side).

“It was a big relief to slow things down a bit,” she says. “It helped me to reset mentally and physically.” Taking Zoom class in her brother’s empty bedroom each day, Woodward focused on going back to the basics. This was aided by an exploration into anatomy and the body-conditioning programProgressing Ballet Technique. Woodward also started teaching, both online and in person.

Time off also gave her a chance to focus on school; Woodward is midway through a BA at Fordham University. With a lifelong interest in cultural fluency, she’s planning on majoring in anthropology, though her real passion lies in ethology, the study of animals in their natural habitats. Though not offered at Fordham, ethology brings together Woodward’s love of animals and the environment, and would allow her to follow in the footsteps of one of her non-ballet idols, Jane Goodall. 

Entering a company’s highest rank can be difficult for many dancers, bringing with it a sense of isolation and a flurry of anxieties. But Woodward is taking the transition in stride, aided by the fact that she and Phelan are heading into this new phase together. Very different dancers, the two friends have remained a steadfast source of support for each other.

“It’s less daunting because we have someone who can be a sounding board, who you really trust and who’s going through the same thing,” says Phelan, excitedly adding that she and Woodward have moved into a new dressing room together. “Indiana tries to keep her fellow dancers happy; she’s really a team player,” adds Phelan, a sentiment Stafford echoes: “She’s always working and always in class. She’s a great role model.” 

When looking towards the future, Woodward’s dreams showcase the breadth of her abilities: She’s just as excited about the technical juggernaut Theme and Variations as she is the predacious Novice in Jerome Robbins’ The Cage. She’d also love to return to her Russian roots, guesting with the Paris Opéra Ballet or The Royal Ballet in her all-time favorite classical role, Giselle.

But for now, she’s content to focus on the joy that’s come with returning to the stage. “I’m hoping that this year allows me to keep growing into myself as a dancer, and really feel comfortable with the quirkiness that each one of us brings to the table,” says Woodward. “I’m just going to keep on working.”

The post Indiana Woodward: The Ebullient Ballerina With a Human Touch appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Go ahead and imagine it: thousands of TikTokers posting their own takes on Knight’s indelible choreography. The song setting streaming records as fans play it on repeat, trying to get the hand flip just so. A dance-driven #SingleLadiesChallenge, inevitably.

It’s a fun thought exercise that also captures a tectonic shift in the cultural landscape. Dance has long played a critical role in the entertainment industry. But as visually oriented social media platforms have risen (and risen, and risen) over the past several years, dance has increasingly become, as Knight says, “the main character.” Beyoncé’s 2009 “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” video, with its unequivocal celebration of choreography, heralded a new era: Today, it’s often a great dance that propels a song to the top of the charts. 

“People are no longer saying, ‘Have you heard the Beyoncé song?’ ” says Knight, now one of the star’s go-to choreographers. “It’s ‘Have you seen the Beyoncé record?’ ”

What hasn’t changed is the industry’s treatment of dance artists. On large commercial music and film projects, most creative leaders often receive generous compensation, and residual payments for further use of their work. But choreographers typically get only a daily or weekly rate, based on their level and experience. The situation appears even starker when the choreographic contributions of social media creators are factored—or, rather, not factored—into the equation. “Over the past year and a half, so many of the biggest records were directly tied to TikTok dances,” Knight says. “Those songs made millions. And the creators of the dances received zero.” 

Last year, Knight launched Knight Choreography and Music Publishing Inc. with the goal of addressing that inequity head-on. To compel the entertainment world to respect dance artists, his new enterprise has begun copyrighting commercial choreography—not just Knight’s work, but also the work of other creators, particularly artists of color. 

It’s an industry-rattling move. It’s also a very JaQuel move. “What JaQuel has always embodied is the magic of shaking the status quo,” says tap artist and longtime friend Chloe Arnold.

From the beginning, Knight was fascinated by dance’s power to transfix audiences and transform culture. Born in North Carolina and raised in Atlanta, he grew up dancing along to MTV music videos before taking his first formal dance class at age 14. In high school, he played the saxophone in, and created movement for, the marching band, marveling at the effect choreography could have on a crowd. At only 19, he got his “Single Ladies” break after being scouted by choreographer Frank Gatson Jr.

Since then, Knight has built an extraordinary resumé. Beyoncé still lives at the top of it—he’s worked with her on two Super Bowls, four world tours, Lemonade, Homecoming and Black Is King, among other projects—but the list also includes Megan Thee Stallion, Britney Spears, Brandy, Nicole Scherzinger and Tinashe.

From the early days of his career, Knight was struck by the difference in resources allotted to white and Black music artists. Three weeks after the release of “Single Ladies,” he booked a job with Britney Spears. “My day rate for Britney was almost my weekly rate for Beyoncé,” he says. “And neither of those rates were all that good. Nothing made sense.”

Over time, Knight realized the systemic nature of the problem. “Choreographers are really the bastard kids of the industry,” he says. “We don’t have the respect that should be on our names based on the value we bring to a project, especially those of us who are Black and brown.” Earning choreographers that respect, he realized, would require forcing the industry to recognize their work’s value. And copyright—the establishment of legal ownership—would be his crowbar. 

Knight created Knight Choreography and Music Publishing Inc. with the hope that it would eventually act like a traditional music publishing company, helping choreographers copyright their dances and then license those dances for use in tours, commercials, films and other areas, like video games and NFTs. To Arnold—who’s in the process of copyrighting a piece of her viral choreography for the Syncopated Ladies set to the Prince song “When Doves Cry” with the help of Knight’s company—it’s both a practical and a poetic idea.

“He’s securing the future of these dance artists in a very concrete way,” she says. “But his work also ties into bigger conversations about how, in the past, artists of color have been written out of history. If you want to challenge that kind of generational oppression, you have to create generational wealth, and that starts with ownership.”

Copyrighting movement is a notoriously byzantine process. Federal law dictates that ownership cannot exist until a creative work is “fixed.” For choreography, being captured on video is sometimes only part of the equation. A Labanotation score can provide vital additional details, but the creation of such a score is an expensive and time-consuming endeavorthat requires a specialist to transcribe every gesture (and often, for video works, every camera angle). The first dance Knight copyrighted was “Single Ladies,” which involved a hefty Labanotation score costing thousands of dollars.

The current copyright system is also geared toward concert dance works, rather than shorter commercial and social media projects. “So what do you do for all these platforms—advertisements­, TikTok videos—that operate in 15- and 30-second­ blocks?” Knight asks. 

A team of experts is helping Knight surmount those hurdles, including lawyer David Hecht, who represented the creators that sued Epic Games over its use of their dances in the video game Fortnite. Last summer, the technology company Logitech also joined up with Knight to help 10 BIPOC choreographers, Arnold among them, copyright their viral dances. The partnership developed in the wake of the #BlackTikTokStrike, which saw Black creators on the app protesting the lack of recognition for their contributions; the list of copyrights now in process features several TikTok dances by Black artists, including Keara Wilson’s “Savage” dance and Mya Johnson and Chris Cotter’s “Up” dance. 

“JaQuel isn’t just talking about doing good. He’s taking action,”­ says Meridith Rojas, global head of entertainment and creator marketing at Logitech. “We wanted to help more artists realize that copyrighting this kind of work is possible. It’s a signal to the creators to feel more empowered to create. It’s also a signal to everybody who has felt like they can just take dance and use it without permission: Stop.” A short film documenting the Logitech collaboration is slated to premiere this year.

Going forward, Knight wants to look backward, securing copyrights for influential commercial dance works of the past. “How do we make sure we have truly given the icons that came before us their flowers?” he says. “I feel like we still owe Michael Peters”—the choreographer of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”—“so much money for that beautiful art, which you see everywhere. The Peters estate should be rolling in dough!”

Though Knight sees copyright protection as the bedrock on which to build dance artists’ future security, he also understands that a time-consuming legal process won’t address their immediate needs. In 2020, at the start of the pandemic, Knight founded a nonprofit, The JaQuel Knight Foundation, to support dancers, particularly members of marginalized groups. During shutdowns, he partnered with relief organizations to provide grants and meals to dance artists. With the support of donors, he hopes to continue to give grants and scholarships well after the pandemic and to continue impacting, encouraging and inspiring the next generation of artists. “Just to help dancers, period—because they need help right now—that’s the goal of the foundation,” he says.

Knight is also investigating ways to eliminate the restrictive work-for-hire agreements most commercial choreographers are forced to sign, relinquishing legal rights to their work in order to receive their daily or weekly rates. “It’s insane that choreographers are slaves to this document they have to sign to get their check,” Knight says. “So now I’m in talks with state legislation about how we can get rid of work-for-hire for this field altogether.” And he hasn’t forgotten about the industry’s dancers: “If they’re on camera, I want to see them getting residual pay wherever that footage is used.”

Waging a multi-front battle against a multibillion-dollar industry­ can be exhausting. “There are definitely days where I’m like, ‘Could I just do my eight-counts?’ ” Knight says, laughing. “But I think all artists have to challenge themselves to care more about the legalities of it all. We have to challenge our agents. We have to challenge our managers. We have to challenge the system if we want to get to a space where dance has the respect it deserves.” 

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What’s next? Our annual list of dancers, choreographers and companies on the verge of breaking through offers several answers to the question of where our field is headed. We’re betting we’ll be seeing—and hearing—more from these 25 artists not just this year, but for many more to come.

Ogemdi Ude

If there’s a throughline to the genre-bending work of choreographer Ogemdi Ude, it’s how Black folks’ experiences—especially their grief—lives in their bodies. 

It shows up in Living Relics, a collaboration with visual artist Sydney Mieko King that asks participants to locate grief in their own bodies and then physicalize it by making plaster molds of those places, and in her tour-de-force solo Nothing Like That Is Ever Going to Happen to Me Again, where she searches for memories of those she’s lost, desperately piecing together bits of movement and text.

But there’s also joy to be found in Ude’s work: Though she claims she isn’t tech-savvy, she’s been playfully exploring video and multimedia since long before virtual work became the norm, and she often sources memories from her Atlanta upbringing, where her first exposure to dance was majorettes. Ude works as a doula, as well, which she sees as deeply interconnected to her dance practice—especially in the form of AfroPeach, a collaboration with fellow dancer/doula Rochelle Jamila Wilbun that offers postpartum dance workshops.

Through a pandemic defined by collective grief, Ude has been prolific—and she’s gotten her due notice. In addition to continuing to perform with choreographers like iele paloumpis and Marion Spencer, her 2022 and 2023 are stacked with commissions and residencies, including at Abrons Arts Center, Gibney, Danspace Project, The Watermill Center and BRIC, plus more to be announced.

—Lauren Wingenroth

Adriana Pierce

Adriana Pierce’s career thus far looks like a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-many laundry list of dream gigs: dancing in Miami City Ballet, the 2018 Broadway revival of Carousel, FX’s “Fosse/Verdon” and the new West Side Story movie, plus choreographic opportunities that continue to grow in scale. Though she came out while a student at the School of American Ballet, it wasn’t until she gathered a group of fellow queer women and nonbinary dancers over Zoom in 2020 that “I really felt a sense of community about my identity and sexuality through ballet,” she says. Pierce doesn’t want the next generation of queer dancers to have to compartmentalize their identities as she did. Enter #QueerTheBallet, an ambitious producing and education initiative she launched last year to get more queer stories onstage.  

Pierce’s own choreography interrogates what equitable partnering looks like and how pointe work might be divorced from its gendered history, research she put into practice in 2021 with a piece for American Ballet Theatre dancers and a virtual commission for The Joyce Theater, both duets for two women. Next up is a Carolina Ballet commission in the spring. Odds are, Pierce will continue pushing ballet forward in ever more eclectic ways—her bucket list items include creating immersive ballet work, directing and choreographing on Broadway, and creating a full-length queer narrative ballet: “I want people to feel as used to seeing queer stories on a ballet stage as they are used to seeing Giselle.” —Lauren Wingenroth

Ballet22

There was something special about the Odalisque pas de trois that Ballet22 performed in its summer 2021 digital season. It wasn’t the crisp pointe work, the crystalline turns or the vibrant musicality, all of which were abundant. It was that the Ballet22 dancers in the traditionally all-female variation from Le Corsaire were male—and not men in drag hamming it up for laughs, but, quite simply, male dancers expressing their artistry on pointe. 

Founded as a pandemic project by artistic director Roberto­ Vega Ortiz and executive director Theresa Knudson, Ballet22 invites male, mxn, transgender and nonbinary dancers to train and perform on pointe in their authentic gender identity. The company grew out of Zoom classes offered by Vega Ortiz and his close friend Carlos Hopuy of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo in early 2020, and gained an international following so quickly that Vega Ortiz and Knudson were able to launch the performing company in December 2020. Ballet22 has drawn dancers like New York City Ballet’s Gilbert Bolden III, Boston Ballet’s Daniel R. Durrett, San Francisco Ballet soloist Diego Cruz, and the Trocks’ Duane Gosa, and commissions by choreographers like Myles Thatcher, Ramón Oller and Ben Needham-Wood. As the greater cultural conversation around gender goes on, Ballet22 is overturning ballet’s rules about who gets to dance, what they get to dance and how they get to dance. 

—Claudia Bauer

Christina Carminucci

Although the pandemic limited the in-person audience to just 25 people, when Christina Carminucci improvised to Thelonius Monk’s “Bemsha Swing” last summer as part of The Solidarity Series, she performed with as much energy as if inside a packed theater. There’s no doubt that everyone livestreaming the show also felt the joy she radiated while mimicking pianist Michael King’s playful licks or executing tight turns on a narrow tap board. But her unbridled glee wasn’t just a result of her rhythm-making: She had produced the event herself. It was the second iteration of The Solidarity Series, an evening of live tap dance and jazz music that Carminucci, 27, conceived during the pandemic. 

The New Jersey native has also performed with Dorrance Dance and Christopher Erk’s Tap Factor, and in Tap Family Reunion at The Joyce Theater. Her burgeoning popularity comes as no surprise to those who have seen how she comes alive when the first notes of a jazz tune begin to play, dancing with the ease and control of a mature practitioner. She’s as comfortable with a sinuous, sultry Latin groove full of heel drops as she is with a rhythm time-step sequence garnished with multiple turns. There’s always an infectious grin on her face, and after a challenging year in which she still managed to find new opportunities for producing and performing, she certainly has many reasons to keep smiling. —Ryan P. Casey

Courtney Nitting

Courtney Nitting attacks choreography with catlike quickness. In Kansas City Ballet artistic director Devon Carney’s 2021 work Sandhur, her rapid-paced turns and leaps electrified. “I love speed,” she says. “Petit allégro is my favorite, and I feel it can never be fast enough.”

The 24-year-old speed demon was born in Lafayette, New Jersey, and began her training at New Jersey School of Ballet. She then attended School of American Ballet before joining Pennsylvania Ballet II in 2017 and Kansas City Ballet a year later. “Courtney is a force to be reckoned with,” says Carney. “She has a diverse dynamic range with spectacularly fast footwork. Every time she enters the stage, she lights it up with intensity and joie de vivre.”

Having already danced featured roles in Sandhur and in William Forsythe’s In the middle, somewhat elevated, Nitting’s career, which has also included choreographing for Kansas City Ballet, is beginning to switch into high gear. —Steve Sucato 

Maxfield Haynes

Illuminating possibility comes naturally to Maxfield Haynes. The nonbinary phenom has carved out a brilliant career for themself, demolishing machismo stereotypes while blitzing across the stage in pointe shoes or heels, and playfully partnering their fellow dancers with aplomb.

Haynes learned to embrace their multifaceted identity early on and came to reject the binary gender presentations they encountered during their classical ballet training. This “do-everything” spirit helped them juggle apprenticing with Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo while studying at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. It continued to serve them well as they performed soloist roles with Complexions Contemporary Ballet—both on pointe and off—dispatched crisp batterie as the bird in Isaac Mizrahi’s Peter & the Wolf, and, this fall, made a triumphant return to the Trocks. But the Kentucky native had a true awakening this past summer as part of Ballez’s Giselle of Loneliness. Their solo blended bursts of traditionally feminine sweetness with soaring leaps, all while illustrating that dance is love—regardless of one’s race or gender presentation. —Juan Michael Porter II

Adriana Wagenveld

Grace, grit, athleticism and versatility are what garnered Adriana Wagenveld soloist roles in Trey McIntyre’s Wild Sweet Love and Alejandro Cerrudo’s Extremely Close in her first season as a full company member at Grand Rapids Ballet. They are also what have the 22-year-old on the cusp of company stardom.

Originally from Puerto Rico, Wagenveld began her dance training in Crete, Illinois. After attending Grand Rapids Ballet’s 2015 summer intensive on scholarship, she was asked to join the company as a trainee. She became a main company member in 2019. “There is a lot of emotion behind her eyes, and she takes on roles with verve and determination,” says artistic director James Sofranko.

Wagenveld has hypermobility in her joints from Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which leads to exaggerated lines that she says are both a blessing and a curse. Countering that hypermobility with strength, she says, has made her project “more of a powerhouse-dancer vibe than a princess one.” —Steve Sucato

Imre and Marne van Opstal

Individually, siblings Imre and Marne van Opstal have accrued­ impressive performance resumés: Both danced with Nederlands Dans Theater 2, and Imre also performed with NDT1, Norwegian company Carte Blanche and Batsheva Dance Company. United, they’re an exciting brother–sister choreographic duo, creating work that is at once virtuosic and thought-provoking.

Having developed several works for NDT’s main stage, including Take Root (2019), which was nominated for a Dutch “Zwaan” award for most impressive dance production, it wasn’t until last year that the duo received their first commission from outside of the Netherlands. A piece about the politics of nudity created for London’s Rambert Dance Company, Eye Candy features eight dancers dressed in synthetic breastplates that make them look like Greco-Roman sculptures. Performing a mixture of fluid and rigid mechanical motions, the performers often look more akin to dolls, dummies or clones than thinking, feeling individuals, making a powerful statement about the paralyzing pressures of contemporary beauty standards.

The duo’s choreography is the perfect marriage of elements from the van Opstals’ respective performance careers: Notes of Ohad Naharin’s luscious Gaga movement language are infused with the classical lines and technical prowess for which NDT is known, all sprinkled with the siblings’ unique perspective and artistic flair. —Emily May

Arielle Smith

Whoops of joy greeted Arielle Smith’s Jolly Folly when it closed English National Ballet’s return to live performance in London last spring. The ballet bounced giddily along to classical pops remixed by a Cuban big-band, its tilting, tumbling ensemble dressed in black tie and tails. It was an absolute blast, delivering a genuine jolt of delight.

The Havana-born Smith, 25, previously honed a storyteller’s instinct under the mentorship of Matthew Bourne, who made her associate choreographer on his 2019 Romeo + Juliet. Smith’s early work has emerged with life-enhancing wit and assurance. Her voice is already distinctive—who knows how it will develop and where it will take her? She’s more than just a fistful of fun. —David Jays

Sienna Lalau

Sienna Lalau just turned 21, yet her “25 to Watch” nomination sparked some debate among the Dance Magazine editors: Did she qualify for this list of emerging talents? Was she already too…established?

Reasonable questions, given Lalau’s abundant choreographic credits. Born in Hawaii, she first earned national notice for her work with the Los Angeles–based creative arts studio The Lab, helping lead its junior team to victory on the TV show “World of Dance” in 2018. Since then, she has made internet-melting dances for Jennifer Lopez, Missy Elliott and Ciara, and become one of the K-pop world’s go-to choreographers. Her work for BTS’ “On” video, with its punk spin on the drumline, earned a 2020 MTV Video Music Award.

Lalau is also the first person you see in “On.” As gifted a mover as she is a maker, she often ends up sharing the stage or the screen with her famous collaborators, bringing a scene-stealing mixture of complete control and complete abandon to her own choreography. From both behind and in front of the camera, Lalau is shaping the look of the entertainment world. —Margaret Fuhrer

Bo Park

Bo Park is challenging the dichotomy between “masculine” and “feminine” with her hip-hop–inspired choreography. “What I experienced was that ‘female’ should be a certain way,” Park says. “I couldn’t really book jobs if I wasn’t giving ‘femininity,’ and I wanted to change that.” In 2017, she founded her own company to provide dancers with a safe space to express their authentic selves, unhindered by gender-­based­ expectations. The company’s name, SHINSA, is a play on Korean words. It means “gentleman” but also references the famous 16th-century artist Shin Saimdang, who left a lasting cultural legacy despite the restrictive gender roles of her time.

Pairing full-bodied and intricate movements with meticulous musicality, Park’s imaginative choreography resonates across diverse platforms. In 2019, SHINSA’s electrifying Mulan-themed number earned first place at the hip-hop competition ELEMENTS XIX. In 2020, its immersive production DAYDREAMERS was extended to a four-week run after selling out its first five shows. Park has also worked with pop music artists, such as LANKS and Loona, and choreographed theatrical productions, including Hideaway Circus’ 2021 show Stars Above. In every project, Park’s nuanced yet powerful choreography highlights the individuality of her performers—however they choose to express themselves. —Kristi Yeung

Ashley Green

Ashley Green was a standout dancer—and actor—throughout Whim W’Him’s all-digital 2020–21 season, her first with the company. Artistic director Olivier Wevers, who discovered her soon after her graduation from Point Park University, says her vitality is “a rare gift. She’s a creative soul, radiating joy, an extraordinary collaborator with an innate­ way of approaching movement that pulls you in.” The 23-year-old picked up a 2021 Princess Grace Award last summer, and shortly thereafter moved across the country to join Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. “Explosive, in a word,” describes Ailey artistic director Robert Battle. “She’s not trying on the movement, she’s living it. Even in a little Instagram improvisation, she jumps through the screen.” This unpretentious, passionate dancer has staying power, predicts Battle. “She’ll continue to grow.” —Gigi Berardi

Carter Williams

Ballroom phenom Carter Williams’ fluidity and striking stage presence have landed him accolades you don’t expect to see on a 19-year-old college student’s resumé. He’s already been a four-time World Latin Dance Finalist and a two-time National DanceSport Latin Dance Champion. On screen, his credits include the first two seasons of NBC’s “World of Dance” and three seasons of “America’s Got Talent.” His longtime private coach Afton Wilson says it’s not just Williams’ extreme versatility, but also his super-sensitive partnering and precision turns that make him stand out on a crowded floor. He’s racking up even more wins as a member of Utah Valley University’s dance team as he works towards a degree in marketing and aims for a professional career. With his easy, self-assured air and clean, quick moves, he already dances like a pro. —Gigi Berardi

Ilya Vidrin and Jessi Stegall

Ilya Vidrin and Jessi Stegall are experts both in the practice and theory of partnering. Vidrin has a doctorate in the ethics of care in relation to partnering; Stegall is an applied ethicist who works with performing arts organizations to facilitate healthy relationships among artists, directors and educators. The two collaborate frequently through the Partnering Lab, an applied research initiative that investigates emerging technologies of motion capture, art and public health projects, and creative pedagogies. The outcomes of this work range from the development of novel choreographic methods to writing in support of ethical practice. They also have individual careers: Vidrin was recently commissioned to create a new work for Ballet Des Moines, and Stegall’s dance film, Salty Dog, premiered at the Motion State Dance Film Series in the fall. Vidrin and Stegall’s shared, careful consideration of partnering seems apt for our COVID moment, wherein the relationship of our bodies to those around us is particularly fraught and tangible. Their work suggests that partnership is not an abstraction, but the embodiment of care performed repeatedly. —Sydney Skybetter

PARA.MAR Dance Theatre

PARA.MAR Dance Theatre bolted out of the gate fully ready to steamroll the status quo. Stephanie Martinez’s new contemporary ballet company debuted with performances of her fierce kiss. atop a red carpet in a Chicago parking lot in October 2020. With a cast of fearless dancers, the piece captured the restless angst of isolation and the languishing sensuality of pure explosive action, along with a hard to define quirky charm.

Martinez, who has created works for The Joffrey Ballet, Ballet Hispánico and Nashville Ballet, among others, formed her troupe in the midst of a pandemic when dancers desperately needed to work and the field desperately needed to diversify. With the motto “together, with, and for,” Martinez’s mission includes elevating BIPOC voices in contemporary ballet. PARA.MAR premiered works by Jennifer Archibald and Lucas Crandall in Chicago last spring and performed them at the inaugural Carmel Dance Festival last summer; next up are commissions by Robyn Mineko Williams and Keerati Jinakunwiphat, among others, along with a new work by Martinez. —Nancy Wozny

Baye & Asa

Dance duo Baye & Asa know how to land a surprise. It might be a droll little hip shimmy or a gentle moment of eye contact amid a whirlwind of propulsive, full-bodied movement. Using African forms and hip hop in an expansive view of “contemporary” dance theater, the pair’s choreography avoids falling into any predictable pattern.

Sam “Asa” Pratt and Amadi “Baye” Washington were both introduced to dance in their New York City grade school when African dance was offered as an alternative to gym class. They began collaborating professionally in 2015 in between jobs that have included touring with Akram Khan (Pratt), dancing with Gallim (Washington) and performing in Sleep No More (both).

Second Seed—a project responding to the 1915 silent film The Birth of a Nation and interrogating America’s white supremacist lineage—blossomed over six years from a duet into a group performance and, in 2020, a bone-chilling 15-minute film. The pandemic gave them time to delve even deeper into their partnership; now, their 2022 calendar includes commissions for BODYTRAFFIC, Martha Graham Dance Company and BlackLight Summit, plus a residency and a main-stage production at 92nd Street Y, a duet presented by Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, and more.

—Jennifer Stahl

Sierra Armstrong

Back in her ABT Studio Company days, Sierra Armstrong’s luxuriant lines and keen emotional intelligence piqued the interest of ballet fans. But after joining American Ballet Theatre’s main company in 2017, Armstrong had few chances to develop those gifts, tasked with a slate of ensemble parts that kept her both busy and in the background. 

When the pandemic shut down the ABT machine, Armstrong found space for self-discovery. “I was in the studio a lot by myself, dancing by myself, doing all these things by myself,” says Armstrong, now 22. “It was a lonely time, but a time where I really came into my own, too.”

Featured roles in a series of small-scale, COVID-friendly projects showcased that growth. Last February, she brought a new depth of artistry to Adriana Pierce’s Overlook, a tender pas de deux with fellow female ABT corps member Remy Young. Armstrong became a particular muse to ABT star and choreographer James Whiteside, originating a lead in his bubble-residency premiere City of Women, and taking on a principal part in his New American Romance during an outdoor performance at Rockefeller Center. Here’s hoping those opportunities will lead to more, at ABT and beyond it, as the world reopens. —Margaret Fuhrer

Brianna Mims

During her sophomore year at University of Southern California’s Glorya Kaufman School of Dance, Brianna Mims found herself at the intersection of dance and abolition. She was part of the JusticeLA Creative Action team, led by Cecilia Sweet-Coll and Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrice Cullors, where an installation work called “#jailbeddrop” was created in protest of an L.A. County jail expansion plan. Mims felt so passionately about the work that she decided to expand “#jailbeddrop” into a performance piece and interactive installation as her senior project—and it became a guiding light for her career, too. In the nearly five years since “#jailbeddrop” started, she’s presented it in venues across L.A. and moved the project online following lockdowns.

“I learned so much from my body about how to do abolition work, and so much around abolition informs the dances I’m making,” Mims says. She recently finished a Toulmin Fellowship with the NYU Center for Ballet and the Arts & National Sawdust Partnership, where she began developing a world-building game focused on abolition and community activation. Her other recent work includes a dance film called TriKe and Letters from the Etui, a digital platform and accompanying series of workshops that support abolitionist frameworks, from personal to political practice. —Sophie Bress

Simone Stevens

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago rarely hires from the Windy City’s freelance circuit. But former freelancer Simone Stevens made her company debut at Dance for Life last August, three years after moving to Chicago with her sights set on the company. Stevens grew up dancing in the Atlanta suburbs and began working with various choreographers in Chicago after graduating from Kennesaw State University. She has it all: flawless technique, impassioned emotional sensitivity and brazen versatility, the latter developed as she floated between wildly diverse projects. Katlin Bourgeois’­ contorted choreographic cryptograms suited her just as well as the full-throttled, jazzy style of Monique Haley, who created a feverish solo on her during a brief stint with Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre. Now, Stevens has gotten what she came for, and it’s Hubbard Street’s gain. 

—Lauren Warnecke

Darvensky Louis

Every move Darvensky Louis makes is multilayered and arresting. In Omar Román De Jesús’ Muerte Cotidiana, he breathes into a leisurely open stance, arms spreading as if yielding into the expansive feel of a sunset. Suddenly, he drops into rumba-flavored weight shifts, then spills to the floor and springs weightlessly to his feet. His legs restlessly turn in and out, hands wiping down his face and chest, torso rippling, as if simultaneously hating and enjoying the skin he’s in.

It’s this smoldering inner drive and visceral intelligence that have helped him secure roles in works by several of Atlanta’s leading contemporary dance groups, including staibdance, Fly on a Wall and Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre, within a year and a half of his graduation from Kennesaw State University.

The long-limbed, Haitian-born artist recently brought his electric blend of contemporary and hip hop to creating the dance movement for Bob Cratchit’s solo in Terminus’ Marley Was Dead, To Begin With. Terminus artistic director John Welker says Louis’ solo was so extraordinary they don’t know of anyone else who could perform it. “It was on another level,” Welker says. “It just blew us all away.” Louis is also creating his own company, Sequence One, intended to provide recent college graduates opportunities to perform and tour. —Cynthia Bond Perry

Johnathon Hart

“Naturally gifted” best describes Johnathon Hart. After being­ accepted to the Chicago High School for the Arts at age 15 with no formal dance training, he attended San Francisco Ballet School’s summer intensive on full scholarship, followed by two years full time at the school before joining BalletMet in 2020. “He is a huge talent,” says BalletMet­ artistic director Edwaard Liang of the 21-year-old. 

In Karen Wing’s 2021 Verbena, Hart coupled his enviable facility and squeaky-clean technique with a bold stage presence. He soared in leaps that devoured the space and swirled his body in artistic brushstrokes to riveting effect. While most at home in contemporary works, the versatile Hart says he is looking forward to dancing more classical roles in 2022. —Steve Sucato

Joya Jackson

Joya Jackson doesn’t hold back. She infuses each movement with texture and shading, never sparing a note of music. At only 21, Jackson has been featured in several performances that have made a big impact on recent pop culture conversations, including the music videos for Cardi B’s “Up” and Ariana Grande’s “34+35,” as well as the Savage X Fenty shows in 2020 and 2021. “In no way did I imagine that during the pandemic, I would receive the opportunities I did,” she says.

Her buzziest breakthrough came last summer, when Jackson was chosen to be Normani’s­ double, dancing alongside her in the music video for “Wild Side.” Appearing as an ensemble dancer in the rest of the video, Jackson shifted effortlessly between Sean Bankhead’s sleek, jazz-infused choreography and sharp, dynamic movement, her ability to absorb nuances while adding her own flavor making her a standout. —Lydia Murray

Darian Kane

Darian Kane hadn’t planned to choreograph. But when the pandemic hit, and Atlanta Ballet artistic director Gennadi Nedvigin called for company members to create works on fellow dancers, Kane stepped up and choreographed her first piece, Dr. Rainbow’s Infinity Mirror. She discovered what she lightly dubs an “indie-pop contemporary” style that’s worlds away from her regal classical ballet persona.

To nostalgic piano and eerie melodies reminiscent of early sci-fi movies, dancer Sujin Han appears in black tuxedo tails and rainbow toe socks—think Charlie Chaplin meets The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. With elastic développés,­ ­Han takes exaggerated strides forward and steps through an invisible frame. She whirls, leaps and moonwalks, her arms striking lines through the space around her as if painting a more vivid realm. Though light on the surface, Dr. Rainbow expresses a full range of human­ experience—especially struggles with mental health. 

Dr. Rainbow was so well received last spring that Atlanta Ballet is producing an expanded version, set for a February premiere. And Kane, now 25, has fallen in love with choreographing: “It’s the first time I’ve had a voice in my own industry.” —Cynthia Bond Perry

Mthuthuzeli November

Mthuthuzeli November is pushing the boundaries of whose stories are given a voice in ballet. Born and raised in Cape Town, he moved to the UK to join Ballet Black in 2015, creating his first piece for the company in 2016. The same year, he established M22 Movement Lab, his own choreographic platform, and devised Point of Collapse, an emotive solo performed by Precious Adams for English National Ballet’s Emerging Dancer Competition. It wasn’t until 2019, however, with the Olivier and Black British Theatre Award–winning work Ingoma, that November really started to attract international attention. 

Inspired by the paintings of South Africa’s Gerard Sekoto, Ingoma imagines the struggles of Black miners and their families in 1946, when 60,000 of them went on strike. Wearing a mix of wellies and pointe shoes, the dancers create percussive rhythms that drive the piece forward, their powerful motions poetically juxtaposed with moments of pleading, anxiety and vulnerability. Fusing ballet with African dance and singing, the work saw November develop a distinctive, gesture-filled movement language that is entirely his own. 

November has since been in increasing demand, even during the darkest days of the pandemic: He created an online version of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater for Cape Town Opera and a dance film for Northern Ballet. Ballet Black also returned to live performance in October with the premiere of his work The Waiting Game. With November’s unwavering motivation, abundant talent and timely topics, audiences shouldn’t have to wait long to see more from him. —Emily May

Genevieve Penn Nabity

National Ballet of Canada artistic staff, choreographers and fellow dancers alike heap praise on 21-year-old second soloist Genevieve Penn Nabity. “The joy she finds in movement is translated through every fiber of her being,” says choreographic associate Robert Binet, who has been casting her in his works ever since her days at Canada’s National Ballet School. Her full-bodied performance style and versatility have also been showcased in Skylar Campbell’s eponymous collective. He adds, “Her quality of movement, and ability to mold into any style thrown her way, is a constant source of inspiration.”

Penn Nabity joined NBoC as an apprentice in 2018, and was promoted to the corps de ballet and received the RBC Emerging Artist Award in 2019. Associate artistic director Christopher Stowell fast-tracked her career after seeing how she took possession of even minor roles in ballets like The Dream and The Nutcracker. “Genevieve connects movement with articulation and finesse while bringing a seamless ease to even the most challenging technical hurdles,” he says.

Penn Nabity has since danced in The Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, Études and, just before the lockdowns, Crystal Pite’s Angels’ Atlas. During the pandemic, she performed in the digital premiere of Binet’s The Dreamers Ever Leave You, reprising­ her role outdoors for a live audience last summer shortly after her promotion to second soloist. Next up is a new ballet by principal dancer Siphesihle November, set to debut in March. “I feel the stars have aligned,” Penn Nabity says. “Nothing is holding me back.”

—Deirdre Kelly

Header photo credits, left to right, top to bottom: Raina Brie, Courtesy Carminucci; Umi Akiyoshi, Courtesy Baye & Asa; Ray Nard Imagemaker, Courtesy Grand Rapids Ballet; Courtesy Mims; Kaylee Wong, Courtesy Green; Jennifer Zmuda, Courtesy BalletMet; Alexander Irwin, Courtesy Ballet22; Christina Massad, Courtesy Terminus Modern Ballet Theatre; Elizabeth Snell, Courtesy Kansas City Ballet; Brian Wallenberg, Courtesy Atlanta Ballet; Tom Clark, Courtesy English National Ballet; Frank Ishman, Courtesy Hubbard Street Dance Chicago; Sue Murad, Courtesy Vidrin; Todd Rosenberg, Courtesy PARA.MAR Dance Theatre; Banvoa, Courtesy Jackson; Skye Weiss, Courtesy November; Karolina Kuras, Courtesy National Ballet of Canada; Rose Lu, Courtesy Park; Chidozie Ekwensi, Courtesy Ude; Steven Vandervelden, Courtesy Haynes; Rosalie O’Connor, Courtesy Pierce; Alex DiMattia, Courtesy ABT; Rahi Rezvani, Courtesy the van Opstals; 24 Seven Dance Convention, Courtesy Williams; Joe Toreno                      

           

The post Introducing Our 2022 “25 to Watch” appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Today, her Insta posts are reposted and slid into DMs like old-school mixtapes. Ballet celebs and novices alike are enamored with her technique and versatility, her infectious charm and humility. She has amassed a cultlike following as a next-gen ballerina––not a Black ballerina, but a ballerina, period.

Like the hottest underground artists, when awareness reaches a tipping point, they break through and enter the mainstream. Last November, during the height of COVID-19 lockdowns, San Francisco Ballet quietly added Fogo to its roster of principal dancers.

Audiences got their first taste of Fogo in SFB’s digital season, where she danced both Swan Lake Act II pas de deux and Don Quixote Act III pas de deux (the latter being a dream role she had been slated to perform as a guest with the Royal Swedish Ballet until she was thwarted due to the pandemic). She will make her onstage debut with SFB this December, in The Nutcracker. It will be the first time Americans will have the opportunity to see her live.

The dancing body has been fetishized; hyper-isms of legs, feet, flexibility have become baselines, and “extreme” an aesthetic. What makes Fogo so beguiling is that she is in no way physicallyextreme: Her legs straighten but are not super-hyperextended; her feet are arched, not “cashewed”; she admits to not being extremely flexible or having a lot of turnout. She does have beautiful ballon, is an easy turner and moves quickly as well as she does adagio (although she considers it her weakness). Her clarity, precise pointework and elegant port de bras speak to the chromosomal structure of ballet technique.

In a sea of what feels like futuristic hypermobile bodies, Fogo makes ballet feel…attainable. This is what makes her so refreshing.­ You are mesmerized not by the instrument but by the music that comes out of it.

It is almost inaccurate to call Fogo a “ballerina.” She considers herself a dancer. Movement is her first language, not ballet, enabling her to physically code-switch. Her father, who is of Jamaican descent, and her Swedish-European mother (Fogo identifies as mixed race/Black) were both hip-hop dancers who opened Sweden’s first hip-hop studio, and her first dance classes were in jazz, hip hop and tap.

Impromptu jam sessions with her sister Shenie (a singer) were a nightly occurrence. “We would just be going for it. Sometimes I would throw some ballet in there,” she says with a laugh. Her parents’ encouragement­ taught her to trust her instincts, and to laugh at herself. Their belief and support anchored her sense of self, and cultivated confidence.

In pursuit of more training, at 9 she auditioned for the Royal Swedish School of Ballet, where she began to fall in love with the classical form. She went on to London’s Royal Ballet Upper­ School, and upon graduating in 2013, she joined Vienna State Ballet. Her rise there could be considered meteoric: demi-soloist in 2015, soloist in 2016, first soloist in 2018. In the two years that followed she danced Swanilda, Medora and Odalisque, Tarantella, “Rubies” and William Forsythe’s Artifact Suite.

When Legris announced his departure, Fogo began to plot her own. Helgi Tomasson, artistic director of SFB, recalls meeting Fogo for the first time in London while the company was performing at Sadler’s Wells. “She is a striking dancer,” he says. “The way she moved—I thought she would be ideal for our repertory.” He asked her if she would be interested in the company.

Always looking to grow, the prospect was enticing. “I liked that SFB does classical, neoclassical, contemporary pieces and new choreographers,” she says. “I like to be in the process of creation. That is the way of leaving your mark in the ballet world, a legacy.”

Delayed by the COVID crisis, nothing about her transition was usual: pandemic, closed borders, air travel, the uncertainty­ of if and when dance, and live performance, would return. “The plan was that my mom or my sister or someone was going to come with me to settle me in,” she says. “But I had to just go alone.” Fogo arrived to a ghost town in November 2020, with no friends and no idea which neighborhood to start looking for an apartment in.

First days at new jobs are usually a flurry of names, faces and navigating new spaces, but COVID protocols meant that the dancers worked in small, isolated pods until August 2021. “I couldn’t really make those connections and get to know people the same way, because you can’t really hang out. We have face masks, also. I don’t even know what they look like.” She had reached a huge milestone in her career and scored a beautiful loft space in San Francisco’s Mission District, and had no one to share it with.

Fogo was unmoored. “You’re used to getting the outside validation, like the energy from the audience and the applause,” she says. “I really miss performing. I realized that I really have to work on finding my self-confidence and being sure of myself from within.”

A fortuitous benefit of pod life was the opportunity to work with Tomasson and fellow newcomer Julian MacKay on a pas de deux for Tomasson’s full-length ballet Harmony. “She was very receptive to anything that I asked her to do. She would execute it so beautifully, and I was inspired by that,” says Tomasson. With performances suspended, rehearsal time and space were abundant. “I felt really privileged to come in and, strangely, do that from the beginning,” says Fogo. “It was nice to really take time on this one thing because that’s what we can do now.” Working with Tomasson had been one of the reasons she chose SFB: “I felt like he could elevate my career, and I could learn from him and his team.”

Fogo was also cast as one of four principal women in choreographer Dwight Rhoden’s new work. “She is indeed a force to be reckoned with,” says Rhoden, who was familiar with her from social media. “From viewing clips online, I knew she was a powerful, technically proficient, risk-taking­ performer; but when I actually began to work with her, there were layers of richness and a depth that were even more captivating in person.” The yet-to-be-titled ballet is scheduled to premiere in April.

The juxtaposition of Fogo’s work with both Tomasson (classical) and Rhoden (contemporary) speaks to her ability to adroitly shape-shift. “She handled the complexity of my movement with ease, and brought her own perspective to it. Her body carves through the space with authority. She is soulful,” says Rhoden, “and there is an earnest emotionality to her dancing that is not forced, but is very authentic.”

In a twist of irony, shortly after Fogo’s arrival, Tomasson announced he would retire in 2022, after 37 years at the helm. It is bittersweet on both sides—when Tomasson first met her in London, he was not contemplating retiring. “I was looking forward to working with her in different roles through the next few years, but, as things will happen, I came to a point in my life when I said this is my time to step down,” he says.

The prospect of new artistic leadership is always daunting for dancers. For Fogo, it increases her appreciation of this creative process, being able to personally work with Tomasson.

Things will be different for Fogo when the dust from COVID settles and a new director is appointed. She will find herself “center center” on the main stage of ballet. This upcoming season will give American audiences a chance to get to know her better as she stands shoulder to shoulder with SFB’s female powerhouses, the likes of Misa Kuranaga, Frances Chung and Yuan Yuan Tan. “I’m growing into my being a principal dancer—you know, having all these responsibilities—and, yeah, I feel pretty confident,” says Fogo. Even in this truncated COVID context she is making her mark. “I’m already thinking of how I can continue to create for her in future projects,” says Rhoden. “The world needs to see Nikisha Fogo!”

The post Nikisha Fogo Is The New Frontier appeared first on Dance Magazine.

The dance is Morani/Mungu (Black Warrior/Black God), a solo he created for himself as part of last year’s Fall for Dance festival, commissioned by New York City Center. Fifteen minutes long, full of rises and falls, it is a killer, Roberts told me recently. “I hope I never have to dance it again,” he says.

A lot of these dynamics radiate from the power and malleability of his back. “That’s where the movement starts from, the intent of it,” says fellow Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater dancer Ghrai DeVore-Stokes. “Watching him is amazing, because you learn so much about yourself and about dance.”

But beyond all that, Roberts, and his choreography, gives the clear and deep impression that there is much happening beneath the surface. He has emerged, in the past two years, as a choreographic voice of uncommon force and originality. His work captures the spirit of our age, full of doubt, pain, but also grace. Two years ago he became resident choreographer at Ailey, where he has danced since 2002. More recently, he started a fellowship at NYU’s Center for Ballet and the Arts, and has commissions for Vail Dance Festival and New York City Ballet in the works. Even the pandemic hasn’t put a damper on his creativity. If anything, it has pushed it even further.

When he created Cooped, a solo for Works & Process Artists Virtual Commissions in May 2020, Roberts threw himself into the process of finding new ways to film movement with the best camera he had: his iPad. Despite no experience in film, he ended up creating something original, strangely detached from reality, disorienting.

“I think I used a lamp, an iPad, a yoga mat, some Scotch tape and a milk crate,” he says. Out of that and the sound of blaring bagpipes, he created a space outside of time, as well as a powerful image of the Black body in pain, trapped in a too-small, suffocating space, with no way out.

This ability to make something so visually complex and compelling out of just a few elements—sound, the body, a yoga mat—is something he associates with his difficult childhood, growing up with little money, a mother who struggled with addiction, a grandmother who wasn’t quite sure why he wanted to be a dancer. As a kid, he largely had to keep himself entertained. He would retreat into his own world and draw, or create little figures out of pieces of wire. Later, dance became a salvation, the thing that took him to a different place. “It reminds me of when people say that African Americans, throughout their entire journey, have been making something out of nothing,” he says. He has the patience, the focus and the imagination to make something new each time.

At Ailey, Roberts, 38, is known as a quiet person who keeps to himself. “When I see him walk into the studio, or just walking around, he looks like there’s something bubbling up,” says Ronald K. Brown, who has choreographed on him many times. “He’s brewing.” It can read as shyness, but his colleagues know better. “I think that’s where he lives, in that space within,” Robert Battle, artistic director of Ailey since 2011, says.

By the time Battle asked Roberts to become the company’s first official resident choreographer in 2019 (the expectation was that he would make a work per year for three years), he had been watching Roberts closely for a while. “Jamar never came to me and declared himself a choreographer,” Battle says. “But I had been watching him, being a voyeur, seeing him improvise little things. Sometimes you can just tell. Even just the way he interprets other people’s choreography told me something about his creativity.”

After seeing a piece Roberts made for Ailey II, Battle commissioned his first work for the main company in 2017. He also knew about Roberts’ other artistic pursuits, drawing and fashion design.

Roberts has left Ailey twice, once early on to pursue a degree in fashion design. (“I hated it. Sitting through lectures about how to make a Peter Pan collar, I really wasn’t into that,” he says.) It was during his second time away from Ailey, from 2011–12—he was burned-out, he says—that he discovered his love for choreography. It happened while he was teaching in the Miami studio of his longtime mentor and teacher Angel Fraser-Logan. (As an adolescent, he had studied dance with Logan at Dance Empire, as well as at New World School of the Arts.) He spent hours there making dances for the students and for friends in college nearby.

“It was a very intense and immersive kind of experience. And I started to notice that there was something there, something happening with the movement,” he says. After a year, feeling that he would have more opportunities to choreograph in New York City, he decided to go back to Ailey.

But it was his first dance for Ailey, Members Don’t Get Weary, that really set him on his current path. When it premiered in 2017, it looked like the creation of a much more veteran choreographer. Its intentions and emotions—conflict and pain, struggle and terror, the fatigue of hard work—felt distilled, reduced to their essence. “Like an alchemist, he got to the heart of the matter,” says Battle.

When Roberts started the piece, he had come in with an idea and an atmosphere. His choice of music (John Coltrane) and the costumes he had designed (plain work clothes) had already created a sense of time and place, “a space for the dancers to exist in,” says DeVore-Stokes. Once that space had been defined, the process of making the piece was one of exploration and filling in. “Whenever I go to make something, there’s a large area of unknown. I’m always throwing myself into a space where I don’t have the answer. I love doing the work to find the answers,” he says.

He goes through a similar process with the music he chooses. Roberts intentionally selects scores he is not only drawn to, but challenged by. When he first listened to the music for Members, the complexity and richness of Coltrane’s musical meanderings terrified him, he admits. “But, then you sit with it, something appears, whether it be big or small, and you keep pulling on that string.” In this case, pulling on the string means listening, intently, to all the nuances in the music, figuring out how they tie together, their energetic flow, finding a way to physicalize those connections.

Like Members, his other works have been set to jazz, including classic and bebop and avant-garde. But he came to jazz late. Roberts grew up listening to R&B and pop and alternative rock. However, when he started to think seriously about choreography, he felt that he needed to turn to music that gave him more space to explore. Pop was too easy. “I wanted to develop a more sophisticated ear, to invest in listening to more sounds.” Using classical music felt inauthentic. So he turned to jazz, America’s own classical idiom, rooted in African-American musical traditions. His understanding of jazz is something he has had to work at, he says. “I had to figure out how to do it—how to take myself there.” Expanding his musical palette still takes up a lot of his free time.

That musical understanding is central to his craft. When you watch him dance, or see others dance his work, it’s like seeing the notes travel through muscle and bone. “The way he hears music is beyond anything I’ve seen,” DeVore-Stokes says. “He’ll hear things that we didn’t even know were there.”

Roberts doesn’t seem interested in making slight, throwaway dances. “I wanted that piece to be about this duality of light and dark, what W.E.B. Du Bois called double consciousness,” he says of Morani/Mungu. “About being Black and being American, and this idea of always having to fight for your freedom and fight for your rights, even though you’re American.”

Struggle, and the pressure that builds up because of that struggle, is a powerful motor behind his creative process. But his dances are also full of mystery and abstraction. Nothing is spelled out. “He works as if he had a secret,” Brown says. In Roberts’ 2019 Ode, a response to the shootings of Black men and women, there were no obvious images of gun violence. And Morani/Mungu contains almost no literal references to the words in the text to which it is set, except when Roberts “marches,” on his knees, to the words “Black is marching in Alabama.” Even that is fleeting and easy to miss.

But as you watch one of his pieces you feel as if you have been on a voyage through Roberts’ mind, experiencing what this dancer—this idealized human—feels as he processes his thoughts: about Blackness, about America, about Coltrane, about rhythm, about the sound of Nina Simone’s fingers on the piano keys, about exhaustion, about hope.

Struggle lies both in the subject matter of his dances, which often touch on issues related to race, but also in the form of the dances themselves, the way they are constructed, the way the contrasts within them build tension and, eventually, release. “I think there’s a lot to learn there, a lot of beauty,” he says. He’s not content to simply convey meaning; form and craft are just as important.

It is part of what makes his dances, and his dancing, so potent. They feel lived in, and pregnant with meaning. Just as crucially, he is able to communicate those qualities to the dancers he works with. “When I’m in the studio with Jamar,” says DeVore-Stokes, “I feel like I’m doing work that’s really important and is going to push the field in a different direction.” Just which direction that will be is yet to be seen. As Battle says, “He’s just getting started.”

The post Jamar Roberts’ Astonishing Dancing Is Matched By His Mesmerizing Choreography appeared first on Dance Magazine.

“Mina’s movement is very contrarian,” says Cori Olinghouse, a longtime collaborator. “As soon as someone wants to describe it, she’ll do a totally different kind of quality than you’d expect.”

Influences ranging from butoh to Cunningham technique coalesce in Nishimura’s lissome body to create an artistic voice that’s uniquely her own. “There are so many different layers and styles with the postmodern world and butoh world, and different philosophies between West and East,” she says. “I’m always searching for alternate ways of liberating myself.”

That enigmatic quality has made Nishimura a darling of the experimental dance scene. Her long list of performance credits—including quirky, high-profile pop-culture projects—is matched by her own choreographic achievements. But never one to follow expectations, at the height of it all she left her life in New York City to go back to school. She’s now completing an MFA at Bennington College, a haven for artistic exploration nestled in the hills of Vermont.

Nishimura, 42, grew up in Tokyo, a fierce lover of animals, anime and science fiction. Dance played a minor role in her childhood, relegated to a weekly Japanese folk-dance class taught by a friend’s grandmother and the occasional ballet lesson. In high school, Nishimura joined a dance club.

It wasn’t until college at Ochanomizu University that she was introduced to a wider range of contemporary dance forms. While still a student, she took a workshop taught by Kota Yamazaki, a butoh practitioner and choreographer 20 years her senior. Nishimura continued to learn from Yamazaki, and the two developed a close friendship and started dating. Six years later, they got married.

Though Nishimura hadn’t imagined pursuing a dance career, her keen sense of curiosity propelled her to keep learning. In 2001, she moved to New York City, and at Yamazaki’s suggestion enrolled in a training program at the Merce Cunningham Studio. Arriving just months before 9/11, with very little fluency in English, it took Nishimura nearly two years to find her footing.

“I got lost completely,” she says. “I didn’t have a strong dance background, and everyone else seemed to have ballet training and a very architectural body. I couldn’t find a connection between my life and what was happening in New York, especially in the dance field.”

Nishimura also felt her attention pulled in two divergent directions. At the same time that she was training in the postmodern domain of Cunningham, she continued studying with Yamazaki (he moved to the U.S. a year after her arrival) and eventually joined his company, Fluid Hug-Hug. Unlike most modern butoh practitioners who work with set choreography—following in the footsteps of the form’s cofounders Kazuo Ohno and Tatsumi Hijikata—Yamazaki comes from an improvisational lineage created by butoh master Akira Kasai. “It’s quite rare,” notes Nishimura.

While assisting Yamazaki on a cross-cultural exchange in a Senegalese fishing village, Nishimura had something of an epiphany. “In Senegal, everyone knew how to dance, and dance was blended completely into their lives. They didn’t need to go to a studio,” she says. “At that moment I understood that I was the one who was separating my life and my dance practice, and I didn’t need to do that anymore.”

Back in New York, Nishimura returned to the Cunningham studios with a new perspective. “All of a sudden I fell in love with the philosophy of Merce,” she says. “It was not so much about dance technique, but what Merce was trying to do. I felt like a free bird in the studio.”

Nishimura started communicating more freely with the other artists around her, and little by little, opportunities started to come her way; her first professional gig was dancing for RoseAnne Spradlin. Today, Nishimura’s resumé reads like a who’s who of New York’s downtown dance world: Credits include John Jasperse, Vicky Shick, David Gordon, Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener, Neil Greenberg and many more.

“Mina, for me, can almost do no wrong,” says Mitchell, who’s known Nishimura since her early days in Cunningham class. “She has a really wild imagination. And there’s a rhythmic clarity and intensity and a particular coordination in her body that are very unexpected, but allow her to move in and out of different qualities and textures.”

Around 2004, Nishimura also started committing herself to choreography, inviting friends to join her in the studio to create duets, trios and eventually larger group works. “Mina has this ability to stretch time and duration and perception that distinctly feels outside a Western compositional sense,” says Olinghouse, who’s worked with Nishimura both as a performer and an archivist. “She’s such a deep experimentalist.”

In recent years, Nishimura has also been sought out for commercial projects. In 2015, she made headlines dancing alongside Sia on “Saturday Night Live.” Wearing a dual-colored wig to mimic the Australian pop star, Nishimura brought what she calls “butoh-ness” to her dancing. With her characteristically idiosyncratic movement and mutable facial expressions, she seemed to play the id to Sia’s uber-controlled performance.

In 2017, Nishimura was again in front of the camera in a phantasmagoric short film created for fashion label Miu Miu’s Women’s Tales series, directed by Celia Rowlson-Hall. The following year she starred in a music video for the alternative rock band Late Sea; her skin painted white but for red eyeshadow, Nishimura dances on a beach, surrealist boxes floating around her.

“The camera really captures subtle nuances sometimes lost in a big theater,” she says of the benefits of film work. “When I do more butoh-style work with my facial expressions, it can be hard to deliver onstage.”

Nishimura has had to work hard to simultaneously hold the Eastern and Western movement philosophies that root her. She explains that in butoh, she aims to destabilize herself, empty her body and sense of self so that she can be easily transformed. But in postmodern dance, identity is key. “I always felt a little strange switching gears from one to another. Of course, each choreographer has a different style, but I started questioning what my own body language is,” she says.

Over the past seven years, Nishimura has started to feel an organic shift, and a sense of clarity around holding many identities at once. “In whoever’s work Mina’s doing, I started seeing her dance rather than her trying to fit in,” says Yamazaki, with Nishimura acting as his interpreter. “Now I can’t keep my eyes off her in performance. It’s hypnotizing, even when she’s doing a subtle movement. She’s magical Mina.”

This is particularly evident in Nishimura’s own work. Her solo Princess Cabbage, which premiered at Danspace Project in 2015, is based on Hijikata’s textural materials. It includes her drawings, which play an important role in her creative process. And in 2019, Nishimura created Hi, Merce! I Have a Question. for a program curated by Mitchell at NYU’s Skirball Center.

“Cunningham and Hijikata were such different figures from completely different social and cultural backgrounds, but they can meet through my body,” says Nishimura. “My body is like a black hole. It absorbs everything, so I feel like I’m receiving a treasure from these great figures.”

Nishimura’s maturation as a creator has also led to a newfound sense of collaboration with Yamazaki. While she’s long played an important role in her husband’s company, the pair have only recently moved towards making and performing new work together. Their first duet, The Otherself, premiered in 2019, and they’re now in process on a new piece, I, Ghost, The, Other, You, which they delved into in residency at Florida State University’s Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography last December.

“The images we’re using are abandoned, ghostly bodies that have fallen out of the rigid world,” says Nishimura. The duo recently performed an excerpt for presenters in Japan; they hope to debut it at a theater there and also bring it to the U.S.

Shortly before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, Nishimura left Brooklyn, her home of 17 years, for a new adventure. After guest teaching with Yamazaki at Bennington College three times over the past decade, she’s now a student there herself, completing an MFA in dance. In addition to her studies, Nishimura is teaching and choreographing on Bennington students, and remotely leading a performance project, called “Disappearing Altogether,” at Sarah Lawrence College.

Though they frequently travel back and forth to Japan, Nishimura and Yamazaki are enjoying the quiet tranquility that Vermont offers, but she says she misses the excitement of New York City and her friends there. Nishimura fills her downtime with walks through nature, exploring her reiki practice, and a newfound appre­ciation for Netflix’s vast library of Korean dramas.

“I thought it would be important to neutralize myself, reset myself and think about what I really want to do in the rest of my life,” says Nishimura of her decision to change course midway through her career. “In New York, every day you get to see dance pieces or art exhibitions, and I felt like I was always reacting to what I saw. Now, instead of living reactively, I want to learn to live a little bit more proactively.”

Dual Artist:

Drawing plays an important part in Nishimura’s creative life both in and out of the studio. “I draw a lot, regardless of dancemaking,” she says. But her choreographic notes go beyond simple diagrams. “Instead of drawing lines or dots, sometimes I draw the face of someone, if I want to create a smiley space,” she says. “It helps me to cultivate different layers of images inside myself. Sometimes that image can be language-based, and it can also be drawing-based.”

Nishimura sees her drawings as another expression of her inner life. “She draws her internal states as tone or colors that get inhabited,” says Cori Olinghouse, who’s worked with Nishimura to archive these images. “When I think of Mina, I think of someone who’s able to animate internal landscapes and make invisible forces more visible.”

The post Blending Butoh, Cunningham and Her Own Enigmatic Style: Mina Nishimura appeared first on Dance Magazine.

The short answer: technology. Acosta, now based primarily in Birmingham, corresponds with Acosta Danza via texts, video conferences, recorded clips and Skyped rehearsals. He’s set up two teams—one to handle managerial responsibilities and one, led by Yaday Ponce, to oversee all artistic tasks. “She runs everything with my supervision,” he says. “We have a WhatsApp group. I read everything. I keep up to date with the movements in Cuba, and give my feedback.”

It’s a daring move. But as one of the premier male ballet dancers of his time, Acosta has spent his career breaking the status quo. And in appointing him as the new artistic director of Birmingham Royal Ballet, the 74-year-old company has signified that it’s ready for a bold change.

“BRB is a big institution. It has great tradition,” says Acosta. “Now it’s time to explore the direction it should take to be more representative of the times we are living in.”

Jayme Thornton

Today, ballet is perched on the precipice of a major cultural shift as it is forced to address inherent dysfunctions, like its lack of diversity. Concerns for the preservation of “tradition” run high among some in the old guard, even while many recognize that if ballet does not embrace change, relevance is impossible.

Acosta, who embodies the dichotomy of the ballet industry’s current position, might be one of the few people trusted to test the traditions. The 2018 biographical film Yuli recounts his journey from humble beginnings in Havana: Accepted into Cuba’s deeply traditional National Dance School, he started reluctantly, but quickly realized that ballet was an opportunity to change his life. “It wasn’t about a job; it was about a necessity, about existing and being alive,” he says. “I needed to use my art to show to the world that I could be somebody.”

After making his mark in ballet competitions (taking gold at the Prix de Lausanne in 1990), he joined the English National Ballet. But it was his time with Houston Ballet (1993 to ’98) under artistic director Ben Stevenson, who created career-defining roles for him and Lauren Anderson, that made him a sought-after guest artist. After joining The Royal Ballet, he got a taste of choreographing, re-creating classics like Don Quixote and a one-act Carmen.

Birmingham Royal Ballet is the sister of The Royal Ballet, both daughters of Dame Ninette de Valois. They began as one troupe at Sadler’s Wells Theatre. When the company was invited to take up residence at the Royal Opera House in the 1946, de Valois, wanting to have dancers in both theaters, started a second arm. It eventually became a touring troupe, until 1990, when it put down roots in Birmingham.

For the past 25 years, under former BRB director David Bintley, the sisters have been estranged. Unsurprisingly, this is something that Acosta is eager to repair. He would like to have an exchange where each performs in the other’s theater. He envisions possibly co-producing ballets. “Both companies will have completely different artistic identities. But I think it would be great for every now and then to come up with programs that celebrate The Royal Ballet brand.”

Acosta working with students in Dance Track, BRB’s youth program.
Man Yee Lee, Courtesy BRB

He believes the company can at once present canonic classical repertory and herald the avant-garde, and do both at the highest level. His first programmatic offering includes a premiere by Brazilian-British choreographer Daniela Cardim, Balanchine’s tried-and-true Theme and Variations and a new duet by Acosta Danza resident choreographer Goyo Montero—for which Acosta will don his dance togs again to partner Alessandra Ferri.

One gets a sense that Birmingham Royal Ballet will be molded not only in Acosta’s aesthetic and standards, but in the shape of his heart. He has thoughts of presenting a triple bill entitled “Africa.” “About Africa: past, present and future,” he says. “It should feel like a full-length and talk about Africa as the cradle of civilization.” (Imagine an evening at the ballet that spans ancient Kush to Black Panther.)

As Acosta sees it, his chief responsibility is to make BRB one of the leading ballet companies in the world. That means elevating the classical works the company is known for, commissioning cutting-edge choreographers and developing innovative ways to present ballet that will attract and intrigue and break stereotypes.

“I want to bring art out of its context every so often,” he says. “It shouldn’t be all closed-door; we can stage it in the park for everyone to see. I’m very up for site-specific choreographies, going to a warehouse and staging a show there, or having Swan Lake in the canal.”

Acosta’s vision is simultaneously radical and timely. As one of the few black artistic directors of a ballet company, Acosta is part of a super minority. And when Acosta says things like, “I want a company that’s not predictable—when you become predictable it becomes boring, it becomes monotonous,” it can sound like heresy to traditionalists who see the foundation of ballet rooted in its “predictability.”

Ballet as a form is undeniably elitist. However, Acosta is not. His point of entry has given him a different lens through which he views the form. Although he holds the highest of standards for ballet, he sees it as a dance of the people. “I want people to dance ballet as something that communities do. You can just dance, not as a professional, but it’s something that motivates you, that’s good for your body, so that you can be in touch with music,” he says.

Since more than 40 percent of Birmingham residents are nonwhite, Acosta wants to create a company that is a reflection of the community BRB represents, in the dancers and the stories they tell. There is a ballet in the pipeline that will capture the stories of residents in the community.

But “Brummies” won’t have to wait to participate. BRB’s Dreams project is a program for dancers age 8 and up who attend local ballet schools. Participants have the opportunity to train and work alongside the company, culminating in a full-scale performance of Swan Lake with BRB dancers in the main roles. The first two iterations debuted in February in Southampton and Birmingham, with auditions in each region to hire local cast members.

BRB’s Momoko Hirata and César Morales in
Swan Lake @dancers_eye, Courtesy BRB

Leadership transitions can create tumult in companies as everyone gets to learn one another. When asked how the dancers are feeling, Acosta says, “I think they’re very excited. They’re ready for corrections, for embracing new ballets. I’m bringing in new choreographers that have never been seen in the UK—from Slovenia to Brazil. It will make a repertory that is more eclectic and diverse.”

The dancers also know that his star power brings a spotlight: In addition to other tours, the company will have a homecoming of sorts when it returns to perform in the Royal Opera House next summer.

One of the things Acosta wants to pass on is his indefatigable work ethic, and he does so by modeling. He takes class with the company. They see him sweat and struggle, and although he’s turning 47 this month, he is among the last to leave the studio.

He worries about the digital noise, like social media and internet stardom, that can make it hard to concentrate. So he has charged his principal dancers with the responsibility of leading by example. “I expect for my principal dancers to lead not just by their level technically and artistically, but how they behave, being someone who’s always working. Not on their mobile phone.”

Although running two companies simultaneously might sound impossible, Acosta is no stranger to hard work. “There were no Saturdays and Sundays,” he recalls of the early days of his training. “It’s about an attitude about life, an attitude towards your commitment to this art.”

Before ballet claimed him, he was just another kid breakdancing in the streets of Havana, and he has held on to his hip-hop heart, and that “can’t stop, won’t stop” philosophy. As a black man in ballet who has reached its pinnacle, Carlos Acosta is accustomed to working twice as hard and being twice as good. This has made him twice the man. So when it comes to running two companies in two countries, he might be just the guy for the job.

The post Carlos Acosta Is Shaking Up Ballet’s Traditions 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.

Like many dancers, Dorsey fell in love with movement as a toddler. However, he didn’t identify strongly with any particular gender growing up. Dorsey, who now identifies as trans, says, “I didn’t see a single person like me anywhere in the modern dance world.” The lack of trans role models and teachers, let alone all-gender studio facilities where he could feel safe and welcome, “meant that even in my wildest dreams, there was no room for that possibility.”

But even impossible dreams can come true. Now in its 15th season, Dorsey’s award-winning San Francisco company, Sean Dorsey Dance, is heralded for intersectional dance-theater works that celebrate trans, gender-nonconforming and queer identities. Along the way, Dorsey, 47, has become the first trans choreographer to receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts (seven grants to date, totaling $115,000), and the first U.S. trans artist presented by the American Dance Festival and New York City’s Joyce Theater.

Today, he’s the role model he always wished he had.

Lydia Daniller, Courtesy Dorsey

As a high-school theater geek, and even while taking community dance classes and double-majoring in political science and women’s studies at the University of British Columbia, Dorsey had no inkling of his potential in dance. He spent his time joining any social justice clubs he could find, and introduced the first recycling program at his high school.

Then, during his first year in Simon Fraser University’s graduate program in community economic development, he started taking ballet in the evening. “My teacher said, ‘Have you ever thought about being a professional dancer? I think you have what it takes.’ My world just exploded.”

Already in his mid-20s, he put his education on hold to enter a two-year modern dance program at a Vancouver dance school. His first piece of choreography, a five-minute queer-themed duet, got an enthusiastic response.

“The next day, the studio director sits me down and says, ‘Your piece last night made people feel very uncomfortable,’ which I knew wasn’t true. In that moment, all the years of not seeing anyone like me, all the gendered stuff like costuming and bathrooms and changing rooms, came flooding in, and this light bulb went off. I just found my calling.”

Dorsey realized that his art could advocate for—even demand—equity for trans and queer people. “Although I never imagined that dance would be the vessel for my social justice work, it does make perfect sense,” he says. “Dance is this visceral form of communication, and it can connect you deeply with an audience and lead to identification, empathy and compassion.”

He headed to San Francisco, where he performed with Lizz Roman and Dancers for six years while choreographing and performing his own work as an openly trans dance artist. But like any pioneer, he had to break down barriers. “There were so many folks who would never pick up the phone to talk to me,” he says. “As a trans artist, the assumption was that the craft would be poor, and there might be no audience or context. They were like, ‘Oh, you mean drag.’ ”

With almost no one willing to produce his or other trans artists’ work, he decided to do it himself. He launched the annual Fresh Meat Festival of trans and queer performance in 2002, and SDD two years later.

Melding abstract movement and theatrical dialogue, endearing humor and deeply personal storytelling, Dorsey’s choreography offers an array of access points into challenging material. His first evening-length work was 2009’s Uncovered: The Diary Project, based on the personal archives of trans pioneer Lou Sullivan. The Secret History of Love, about LGBTQ relationships in the years before gay rights, followed in 2012; then the AIDS-themed The Missing Generation in 2015 and Boys in Trouble, which unpacked toxic masculinity and white supremacy, in 2018.

Sean Dorsey Dance in
Boys in Trouble. Dancers, left to right: Will Woodward, Sean Dorsey, ArVejon Jones, Nol Simonse (top of head), Brian Fisher. Kegan Marling, Courtesy SDD

In performance, in conversation or in his equity work, Dorsey directly calls out racism, gender bias and privilege. “I’m so impressed that as powerful and staunch an advocate as Sean is, he always leads with warmth and love,” says Christopher K. Morgan, executive artistic director of Dance Place in Washington, DC, which has co-commissioned three SDD works. “It’s such an incredible way to effect change.”

Those flawless people skills—along with serious grit and strategic community engagement—have been one of Dorsey’s most powerful tools.

“I work for months in advance with theater partners,” he explains. “With The Missing Generation, I would help identify a local AIDS organization, an LGBTQ seniors organization and a trans-youth nonprofit. They get free tickets, you build relationships and that theater is getting a new audience, new volunteers, new donors. It all goes back to my background as an activist—I’m thinking about that full arc.”

On SDD’s nationwide tours, Dorsey also leads dance workshops that support all genders, all abilities and sizes, and all races. “Almost everyone is there as their first dance class,” Dorsey says. “They’ve never felt safe or supported enough to go into any kind of a dance-learning environment.” After introductory meditation and body-positive affirmations, Dorsey teaches beginner-friendly movement and adapts it in supportive ways.

“They didn’t let me sit on the sidelines,” says Oliver Nepper, 28, who identifies as trans-nonbinary and uses a wheelchair. In Dorsey’s workshop at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, “they were like, ‘You can do this turn a little bit faster, or do it on this beat instead of that so you can get to the next step.’ I gained a big confidence boost because of Sean’s positivity and encouragement.”

“Everyone feels a community bond instead of feeling othered,” says Nicky Martinez, 25, who identifies as gender-fluid and Latine, and has taken two workshops in San Francisco. “As a person who is plus-sized, I always felt uncomfortable as a mover. Being seen and visible in that setting is really special.”

Leading the workshops helps refuel Dorsey for the rest of his work. “It’s this amazing space where being trans or gender-nonconforming is something to be honored,” he says. “It’s one of my absolute favorite things to do.”

Dorsey teaching a workshop in Boston
Courtesy SDD

Even SDD’s tech rider serves as an element of activism: It requires theaters to make their facilities all-gender during the company’s run. As a result, many theaters have made their lobby restrooms and backstage facilities permanently all-gender.

At The Joyce, emcees now greet audiences with “Welcome, everyone” instead of “Welcome, ladies and gentlemen.” “Every time I hear somebody say, ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen’ now, I want to cringe,” says Linda Shelton, The Joyce’s executive director.

Not all tour stops are as welcoming. In North Carolina in 2017, local “bathroom bills” and anti-trans activism meant Dorsey was often unable to use a restroom that was legally or physically safe for him. In one case, SDD member ArVejon Jones recalls, “I stood outside for him at an airport to make sure he was okay.”

These days, presenters not only pick up the phone when Dorsey calls, they invest in his work: His next evening-length production, The Lost Art of Dreaming, is co-commissioned by ADF, Dance Place, 7 Stages in Atlanta, Velocity Dance Center in Seattle and San Francisco’s Queer Cultural Center.

“It explores expansive futures for trans, queer and gender-nonconforming people,” explains Dorsey, who will do movement research in DREAM LABS held during SDD touring residencies. “DREAM LABS are spaces where I ask local folks to creatively express what they most wildly want and dream of,” he says.

Dorsey’s vision for the future includes more professional-quality training for trans and gender-nonconforming dancers, inclusive dance curricula and trans teachers, and trans leadership in art institutions. He also wants to commission trans, gender-nonconforming and queer artists of color through his program Fresh Works.

And he’d eventually like to take a vacation with his partner of 18 years, the trans singer-songwriter Shawna Virago. “This is my heart’s passion, but it’s also super-exhausting,” Dorsey admits.

Despite the challenges, he remains hopeful. “The wonderful part about the ‘trans moment’ is that it has afforded more trans literacy to presenters, programmers and funders,” he says. “I know that the future is going to be better, because young trans people are able to see themselves reflected in arts and culture. They can finally imagine there’s a place for them in that world.”

The post Pioneering Trans Artist Sean Dorsey Is on a Mission to Reshape the Dance Field appeared first on Dance Magazine.

All you see is intention and arrival, without a residue of superfluous movement. The ballet seems to depict a man searching for something, struggling against forces within himself. Stanley doesn’t oversell the struggle—in fact he’s quite low-key—but the clarity with which he executes the choreography draws you in.

There are dancers who externalize ideas and others who fascinate you with their interiority. Stanley is the latter. “I love that Taylor is shy, even onstage,” says choreographer Alexei Ratmansky, who coached him in his Namouna, A Grand Divertissement last year. “He doesn’t exhibit his soul, but you know it’s there.”

Namouna
and Opus 19 are only two of a smattering of new ballets Stanley has debuted in over the last year. It was a trying time for the company. First, the longtime director, Peter Martins, left under a cloud of accusations of misconduct. Then, three male principals were also accused of misconduct—one resigned, and two were fired, though later reinstated after arbitration.

The sudden rupture was unsteadying, admits Stanley, but also, in a way, liberating. “Along with that feeling of absence and change,” he says, “there’s a sense of responsibility that we’re all taking as individuals.”

If you had to pick one galvanizing moment, it would be the premiere of Kyle Abraham’s The Runaway last September. In two solos, one set to quiet music by Nico Muhly and the other to Kanye West and Jay-Z, Stanley stopped time, folding and unfolding his body in that shape-shifting way he has, molding the air around him with his arms, then rippling his shoulders with sinuous, elegant ease.

“He has this mysterious center, rich and layered,” says Abraham. “He constantly wanted to push harder and further.”

And then there is Apollo, one of the most coveted and complex roles in the male repertory, and one Stanley never imagined he would get to dance. In part, because all the previous Apollos at NYCB have been white, save one: Craig Hall, who got to dance it exactly once. Stanley is mixed-race and fine-boned, neither particularly tall nor particularly commanding, unlike most of the Apollos who have preceded him.

“His hang-up at first,” says Hall, who coached him, “was feeling ‘I’m not a classical dancer in a lot of people’s minds, so I have to be very classical.’ A lot of the time we were talking about making it a little rawer.”

Stanley had to find his own path through the ballet. “I started thinking about the three muses as teachers rather than in a romantic relationship,” he says. “A lot of my friendships are with women, and those women have raised me, almost. So I pictured each muse as one of those friends.”

His interpretation was infused with great delicacy, not a quality one tends to associate with this ballet. At one point during his debut, he turned to his three counterparts with a shy, almost grateful smile.

It was a beautiful moment, because it felt real. Other dancers remark on this ability to connect onstage. Lauren Lovette remembers dancing Romeo + Juliet with him: “Never for a minute did I feel he wasn’t completely in love with me,” she says.

She drew upon this quality for a pas de deux she created for him and Preston Chamblee in 2017’s Not Our Fate. The duet was part of a trend toward representing a less narrow view of love, gender and partnering in ballet. And again, Stanley was just right for it—his dancing has been described as having a “gender-fluid allure,” one that doesn’t conform to a prescribed definition of “masculine” dancing.

He is certainly not the first to explore this terrain. Over its history, ballet has periodically reexamined ideas of masculinity, from the dignified but un-virtuosic danseurs nobles of Petipa to the exoticism of Nijinsky and the gender-bending sexuality of Maurice Béjart’s ballets.

Stanley’s approach, though, feels more internal, focused on getting closer to his own natural movement quality. He recalls feeling out of place while training at The Rock School for Dance Education in Philadelphia: “I didn’t feel super-connected to the male steps and the male bravura you learn in men’s class,” he explains.

Things improved once he came to the School of American Ballet for his final year of training. “I think that coming here you become so refined, which was good for me. I didn’t have to fit into this manly thing.”

To that refinement he has recently added the body-awareness and fluidity of Gaga, a movement language created by Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin. Last August, Stanley took part in a summer intensive in Tel Aviv led by Naharin and dancers from Batsheva Dance Company.

“I felt a lot of inspiration, and a lot of unbuckling,” he says. “You start to think about your bones inside of your flesh, and about finding the ability to float inside your skin.” He has been trying to apply these ideas to the more formal structure of ballet.

The experience intrigued him enough that he auditioned for Batsheva—The Young Ensemble this past winter, though he didn’t get in. (“I had to check the ego,” he says with a laugh.) The restless part of him is haunted by the possibility that there might be another reality out there that might fulfill him more.

“There’s something in me that needs to be fed,” he says, “and doing that audition was part of understanding what is the food that I need.”

In the past, that search involved coming out as a gay man, at 21. (He’s now 28.) Stanley comes from a religious background and feared disappointing his family, with whom he remains very close. He even tried conversion therapy for a year, a process that, unsurprisingly, left psychic scars.

He still struggles with self-doubt, though mostly, these days, it’s focused on his dancing. “It all trickles down from shame about being a good person, a good son,” he says.

The wounds are not easily healed. “He’s extremely hard on himself,” says Hall, “and never gives himself enough credit.” It was clear even in that Opus 19 rehearsal. Stanley was less satisfied with his dancing than the coach was, and, at one point, turned away from the mirror to avoid its scrutiny.

The search, now, is focused on finding a form of expression that feels honest. Part of the answer may come at NYCB, where a new team, composed of Jonathan Stafford and Wendy Whelan, has taken the reins. Whelan, especially, has been deeply involved in contemporary dance since retiring from NYCB in 2014. Stanley is hoping her interests will rub off on the company. There is a long list of choreographers, including Naharin, William Forsythe, Crystal Pite and Jirˇí Kylián, whose work he would like to dance. “I think we would kill it. And it would shape our bodies and give us more information about how to do the other things.”

With the uncertainty of the last year has come a greater self-knowledge. “Before all of this,” Stanley says, “I felt kind of asleep. But we’ve really had to go back and look at ourselves. How do I feel about myself? How can I reinvent myself?” The search continues.

The post Why We Can’t Take Our Eyes Off of Taylor Stanley appeared first on Dance Magazine.

The day after the award ceremony, he was back in class—ballet class. His growing reputation as a hot young tap dancer was making Teicher nervous that he would find himself pigeonholed before he had time to explore other options. So, he aggressively pursued anything that would let him be “not a tap dancer.”

He packed the next five years with experience across the board: a six-month apprenticeship with Camille A. Brown & Dancers; a yearlong contract touring Europe with West Side Story; a stint as associate choreographer to Chase Brock. He also discovered Lindy hop, and got hooked on the scene’s focus on dancing for the joy of it, like musicians jamming. All the while he continued to dance regularly with Dorrance. And he delved into his most persistent passion: choreography.

The post How Caleb Teicher Became King of Old-School Cool appeared first on Dance Magazine.

“What struck me the most was the pace, and the erratic feeling it had,” she says. The camera’s quick shifts and angles reminded her of bodies in motion. “I was like, ‘What is this movie? This is so insane and marvelous and excessive,’ ” she says. “And excessive is I think how I approach dance. I enjoy the challenge of swiftness, and the pushing of the body. I love piling on a lot of vocabulary and seeing what comes out.”

Flash forward to a couple years ago, when director Alex Timbers hired her to choreograph Moulin Rouge! The Musical, drawn to exactly that sensibility. “What’s unique about Moulin Rouge! is that it’s a genre hybrid,” he says. “The show wants someone who can bring the worlds of Broadway, pop spectacle and really inventive storytelling all together, and she can mold all of those.”

The post Sonya Tayeh Is Done Proving Herself, But Never Done Growing appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Dance Magazine
checked in with nine alumni who are continuing the DTH legacy in their own ways.

Marcia Lynn Sells

DTH Tenure:
1976–79

Current position:
Dean of students at Harvard Law School

Sells began studying at DTH in its first summer program in 1970. After retiring from the company, she became assistant district attorney in Brooklyn and later was a vice president for the NBA and WNBA before joining Harvard Law School. Sells was instrumental in Columbia University’s 2015 acquisition of Mitchell’s archive.

“DTH is the model of understanding why pink tights and pointe shoes were meant for a white dancer’s line,” says Sells. “When Mr. Mitchell said, ‘We will dye them to match a dancer’s skin tone,’ he signaled that black ballerinas have a legitimate place in ballet. Reworking Giselle in Louisiana within the black community and reimagining Firebird on a Caribbean island made these stories ‘ours.’ ”

Melanie Person

DTH Tenure:
1977–88

Current position:
Co-director of The Ailey School and director of the Ailey/Fordham BFA program in dance

One of the “baby ballerinas”—she was an apprentice at 14—Person says Mitchell’s insistence on impeccable work ethic informs the standard she sets today at The Ailey School.

“DTH is still a role model for inviting others to see beyond their biases and to challenge restrictive mind-sets,” says Person.

Judy Tyrus

DTH Tenure: 1977–99

Current position:
Archivist and exhibition curator

When Mitchell asked Tyrus to co-curate the 2009 exhibition “Dance Theatre of Harlem: 40 Years of Firsts,” she told him she didn’t have any curating experience. He smiled and said, “You were a principal dancer. You have done much harder things.” Now a professional archivist, Tyrus assisted the National Museum of African American History and Culture with its “Taking the Stage” exhibition, which highlights the role of black artists in the performing arts.

“We were crafting something much more important than any one of us,” says Tyrus. “Everything we did onstage and off was scrutinized, so nothing could be disorderly or half-baked. We strived to be the best in every way.”

Tyrone Brooks

DTH Tenure:
1979–97

Current position:
Artistic director of The Tallahassee Ballet

A former principal dancer, Brooks became associate director of DTH’s Dancing Through Barriers Ensemble, then executive director of Virginia School of the Arts.

“Generations of dancers of all colors benefit from the dream of one man who had a vision of an inclusive ballet for all,” says Brooks.

Hughes Magen

DTH Tenure:
1982–94

Current position:
Owner of the Magen H Gallery

The French-born Magen had a legendary partnership with Virginia Johnson. And while still dancing, he began collecting mid-century French antiques. In 2017, his Magen H Gallery earned a spot in the prestigious European Fine Arts Fair. He was the only black gallerist represented.

“Mr. Mitchell’s message of ‘Once you get in it, you cannot give up’ is certainly prevalent for me,” says Magen. “I find myself in this world of art where I am the only black person at this level. I carry on the same message.”

Robert Garland

DTH Tenure:
1984–99

Current position:
DTH resident choreographer and school director

Garland’s choreography has been key in DTH’s redefinition and modern identity. His vocabulary, a portmanteau of neoclassical ballet and African-American social dance, flatters the dancers and satisfies audience expectations. Return and New Bach, favorites before the hiatus, have served the new iteration well, and 2012’s Gloria fits today’s generation.

“Arthur Mitchell showed me the legitimacy of black intellectualism,” says Garland. “While all the fanfare around his career and what he built was great, there was a great intellect behind it that sometimes gets glossed over.”

Alan Barnes

DTH Tenure:
1986–88

Current position:
Assistant to the director at Oper Frankfurt

Barnes left DTH after just two years to join William Forsythe’s Ballett Frankfurt. Currently at Oper Frankfurt, he oversees productions and sets operas around the world.

“We were a family—when we had problems we could talk about it, and if we had a triumph we all got to be a part of it,” says Barnes. “One of the best and worst moments was our Russian tour. We were ambassadors, dancing on those very important stages. I thought of us as black diamonds. Arthur was a showman, and he taught us how to really project, to get our message across from those huge prosceniums. I took that to Germany, and it was appreciated by my new boss.”

Kevin Thomas

DTH Tenure: 1995–2005

Current position:
Co-founder and artistic director of Collage Dance Collective

Thomas co-founded Collage Dance Collective in New York City, and relocated it to Memphis a year later. The company shares philosophical DNA with DTH: Its mission is to make ballet more accessible and relevant. It was by hiring Collage dancers that DTH had a big enough cast to present Dougla in 2018.

“Seeing a stage full of brown dancers was a powerful image for me,” says Thomas. “There was this great sense of pride that shaped everything that we did.”

Antonio Douthit-Boyd

DTH Tenure:
1999–2004

Current position:
Co-artistic director of dance at the Center of Creative Arts in St. Louis, Missouri

After DTH, Douthit-Boyd joined Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Today, he and his husband, Kirven Douthit-Boyd, co-direct dance at the fourth largest multidisciplinary community arts center in U.S.

“We had to grow up very fast under Mr. (that’s what we called him),” says Douthit-Boyd. “We had to speak with confidence and carry ourselves like the young kings and queens he envisioned.”

The post Meet 9 DTH Alumni Who Continue to Spread Arthur Mitchell's Legacy appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Damian Woetzel, a former star at New York City Ballet, took the reins as Juilliard’s new president, the first in the institution’s history to come from the field of dance. (The previous six have been musicians.) Evan Yionoulis was named director of drama. And Alicia Graf Mack, an exemplary dancer at both the Dance Theatre of Harlem and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, became Juilliard’s incoming director of dance—the first African American, and, at 39, the youngest person to ever take up the position.

As Ara Guzelimian, Juilliard’s provost and dean recently told me, “it’s a generational shift.” So, what does this shift mean to the institution?

The Role Model: Alicia Graf Mack

As I watch Alicia Graf Mack teach a third-year ballet class at Juilliard, it is obvious what a model she is to the students. This is true both when she demonstrates steps—she is truly a paragon of form—and when she talks about the underlying principles behind them.

“It’s exciting to have that kind of presence inside the school, someone who only left the performing part of her career very recently,” Javon Jones, one of these third-year students, says. “And, as a student of color, seeing representation at the front of the room is very empowering.”

As a former leading dancer for both DTH—under the exacting eye of Arthur Mitchell—and Ailey, she effortlessly embodies Juilliard’s ethos: an equal focus on ballet and modern dance. She also holds a degree in history from Columbia University and an MA in nonprofit management from Washington University in St. Louis. She is an overachiever in every sense.

In class, instead of giving corrections, she tends to engage the students in conversations about ideas.

“How do you isolate the action of that dégagé?” she asks at one point. Two dancers give different answers. “I heard two ideas,” Graf Mack says. “Both were really good.” She suggests combining both approaches.

The post What to Expect From Juilliard's New Dream Team: Damian Woetzel and Alicia Graf Mack appeared first on Dance Magazine.

“It’s absolutely given me a new appreciation for the partner standing behind me!” Biasucci says with a laugh.

Looking at Biasucci, 29, with her wide smile and eager curiosity, you think you see the quintessential extrovert. In reality, she’s anything but. “I was an introverted kid,” Biasucci says. “That’s part of the reason I fell in love with dance—I didn’t have to be talkative.”

It’s only one of the seeming contradictions in Biasucci’s life: She’s a short, muscular ballerina in a company known for its fleet of tall, long-legged women; she’s also most comfortable with classical ballet, while taking on a growing repertoire of contemporary work.

Despite the demands of her career, Biasucci has a full offstage life. Like many people in the Pacific Northwest, she and her new husband, a design director, enjoy spending time outdoors. She says they’re also homebodies who like to putter in the kitchen.

But Biasucci doesn’t have a lot of downtime; she’s spent the past seven years studying for a college degree in arts leadership. She’s thrilled about graduating, but she hasn’t really given much thought to life post-ballet. She still dreams of dancing the leads in classics like Giselle. But in her newest role, principal dancer, she has another goal.

“Being a role model and a mentor,” Biasucci explains. “When I look back at my time as a younger dancer, I have such clarity of conversations with principals. Their kindness and generosity didn’t go unnoticed.”

Back in the studio, Biasucci is still struggling to lift Maldonado. Finally, fellow principal dancer James Moore walks over to demonstrate where Biasucci should place her hands, and how to tuck her elbows close to her torso for extra power. Biasucci watches carefully, then gives it a try, hoisting Maldonado by the waist, pivoting, then setting her down gently. Biasucci will keep rehearsing and refining the lift until it becomes second nature. As always, when the curtain goes up, she’ll give the audience everything she’s got.

The post Why Seattle Has Fallen For PNB's New Principal, Leta Biasucci appeared first on Dance Magazine.

“She has this soulful quality of an ancient spirit coming through her body,” says LINES chief executive officer Muriel Maffre, a former prima ballerina with San Francisco Ballet. “She’s fearless, which is fun to work with,” says artistic director Alonzo King. “I don’t know how to put it into words— she’s herself.”

Yet as natural as she is in King’s choreography, she’s never lost her love for classical ballet. So much so that when she had some time off last summer, she reached out to her previous company, National Ballet of Canada, and performed in the corps of Swan Lake. Artistic director Karen Kain didn’t hesitate to put her back on the stage.

“Adji is one of the most beautiful, accom­plished and thoughtful dancers I have experienced working with,” says Kain, who first spotted Cissoko when she was 17 at the 2009 Prix de Lausanne, and hired her in 2010. Turning back into a swan showed Cissoko how much she’d grown, yet also confirmed her love of dancing in two balletic worlds. “It was a reminder—that is also beautiful, just in a different way,” she says.

The post The Spirit and Soul of LINES' Enchanting Adji Cissoko appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Dance audiences might be most familiar with this side of Smith: the heart—and the guts—that she brings to her dancing. But in the four years since she returned to the U.S. from Tel Aviv, where she spent a decade performing with the Batsheva Dance Company, she has achieved a balancing act of creative roles: dancer, choreographer, teacher and budding actor.

The scene she’s rehearsing is one of 10 she choreographed for Aviva, an independent feature film directed by Boaz Yakin, best known for his 2000 blockbuster Remember the Titans. She also plays a main character in the movement-driven story, as part of a cast of more than 30 dancers that she helped to select—including 20 of her students from Philadelphia’s University of the Arts.

Smith says she was compelled to leave Batsheva to find out what she had to say as an artist. Photo by Jayme Thornton

The amount of time she has spent on movie sets is one surprise of post-Batsheva life. “I wasn’t looking for that—at all,” she says during an interview at the Manhattan apartment where she lives with her husband, Or Meir Schraiber, who also danced for Batsheva. When Smith made the difficult choice to move on from the company, she intended to focus on making her own works of live performance, after years of embodying the vision of the troupe’s distinctive, charismatic leader, Ohad Naharin.

Her decision to leave, she says, “came from wanting to hear my own voice louder. Working in that kind of environment for so long, things get interwoven, and the line between where your voice ends and he begins—it starts to get a bit cloudy. You’re like, What do I actually have to say? Or am I only able to say it through his work?”

Smith, 34, hasn’t strayed from exploring those questions. But she’s been answering them in ways she didn’t anticipate. Over the past year and a half, in addition to her work on Aviva, she has choreographed for Natalie Portman in Annihilation (the riveting, mysterious final scene) and starred in Mari, a debut feature film from the British director and writer Georgia Parris, which premiered in London in October.

Her work for live audiences is going just as strong. With Care, a collaboration with the violinist Keir GoGwilt in which Smith and Schraiber both perform, premieres at ODC Theater in San Francisco on November 1. The Martha Graham Dance Company has enlisted her and Maxine Doyle, known for choreographing the immersive-theater hit Sleep No More, to co-create a piece for its spring season. (Smith is a former member of the Sleep No More cast.) And her new work for Corpus, a contemporary subgroup of the Royal Danish Ballet, will premiere in February.

Smith’s foray into film owes a lot to Bobbi Jene, the 2017 documentary that intimately chronicles her departure from Batsheva, as she moved to San Francisco, then to New York, while building her grueling solo A Study on Effort and navigating a long-distance relationship with Schraiber. Directed by Elvira Lind, the film won three awards at the Tribeca Film Festival, including best documentary feature. It also broadcast Smith’s artistry to audiences outside the relatively small world of contemporary dance; both Yakin and Parris, for instance, were introduced to Smith through the film and the buzz surrounding it.

Smith in A Study on Effort. Photo by Michael J. Lutch, courtesy Smith

“It changed her life in a very good way I think,” says Schraiber, who also plays a central role in Aviva and has contributed some choreography. “She became a dance celebrity.”

Of course, Smith was an exceptional dancer long before the release of Bobbi Jene, admired for her conviction, clarity and voraciousness in Naharin’s all-consuming work. Schraiber, who grew up in Israel and saw her dance even before he joined Batsheva, describes her way of moving as “unassailable—no one can argue with it.”

Shamel Pitts, a fellow Batsheva alum, has been watching her in action since their days as students at The Juilliard School (where Smith now teaches). “Bobbi is very powerful—she can stand still and share a huge dance,” he says. “You feel that you get to know her deeply when you see her move, something about her vulnerability and how it meets her strength.”

“She doesn’t share so openly,” he adds. “But if she does, she’s going all the way.”

If you’ve seen A Study on Effort, that observation rings true. In the hour-long work, Smith is often unclothed as she undertakes a series of solitary tasks, or what she calls “efforts”: the effort of pushing, of lifting, of taking care. In “the effort of pleasure,” she orgasms while straddling a heavy sandbag. Her instruction to herself: “Find pleasure in what weighs you down.”

That passage, Smith says, is her comment on portrayals of women’s sexuality in dance, which often strike her as inauthentic. “If you want to see actual pleasure,” she says, “this is what it looks like, and it doesn’t look as sexy as you think it looks.” The nudity grew out of a similar desire for honesty, for cutting through surfaces: “This is a body, a female body, making shapes. It will shake, it will start to sweat.”

Bobbi Jene – Official U.S. Trailer – Oscilloscope Laboratories

To prepare for her first lead role in a feature film, Smith took acting and voice lessons. To her surprise, she found parallels between vocal training and Gaga, the movement language developed by Naharin. Her voice coach, she says, “would say things like ‘Vibration travels faster through soft flesh, so you want to be soft.’ ”

Like any dancer who has worked for 10 years with a single choreographer, Smith carries that influence forward. “I don’t see it as a bad thing,” she says, noting that “it’s only natural” for her to be in conversation with her roots. If a critic were to call her work “derivative” of Naharin’s? “I would say thank you. What an honor.”

Reflecting on her career so far, she says one realization stands out: that instead of waiting for change, she can create it for herself. “Often in the dance world, it’s ingrained in us that there’s this one role, one piece, one choreographer that will change our lives.” But dancers, she has learned, have more agency: “You could get in a studio with a group of friends and make that piece you’re waiting for.”

“My dream is to create a company of artists that I love and am inspired by,” she adds. “A company where we can create performances that can live on in many different mediums.” It’s hard to imagine that she won’t make it happen.

The post Heart & Guts: Bobbi Jene Smith Finds Her Own Voice appeared first on Dance Magazine.

“Question,” Portner asks. “Are we looking at our hands?”

She steps out to watch the others try the phrase, and adds a few more steps. Quick, staccato movement, legs kicking out, torsos swiveling around, fists hitting glass. “This is a puzzle,” she says, almost to herself. “I’m not sure I’ll like it.” The statement, like so many, is punctured with a sweet, nervous laugh.

Portner, 23, may be soft-spoken, but she’s a powerhouse mover. Anyone who has seen her Instagram videos can recognize the ferocity with which she throws her body—and seemingly her soul—into each moment.

That said, the energy in the rehearsal space is anything but frenetic. A calm, collaborative feel permeates. “What do we need to do next?” she asks the dancers. “Is everyone okay?”

The post Why Commercial Star Emma Portner Is Exploding Into the Concert Dance World Right Now appeared first on Dance Magazine.

So what’s the secret of her staying power?

Here are five of our favorite insights from Winship’s story:

To read Dance Magazine‘s full cover story on Marianela Nuñez, get your copy of our September issue.

The post 5 Lessons We Could All Learn from Marianela Nuñez appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Here are a few of our favorite excerpts from Schaefer’s story:

To read Dance Magazine‘s full cover story on James Whiteside, get your copy of our August issue.

The post 5 Reasons We're Obsessed With James Whiteside appeared first on Dance Magazine.

For more about American Ballet Theatre star James Whiteside, make sure to get your copy of our August issue!

The post Guess Who's Going To Be On Our August Cover? appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Her recent sold-out run of DESCENT at New York Live Arts, for instance, offered a constellation of stimulation. Onstage was a large architectural ramp with an assortment of peaks and planes. There was an intricate lighting and projection design. There was a musical score that unfolded like an epic poem. There was a live score too: the sounds of Sheppard and fellow dancer Laurel Lawson’s bodies interacting with the surfaces beneath them.

And there were wheelchairs. But if you think the wheelchairs are the center of this work, you’re missing something vital about what Sheppard creates.

“Often for non-disabled audience members,” she says, “the work isn’t real until they see the chair.” Curious requests to know why Sheppard uses a wheelchair are telling of how disability typically traffics in the public imagination. “The movement and the art somehow challenge what they think is possible,” she says.

Alice Sheppard photographed by Jayme Thornton for Dance Magazine

Excellence in dance is often defined at the exclusion of disability. The idea of virtuosic performance involves dancers with precise technical control over each body part. The best dance, it’s often assumed, is performed by artists who are intensely able-bodied.

But Sheppard’s work models a truth that is rarely understood among dance audiences: Disability does not signify incompleteness. In fact, it offers novel pathways to several movement styles, each of them whole and generative of unique choreographic forms.

Disability Is A Creative Force

Alice Sheppard initially became a dancer to make good on a dare. It was 2004 and she was a professor in medieval studies at Penn State. During a conference on disability studies, she attended a performance by Homer Avila, a renowned dancer and choreographer who had lost one of his legs to cancer. Sheppard got to talking with him in a bar after his performance. He dared her to take a dance class. About a year after Avila died, she did—and shortly after resigned from academia.

What hooked Sheppard was a question that has motivated her work ever since: How can we move beyond questions of ability to culture and aesthetics? In popular culture, disability often stands in for a vague and generalized adversity. Sheppard wanted to find a radically different process.

“Disability,” Sheppard writes in her “Intersectional Disability Arts Manifesto,” “is more than the deficit of diagnosis. It is an aesthetic, a series of intersecting cultures and a creative force.”

After leaving academia, Sheppard began exploring the techniques of dancing in a wheelchair and learning how disability can generate its own movement. She trained, performed and toured with several physically integrated dance companies, including AXIS Dance Company, Infinity Dance Theater, Full Radius Dance and Marc Brew Dance Company.

Eventually, she launched the New York–based Kinetic Light, which has been invited to residencies at places like the prestigious Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography and Gibney, and to perform at Jacob’s Pillow’s Inside/Out. She chose to form Kinetic Light as a production company rather than a dance company in an attempt to bring the work “outside of the arts bubble,” as she puts it on her website.

Making Dance Less Dependent on Sightedness

The team for Sheppard’s DESCENT wanted to think about how to decenter sightedness in the show. They were challenged by some of their blind audience members to think beyond current practice in access for nonvisual audience members.

In response, they began developing an app called Audimance. Designed by Lawson, who is also a product designer and user interface architect, it translates movement into a sonic experience with multiple content streams, including poetry and sonic renderings of dance alongside traditional audio description.

“Expert listeners can choose where to focus,” says Lawson. Audimance will be released as an open-source app that others in the dance field can use to make their work accessible.

The post Alice Sheppard Is Moving The Conversation Beyond Loss and Adversity appeared first on Dance Magazine.

“I’ve never felt young,” she says. “I can’t wait until I’m 30. Every woman I’ve ever talked to says that at 30 you just don’t care. You’re free. Maybe I’ll start early?”

She laughs—a frequent sound when spending two minutes or two hours with Lovette. The epitome of sparkling youth, both in person and onstage, she isn’t someone that the mind naturally lands on when considering old souls.

But the thoughtful, introspective dancer, who also loves to draw and cook, is banking that with age comes some clarity. At the moment, she’s learning how to say no. “I never really had to do that before,” she says, “because I didn’t have this much on my plate.”

Lovette is learning when to say “no.” Photo by Erin Baiano, courtesy NYCB

Along with her dancing life, Lovette has briskly forged a choreographic career: In the course of a little more than a year, she has created two works for NYCB—most recently, Not Our Fate—as well as the delightful program closer Le Jeune, for the ABT Studio Company. Part of the group’s current tour, it will be shown at the Ailey Citigroup Theater in April.

“She has a quickness, a brightness to her work and a fleetingness to her steps,” says Kate Lydon, the Studio Company’s artistic director. And if members of the group, as many do, eventually join American Ballet Theatre, where Alexei Ratmansky is artist in residence, they need speed.

“He is fast,” she continues. “I thought that her sensibility would match well with the development of the dancers.”

But it was Not Our Fate that placed Lovette at the forefront of the recent debate about same-sex duets that was instigated by a Facebook post by Ratmansky. It featured a Photoshopped image of a woman lifting a man; Ratmansky’s entry starts with: “sorry, there is no such thing as equality in ballet.”

Not Our Fate
features a romantic pas de deux for Preston Chamblee and Taylor Stanley, and on opening night the sight of them dancing together sent a shock wave—the good kind—throughout the David H. Koch Theater.

“I was immediately touched by her vision for the piece,” Stanley says. “It was how I’ve grown up and struggled with my sexuality, and how I’ve come to accept myself in the end. She said I was this person who was constantly in search of love or someone to give me comfort and make me happy, but that there is rejection each time. So there’s this push and pull of ‘Do I continue to go for this, or do I retreat and not fully be who I want to be?’ I was like, ‘Oh, just what I was writing in my journal this morning!’ ” he says.

But this wasn’t Lovette’s first attempt at same-sex partnering. Last summer at the Vail Dance Festival, she choreographed a romantic pas de deux for Patricia Delgado and herself featuring spoken word by the genderqueer poet Andrea Gibson. “I feel like we fell in love with each other onstage,” Lovette says. “I loved that show.”

And she’s proud to be a part of the gender conversation. “A lot of times, we talk about things but we don’t actually do them,” Lovette says. “We’ll post on social media, but when you actually make art that represents what you’re trying to say, you’re a part of the action.”

And for Lovette, being part of the action doesn’t stop offstage. As a Puma ambassador, she is developing a variety of educational outreach programs. “It’s not just about having a dancer come in and teach a class and be like, ‘I’m inspiring!’ and then leave,” she says. “It’s putting in a new floor, a new barre. Kids don’t have good floors.”

She’s also passionate about the Black Lives Matter movement; Not Our Fate includes a moment with the African-American dancer Christopher Grant that references racial injustice. “It’s not our fate,” she explains, “to hate all these people that are different than us.”

Preston Chamblee and Taylor Stanley in Lovette’s Not Our Fate. Photo by Paul Kolnik, courtesy NYCB

Lovette is trying to figure out, as she puts it, “how to weave the basket of my life.” In the future, she hopes to collaborate with more artists outside of the ballet world, like Jon Boogz, the movement artist who created the “Color of Reality” short film with visual artist Alexa Meade and jooker Lil Buck, who is one of Lovette’s close friends. Jon Batiste, the jazz musician and bandleader of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” has also expressed interest in working with her.

“I can’t do everything, so I’m trying to figure out what causes mean the most to me,” Lovette explains. “What do I really want to say?”

Lovette’s nimble choreography, like her dancing, is lushly emotional yet not mannered. Indiana Woodward, the NYCB soloist featured in Lovette’s 2016 ballet For Clara, says, “The steps flow out of her like a giant waterfall of choreography.”

Lauren Lovette choreographing in the studio. Photo by Erin Baiano, courtesy NYCB

For Lovette, it’s a form of expression, which is what drew her to dance in the first place. “It was the way that I could say everything that I wanted to say without really saying it,” she explains. “I have a greater platform to do that through choreography. It’s kind of like inflection: If you’re relating words with dance, dance would be how you say the word, but the choreography is the actual sentence. Now, I get to actually form the sentence.”

And that, for anyone in ballet, but particularly for a woman, is empowering. Yet as one of the few female choreographers working in ballet, she feels some pressure. “How can you not?” she asks. However, she can’t wait until it’s not a question. “I can’t wait until it’s normal.”

She recognizes that being a woman was what helped her get the opportunity to choreograph in the first place. “I’m going to take it as a positive thing,” she says. “Maybe I got my first chance because they needed a female choreographer. Who cares? I’m really happy that it happened.”

Lovette wasn’t randomly chosen, however; she had already shown promise at the School of American Ballet when she took part in its Student Choreography Workshop. Then, as now, she was able to draw out her dancers’ best qualities. Woodward, a close friend, believes that Lovette’s sensitive nature is what allows her to read different energies in the room.

“I feel strongly about uncovering how people want to dance,” Lovette says. “They show you all the time—you just have to be observant. Taylor Stanley can do anything, but just because somebody can do everything doesn’t mean that’s what they want to do.”

In the coming year, Lovette knows what she wants to do: address personal issues in her choreography. She has struggled with growing up in a poor and sheltered religious environment where she had daily Bible study sessions (she is no longer religious); with anxiety as a dancer; and, last year, with an assault outside of NYCB.

“I want to let out a lot of things that have happened in my life that aren’t necessarily sparkly,” she says. “I don’t want to hide the struggle.”

She hopes to pour those emotions into choreography by creating a work about the assault featuring Barton Cowperthwaite, her dancer-actor boyfriend. They met at an audition for Christopher Wheeldon’s musical An American in Paris; she was offered the role of Lise, but turned it down to focus on choreography.

As she becomes more established in that realm, do company members treat her differently? “People are a lot nicer to me now, but maybe it’s because I’m also being more open,” she says. “I’ve always been very introverted—I’m not usually the one who goes to parties. I think maybe they’re getting to know me more because I’m speaking out.”

She wavers for a moment and looks up with a wry expression. “But, yeah. People laugh at my jokes when they’re not funny.”

Photo by Jayme Thornton

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“He choreographed every single step for me,” she says. “He showed it to me—do this développé, reach here, turn here, a very specific idea,” she says. His guidance was that she be cool and sweet. Then, she says, “he just let me become her. That’s where I really earned Paul’s trust.”

It’s easy to see why Taylor treasures Halzack and why he has created 16 works on her since she joined Paul Taylor Dance Company in 2006. Her commanding lyricism in Taylor’s Airs or Martha Graham’s Diversion of Angels contrasts with her daredevil attack in works like Scudorama or Mercuric Tidings. That chameleonesque versatility allows her to easily convey wise sophistication or the giddy energy of a child on the playground. You ask her to do it, she can do it. With grace.

Laura Halzack in costume for Cloven Kingdom. Photo by Jayme Thornton

“Laura is an extraordinary dancer,” says Taylor. “She is a leader within the company and she is a dynamic performer.”

With her elegant torso and back, her majestic neck always stays elongated and the shoulders released, whether standing still or charging through a phrase of consecutive jumps. And her intuitive musicality permeates everything she dances. New York Times critic Alastair Macaulay calls her “the company’s most utterly beautiful woman” and says “her statuesque, suave, quiet inscrutability becomes captivating.”

Nevertheless, Halzack’s path to PTDC wasn’t a straight shot. She began dance lessons at age 4, studying jazz, lyrical, tap and ballet at a competition studio in Southwick, Massachusetts. “I was such a little type-A kid and would always be in my basement rehearsing my solos,” she says with a giggle. “I took it very seriously.”

Recognizing her talent, her teachers advised her to intensify her ballet training at the School of the Hartford Ballet. As a pre-professional student, she studied Cecchetti ballet technique with Raymond Lukens and Franco de Vita (who later directed American Ballet Theatre’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School), and the Vaganova syllabus with Alla Osipenko, a former ballerina with the Mariinsky Ballet. She continued her studies as a dance major at SUNY Purchase, where she first encountered Taylor’s work.

And then she quit dancing.

“I had studied dance so intensively that, without even knowing, I was slowly burning myself out,” she says. Halzack transferred from SUNY Purchase to the University of New Hampshire, eventually graduating with a degree in history in 2003. She didn’t dance for two and a half years. “Every dancer’s path is different, but for me, I don’t think I’d be where I am today if I hadn’t given myself a chance to dream and be a kid a little bit. It gave me the faith to miss dance and to learn other things.”

After graduation, she did miss dance—a lot. She began studying at former Graham dancer Peggy Lyman’s program at the University of Hartford’s Hartt School. Her stronger grasp on modern dance training led her to perform with choreographer Amy Marshall, who had danced with Taylor 2 and David Parsons.

Then Halzack saw PTDC perform at Fall for Dance at New York City Center in 2004. She spent the next two years training at The Taylor School during the day, while working at restaurants and a night shift at the UBS bank headquarters.

“I fell in love with the range and depth of Taylor’s work, the athleticism, the subtle nuances, the humanness,” says Halzack. “It was my dream company.” Taylor welcomed her to the troupe after her second audition in 2006.

An admitted adrenaline junkie, Halzack craves the oscillating range of the repertory: the effervescent pieces she calls “joy in motion that require technique, strength and stamina,” such as Brandenburgs, Airs and Aureole; the dramatic works like Speaking in Tongues, which she describes as “theatrical, haunting, disturbing to be inside of and disturbing to watch”; and fluffy, humorous dances like Offenbach Overtures.

Halzack loves Taylor’s range of repertory. Photo by Jayme Thornton

A true Gemini at heart, Halzack, now 36, juxtaposes her pensive, introverted side against her wild, free spirit. Intuitively, Halzack has always drawn from her bold imagination. The little girl who built a village out of popsicle sticks for her troll dolls isn’t so different from the adult, hardwired to be a dancer and an artist.

Surprisingly, Halzack, who craves the rush of pushing herself, claims she had to learn how to move more slowly. Frequent partner Michael Trusnovec says he thinks the fullness of her dancing tricks people into tagging her as an adagio dancer, but he points out that her commanding speed and attack reveal the multifaceted dynamism of her artistry.

“Laura brings a rare combination of elegance and fire to Mr. Taylor’s works,” says Trusnovec. “She dances from a deep level of passion, and her personal expectation of excellence inspires the dancers around her, including myself, to be worthy of sharing a stage with her.”

Halzack’s loves relaxing by hiking or watching Game of Thrones. Photo by Jayme Thornton

Taylor has recognized similarities in Halzack’s physicality and style to the legendary dancer, now company rehearsal director, Bettie de Jong. He chose her early on for one of de Jong’s signature roles, the woman in pants in Esplanade, a casting decision that Halzack still mentions as a highlight of her career. “It made me really feel like I was part of the Taylor family,” she says.

It was also the first time de Jong coached her in a role. “She’s a woman with a tremendous imagination who loves to get back inside the part, stand up and demonstrate,” says Halzack. “Just the way she talks about holding a room with your eyes, the way you stand and the subtlety of gesture is incredibly powerful.”

Halzack says her rapport with Taylor has been natural: “He always has a way of making me feel at ease in the studio working with him.” And, she adds, “he’s really funny.”

She recalls one rehearsal where Taylor stretched out on the floor to demonstrate a partnering move for Trusnovec. “He lowered me all the way down and had this hilarious, devilish little look in his eye, and says, ‘Well, now what are we going to do?’ We both started cracking up and then he pushed me right back up. It was this very easy, fun way of being. That’s how he’s always been with me.”

PTDC possesses the rare blessing of working constantly, often on the road, so Halzack and her husband, Eric Naison-Phillips, an insurance executive, coordinate their schedules, and occasionally he joins her on tour. They both enjoy hiking and the outdoors, but Halzack also binges on “Game of Thrones” and photographs anything that sparks her imagination. “I love capturing the places that I go to and the people I’m with,” she says. “The process of photo editing gives my head a break.”

During the company’s spring season at Lincoln Center, Halzack will appear in at least 12 dances, including new pieces by Doug Varone and Bryan Arias. “I do hope to continue dancing for a while,” she says. In the future, she would love to be involved with The Taylor School and wouldn’t miss an opportunity to direct or curate dance.

“I don’t think I could ever be away from dance,” she says. “There’s not exactly a map, but there are things I know I want to do. But I have a few more good years in there.”

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The post Why Paul Taylor Treasures Dancer Laura Halzack appeared first on Dance Magazine.

Corps member, New York City Ballet

Unity Phelan’s long, willowy limbs drip with girlish glamour: She presents her hand to her partner as though she expects a diamond ring to be placed on it. As a matter of fact, she presents her feet the same way. But what makes her so fun to watch is how she infuses her natural elegance with an endearing sense of playfulness. Her articulate lines seem to stretch beyond the confines of her body with a delight that can’t be contained. 

Last spring, the 21-year-old New York City Ballet corps member was handpicked by Christopher Wheeldon to perform one of four principal roles in his new American Rhapsody. Partnered by Amar Ramasar, Phelan brought her signature exuberance to the role. That summer, she starred in a premiere by emerging choreographer Claudia Schreier at the Vail International Dance Festival before returning to New York to debut a lead role in NYCB principal Lauren Lovette’s first main-stage choreography. As excited as Phelan might be to take center stage, she’s quickly become a pro at soaking up the spotlight. —Jennifer Stahl

Shimon Ito

Soloist, Miami City Ballet

Shimon Ito grabs attention with his keen physicality—whisking across the stage, whipping out turns, jumping as if onto cushions of air. But then attention becomes admiration as those athletic moments accrue into memorable art. There’s his portrayal of Puck, irrepressibly mischievous, in Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream; his fervor among the sun-kissed companions of Justin Peck’s Heatscape; his superhero-worthy feats in Twyla Tharp’s In the Upper Room. Even in tricked-up choreography, his dancing runs on a smooth engine, fueled by high-grade classicism. No effect, no matter how forceful, looks superfluous. All this was behind Ito’s recent promotion to soloist at Miami City Ballet. “I try to learn a lot about a ballet,” says Ito, “and translate that to the stage.” —Guillermo Perez

Amanda DeVenuta

Dancer, Kansas City Ballet

In an ethereal pas de deux from Yuri Possokhov’s Diving into the Lilacs last spring, Kansas City Ballet’s Amanda DeVenuta moved with feather-like buoyancy. Her expressive abilities showed not only in her demeanor and gestures, but in every step she took—a hint that this young dancer is just beginning to tap into her wellspring of talent. 

In addition to Possokhov’s ballet, the Carmel, New York, native, previously with Minnesota Dance Theatre, has danced a featured role in Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments and made waves with her effervescent performance as the Sugar Plum Fairy in artistic director Devon Carney’s new production of The Nutcracker. Described by Carney as “a rising star” in the company, the 22-year-old is now in her third season with KCB. Says DeVenuta: “Each performance I do I learn more about myself as a person and a dancer.” —Steve Sucato

Jeffery Duffy

Dancer, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago

Once a competition kid who danced to Michael Jackson in his grandmother’s basement, Jeffery Duffy, 23, has already forged a fairy-tale career. After training at Dance Theatre of Harlem, the School of American Ballet and The Juilliard School, Duffy’s graduation cap had hardly hit the ground before he signed a contract with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago in 2015. Performing with a level of maturity unusual to new grads, Duffy’s liquid-like flow complemented his veteran co-workers in Alejandro Cerrudo’s Second to Last and Crystal Pite’s Solo Echo last season. Brilliant ensemble dancing and a captivating duet with Kellie Epperheimer in Penny Saunders’ Out of Keeping attracted the notice of the Princess Grace Foundation, earning Duffy a Dance Fellowship in 2016. He has a penchant for repertoire that is less safe, less pretty, less predictable—work that pushes audiences to the edge of discomfort. Performances in a trio of William Forsythe pieces (Quintett, N.N.N.N. and One Flat Thing, reproduced) might best exemplify this, though Duffy will easily excel even further left of center. —Lauren Warnecke    

Chun Wai Chan

Soloist, Houston Ballet

Chun Wai Chan oozes confidence—and has the technical chops to warrant it. He joined Houston Ballet’s corps in 2012 already poised for promotion, which he received in 2015. His flash, princely good looks and rock-solid work ethic have made him a go-to dancer for Stanton Welch and visiting choreographers. He was a standout as the Groom in Welch’s new Giselle, dreamy as Waltz man in Balanchine’s Serenade, wild and exacting in Alexander Ekman’s Cacti and mostly airborne for Bluebird in Ben Stevenson’s Sleeping Beauty. His tall, elegant stature, combined with his flawless technique, makes it just a matter of time before he’s Houston Ballet’s next leading man. 

Inspired by fellow Chinese-born and former Houston Ballet dancer Li Cunxin, whom he resembles in both height and poise, Chan had Houston on his radar from an early point in his life. “I saw what he did here,” he says, “and I thought: I could do that too.” —Nancy Wozny

Paige Fraser

Dancer, Visceral Dance Chicago

In 2013, Paige Fraser took what she describes as “a giant, scary leap of faith.” After sending a video to Nick Pupillo, who was starting contemporary troupe Visceral Dance Chicago, she was invited to join the inaugural ensemble. Though she barely had the money to fly to Chicago—and knew almost nothing about the city—she said yes.

With her naturally long line, strong technique and dramatic attack, Fraser became a standout in this fast-rising company. Pupillo’s 2016 world premiere Vital showcased her dynamite style with beautifully unforced extensions and gazelle-like leaps. “Paige’s faith and determination completely embody her movement,” Pupillo says. “She has been a driving force in the growth of Visceral.”

Fraser received a 2016 Dance Fellowship from the Princess Grace Foundation and recently made a dance-meets-high-tech commercial for Intel that underscores her ability to blend driving energy and lyricism. As for future dreams, Fraser mentions creating a community center for dance and the arts in the Bronx, her hometown. —Hedy Weiss

Parris Goebel

Commercial choreographer and dancer

Parris Goebel is the feminist force hip hop has been waiting for. The 25-year-old’s work is loud and colorful, and her distinct “polyswagg” style has a mission of empowerment. Her moves display an in-your-face confidence, but they don’t scream to be noticed. She doesn’t strive for popularity or follow trends. She is simply and unapologetically herself, take it or leave it.

But the commercial world is taking it—acclaim follows everything Goebel touches. She’s choreographed for Janet Jackson, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna and Jennifer Lopez; the crews hailing from her New Zealand studio (including the all-female ReQuest) consistently dominate at competitions. Justin Bieber’s 2015 “Sorry” music video that she choreographed, directed and performed in scored her three MTV Video Music Award nominations and nearly 2 billion views on YouTube, placing the viral video among the top four most-watched in site history. And her latest venture into producing her own music, under the name Parri$, proves she’s truly charting her own path, one that’s stamped with plenty of her signature sass. —Courtney Bowers

Elise Cowin

Dancer and choreographer

Elise Cowin’s work is chock-full of contradictions: egalitarian yet meticulous, subtle but transparent, elegant and approachable. Her task-oriented pieces often begin as deep dives of research into arcane topics—the United Kingdom Highway Code or a historical survey of patents for wearable devices designed to allow the body to take flight. Next comes the creation of costumes and props, often of Cowin’s own design. Only then does she begin building her choreography, for dancers of all ages and abilities, to be presented matter-of-factly in galleries, public spaces or on video.

For Up to the Elbows (2016), she manufactured six sandbags, matching the general size, shape and weight of her head, torso, arms and legs. These allowed her to perform a “duet” with a copy of her own body in pieces. Simultaneously formal and fallible, Up to the Elbows extracts the essence from one of Cowin’s inspirations: the novel Don Quixote.

“I’ve gone through phases with the word ‘dance,’ ” Cowin confesses. While earning her MFA in performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, “I had faculty tell me, ‘That’s not dance.’ But right now, it sits well with me.” —Zachary Whittenburg

Kayla Collymore

Dancer, METdance

Movement seems elastic under Kayla Collymore’s spell. Nothing appears forced or pushed; she makes dancing look like something that just rolls off the tongue. All lightness and limbs, Collymore apprenticed with the Stephen Petronio Company, danced with Brian Brooks Moving Company and spent a year performing in Beijing before heading to Texas. Now in her second season at Houston’s METdance, the Jersey-girl-turned-Texan is settling into the demands of dancing with a rep company. “I tend to excel in the wet-noodle flow pieces, so I love that at the MET I get to do all kinds of work, including Camille A. Brown’s earthy New Second Line,” says Collymore, who relished the chance to dig into works by Rosie Herrera, Joshua L. Peugh and Katarzyna Skarpetowska this past year. “I’m also ready to take on a leadership role in the company,” she says. “I’ve learned that for a company to be successful we have to network, promote and warmly welcome the numerous renowned choreographers that walk in our doors.” —Nancy Wozny

Elizabeth Wallace

Corps member, Pennsylvania Ballet

It’s hard to miss Elizabeth Wallace. Tall and rangy, the 24-year-old Kentucky native takes special ownership of her roles no matter the size, her lines extending well beyond her 5′ 9″ frame. With silken sophistication and a soaring arabesque, she draws you in with a natural, open presence, her long limbs swallowing space as if air itself were a precious luxury.

Wallace’s Balanchine background is unmistakable in her dancing—she finished her training at the School of American Ballet and danced as an apprentice with New York City Ballet before joining Pennsylvania Ballet in 2012. Artistic director Angel Corella has made significant changes to the roster since his appointment in 2014, but he obviously sees something special in Wallace. She’s danced a steady and wide-ranging stream of leading roles since his arrival, including Christopher Wheeldon’s Liturgy, Wayne McGregor’s Chroma, Choleric in Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments and Queen of the Dryads in Don Quixote. One of a handful of corps dancers still left from the old regime, her future under Corella looks bright. —Amy Brandt

Omari Mizrahi

Dancer, Ephrat Asherie Dance

With flinging arms and powerful spine undulations, Omari Mizrahi is riveting. His knees are so springy that every jump is a pounce. As a member of Ephrat Asherie Dance, he captures the essence of Asherie’samalgam of hip hop, house, funk and Lindy, to which he adds his own blend of West African, house and voguing that he calls AfrikFusion. When he performs it, he can switch on a dime from fiercely masculine to decoratively feminine. Teaching last summer, he said,“West African dance is all about fluid arms that never stop, and in voguing it’s all about striking a pose.” 

Born in Senegal, Mizrahi came to the U.S.when he was 6. By 10 he was already dancing in his parents’ troupe. He later earned a name for himself as a voguer in Harlem’s ballroom nightlife, and has since worked with John Legend and Jennifer Hudson. When Asherie or another choreographer shows him a step, he says, “I go back to my memory. The nae nae, a new hip hop dance, reminds me of the way we sway with the West African lamba. The connection speaks to me.” —Wendy Perron

Jess LeProtto

Broadway dancer 

When Jess LeProtto is onstage, his enthusiastic charm and sharp comedic instincts win you over immediately. As the mischievous Mungojerrie in Broadway’s current revival of CATS, he makes the choreography’s acrobatic cartwheels and nimble leaps look easy, but can illustrate character—and draw a laugh—just as effectively through a smartly timed facial expression. 

A former “So You Think You Can Dance” competitor who’s also performed with American Dance Machine for the 21st Century, LeProtto has the versatility to tackle choreography by everyone from Jerome Robbins to Jack Cole to Andy Blankenbuehler. And at 24, he’s already appeared in several Broadway shows, including the ensembles of Newsies and On the Town. In CATS, he proves that he can shine in a more featured role—and cements his status as a true triple threat. —Suzannah Friscia

Karissa Royster

Broadway tap dancer

When Savion Glover invited her to participate in a creative workshop in 2014, Karissa Royster assumed it would be a short-lived experience. But that project became Shuffle Along, or, The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed,and Royster made her Broadway debut last spring as both an ensemble performer and dance captain. Her effervescent energy and aplomb as she embodied the production’s period charm and complex history made her a standout amongst a cast of notable hoofers. Playing a Jimtown Flapper and a Jazz Jazmine, one of the musical’s vivacious chorus girls, Royster proved herself a rhythmic chameleon, gliding just as easily through the choreography’s vernacular moves as she did through Glover’s grittier, more hard-hitting combinations.

Royster is currently in rehearsals for new projects with Glover. She plans to continue her voice and acting training in New York City when not teaching or taking tap classes. “Shuffle Along expanded how I view myself as an artist and exposed me to new ways in which I can grow as an entertainer,” she says. With a Broadway show already under her belt, she’ll no doubt be entertaining many audiences to come. —Ryan P. Casey

Reed Tankersley

Dancer, Twyla Tharp Dance

When Twyla Tharp was auditioning Reed Tankersley, the two spent a week together in the studio one-on-one. One day Tharp asked why he looked so nervous, and the recent Juilliard graduate responded “…because you’re Twyla Tharp?” She quickly retorted, “We’ll have to get over that.” Get over it he has. Since landing a spot on her 50th-anniversary tour, the dancer has become an essential member of Tharp’s team of veteran performers. In the virtuosic 10-minute-long opening solo of her Brahms Paganini, he balances slippery spontaneity with grounded precision, rendering legible what feels like a choreographic run-on sentence. Endless energy seems to be his mode of operating—when not dancing for Tharp he’s performing with other choreographers like Jonah Bokaer. “I wouldn’t turn down dancing for Ariana Grande,” he says cheekily of his future plans. Who knows? Tankersley has the crisp-yet-malleable technique and youthful openness to do anything. —Lauren Wingenroth

Chitra Vairavan

Dancer and choreographer

With a heart-stopping stare that drags your soul deep into her character’s pain and passion, Chitra Vairavan has been a standout since becoming a founding member of Ananya Dance Theatre. In 2012, with her “Bird” solo in Moreechika: Season of Mirage, this contemporary Indian dancer took flight as she emerged from an undulating heap of bodies with a fluttering poise and winged uplift. Since then, the Tamil (South Indian)-American has spread her wings even further, conveying her progressive brown politics through collaborations and in her own pieces. Schooled in bharatanatyam and muscular, percussive Chhau- and Odissi-based choreography, her fearlessness in revealing the personal as political earned her a 2016 McKnight Fellowship for Dancers. Vairavan’s ardor for igniting change through dance is as innate as it is intentional. Watch her soar. —Camille LeFevre

Mario Bermudez Gil

Dancer and choreographer

Peppered with syncopated rhythms, Mario Bermudez Gil’s Gaga-influenced choreography simmers with flamenco passion. When he takes the stage in one of his works, he captures a striking duality: He is both a simple pedestrian and an uninhibited dancer. What transmits to the viewer is an unabashed love of moving, with wild, high-flying jumps, whirling spins and athletic floorwork seamlessly woven together. 

After four transformative years with Batsheva Dance Company—and previously one year each with Gallim Dance and Jennifer Muller/The Works—Bermudez Gil now follows his own choreographic path. This past year he started a company, Marcat Dance, with partner Catherine Coury. Bermudez Gil’s first evening-length piece, Alanda, debuted in Spain last summer. He has already performed his work in Israel, Japan and Korea, winning second place in the Copenhagen International Choreography Competition along the way. Additionally, he was granted a production award to create new work for National Dance Company Wales. The influence of Ohad Naharin inspires many a Batsheva dancer-turned-choreographer, but developing a unique voice can be daunting. Bermudez Gil has a looming legacy to follow but is well on his way to an exciting career of creation. —Jen Peters

Zhiyao Zhang

Corps member, American Ballet Theatre

Zhiyao Zhang may have simultaneously confused and delighted many in the audience for Swan Lake at the Metropolitan Opera House last summer. With a line so aristocratic and a presence of such authority that he could have been mistaken for Prince Siegfried, the American Ballet Theatre corps member excelled as Benno, the prince’s friend. Every airy leap possessed enough thrust to land him yards from where it started, and although he had power to spare, he always displayed a seemingly unforced assurance whether in mime or grands jetés.

His dream roles demonstrate a healthy aversion to typecasting. He says the rogue Birbanto in Le Corsaire intrigues him because the character can be played as a clown, a villain or a villainous clown. Zhang should triumph in each interpretation—  possibly in the same performance. —Harris Green

Marc Crousillat

Freelance dancer

At 25, Marc Crousillat has already performed for a who’s who of downtown choreographers, including Netta Yerushalmy and John Jasperse, and the Trisha Brown Dance Company. In Yerushalmy’s dances he oozes character and endearing disjointedness, while in Brown’s he can coolly demonstrate clean geometries or heat up with wild abandon. The 2016 Princess Grace Fellowship recipient credits his appetite for “disrupting” his body’s knowledge and habits to the range in his training at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts. He looks at other art forms—cinema, literature—to find more dimensionality in his dancing. Finding time to make his own work’s been hard, but he’ll be going in that direction, too, showing a project at Brooklyn’s Roulette next month. —Lisa Kraus

Martha Nichols

Choreographer and dancer

Martha Nichols is proof that “So You Think You Can Dance” doesn’t have to be the pinnacle of any dancer’s career. After finishing as a top-five-female during the show’s second season, Nichols has since performed in the long-running Cirque du Soleil show Criss Angel Believe in Las Vegas, danced backup for Rihanna’s Diamonds world tour and grooved her way through a Gap commercial. But it’s her more recent foray into choreography that really speaks to her maturity as an artist. Her infectious, funky-fabulous, neon-clad group piece \TILTED\ took home the top prize at last summer’s Capezio A.C.E. Awards. Nichols is hard at work prepping for her own evening-length show this year with her $15,000 production-budget prize money. If it’s anything like \TILTED\, don’t expect your standard dark and funereal contemporary fare: Think fiercely joyful, effortlessly in charge. “Part of me feels like dance is so sad. I’m not that sad,” she says. “I like life. I am a happy person.” —Rachel Rizzuto

Sirui Liu

Senior soloist, Cincinnati Ballet

It takes a particular kind of talent to move audiences with passionate performances, and another to do so while nailing every ballet position with textbook precision. Cincinnati Ballet’s Sirui Liu is one of these rare artists. The newly promoted senior soloist’s spot-on technical ability is something to marvel at, as is her ability to translate those skills into contemporary dance styles with eye-grabbing personality. The 26-year-old showed off her rich abilities this past September in Justin Peck’s playful Capricious Maneuvers, tossing off sparkling pirouettes and jumps as though bubbly with delight. In that same program, she also showed her flexibility, steadiness and ability to access heartfelt emotion in a trio in Ma Cong’s Near Light. Lifted by her shoulders and legs above her two male partners, she was slowly lowered headfirst to clench a rose between her teeth, which she held there throughout the rest of the dreamlike trio. In her sixth season with Cincinnati Ballet, Liu’s career trajectory appears to be on a fast track toward principal. —Steve Sucato

Sarah Lapointe

Dancer, Charlotte Ballet

Charlotte Ballet’s Sarah Lapointe is the prototypical ballerina. She uses her to-die-for extension to send legs skimming past an ear skyward, but the 19-year-old boasts more than just good genes. Lapointe’s performances reveal fluidity in her movement between steps; a sense of grace in every unfolding arm movement leads the eye to delicate and perfectly placed fingers. Possessing technical skills and stage presence beyond her years, Lapointe’s talent is magnetic. 

A 2015 National YoungArts Foundation award-winner, Lapointe attended Philadelphia’s The Rock School for Dance Education and has guested with The Washington Ballet. Now in her second season with Charlotte Ballet, she continues to follow a mantra given to her by her artistic director Jean-Pierre Bonnefoux and associate artistic director Patricia McBride: “Don’t be shy, and just go for it.” Charlotte audiences can see her do just that as she brings her formidable extension to a role tailor-made for it: the Lilac Fairy in Bonnefoux’s Sleeping Beauty this March. —Steve Sucato

Meg Foley

Dancer and choreographer

Like an oyster fashioning a pearl, Meg Foley is always chewing on gritty questions. For her 2016 opus Action is Primary, she asked how she could transition years of solo improvisation practice into a collective working experience for multiple dancers. To get there, each of her dancers took on some of Foley’s daily practice, including doing and documenting solo improvisations at 3:15 pm wherever they happened to find themselves. The result was big—three weeks of performances with Foley and her creative collaborators working from their own scores in changing combinations of dancers. They blurred everyday behavior with intentional melodramas and extravagant movement invention. It felt deep, mature and brimming with risk taking.

Foley, 35, is a dancer of extraordinary power. She has been choreographing in Philadelphia since she moved there after college, but her achievement in making Action is Primary promises more work with the potential to shift the ground of dance. Parallel with her own creative work, Foley is building a community hub at The Whole Shebang, a South Philly workspace she co-created in 2015. It’s a place for workshops, special events and, yes, more research into her burning questions. —Lisa Kraus

Ching Ching Wong

Dancer, NW Dance Project

Control and abandon are difficult for any dancer to navigate, but NW Dance Project’s Ching Ching Wong masters both in a single movement. In resident choreographer Ihsan Rustem’s Yidam, half of her body dangles as if free of bones, completely unbound in some precarious, impossible position. Meanwhile her standing leg supports the gorgeous shenanigans going on in the rest of her body, her astonishing ability to have balance while being off balance galvanizing attention at every moment. 

There is nothing predictable about the 2015 Princess Grace Award winner’s dancing. “I am working on not being perfect, not apologizing for anything I do onstage, to let my body go through it, and ride it like a wave,” says Wong. “I want to test my body’s physical and emotional capabilities onstage, explode even more, to dive into character. I am looking for more opportunities to be less controlled, to go beyond the boundaries of my 4′ 11 3/4″ body.” —Nancy Wozny

Charlotte Edmonds

Ballet choreographer

Having just turned 20, English choreographer Charlotte Edmonds is remarkably composed and confident. Her choreography has exactly the same qualities. “I’m trying to think of ways you can manipulate classical ballet and change it into something fresher and more modern,” she says of her supple-spined, richly fluid and music-driven movement, which fuses classical and contemporary lines and dynamics. By the age of 16, Edmonds had twice won the Royal Ballet School’s annual choreographic competition and gained her first professional commission. After completing her training at the Rambert School, Royal Ballet director Kevin O’Hare created a brand-new role for her in 2015: Royal Ballet Young Choreographer, where she is mentored by Wayne McGregor.

Edmonds is a fan of Crystal Pite, Mats Ek and William Forsythe, and she’s particularly interested in contemporary narratives—she recently worked on an adaptation of a Zadie Smith story for Northern Ballet. Yet more than anything, she has a desire to connect with deep emotions and move her audience. A timeless aim from a very of-the-moment young talent. —Lyndsey Winship

Margarita Shrainer

Corps member, Bolshoi Ballet

When an unknown name appeared on the Bolshoi’s principal casting in London last summer, ballet-goers took notice. At 22, despite being ill, the Bolshoi Ballet’s Margarita Shrainer made her debut as Kitri during the tour, the only corps dancer cast in a leading role. “It was a pleasantly shocking experience, completely unexpected,” she says.

With her combination of long lines, speed and buoyancy, Shrainer is a pure product of the Moscow school. She was billed as a potential star when she graduated from the Bolshoi Ballet Academy in 2011, yet only minor roles came her way in her first seasons. When new Bolshoi director Makhar Vaziev arrived last March, however, he immediately spotted Shrainer. A dizzying string of debuts followed, with The Flames of Paris, La Sylphide, “Rubies” and Don Quixote in just three months.

A self-described workaholic, Shrainer rose to the challenge under the guidance of her coach Nadezhda Pavlova. Her joyful, expressive presence onstage bodes well for the future, and she is determined to seize the moment: “If I continue working like I do, if I listen, all my dreams can come true. Everything is in my hands—with Makhar Vaziev’s help!” —Laura Cappelle

The post Introducing Our 2017 “25 to Watch” appeared first on Dance Magazine.