Alvin Ailey Jr. was an American dancer, director, choreographer, and activist who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT). He created AAADT and its affiliated Alvin Ailey American Dance Center as havens for nurturing Black artists and expressing the universality of the African-American experience through dance.
Jacob's Pillow is a dance center, school and performance space located in Becket, Massachusetts, in the Berkshires. The organization is known for a Summer dance festival. The facility also includes a professional school and extensive archives as well as year-round community programs. The facility itself was listed as a National Historic Landmark District in 2003.
Trisha Brown was an American choreographer and dancer, and one of the founders of the Judson Dance Theater and the postmodern dance movement. Brown’s dance/movement method, with which she and her dancers train their bodies, remains pervasively impactful within international postmodern dance.
Abigail Levine is a New York-based dance and performance artist. Levine has created works for opera and theaters--as well as for subway stations, sidewalks, swimming pools, airports, office buildings--in New York City, Washington DC, Havana, São Paulo, Mexico City, Caracas, and Taipei.
Juniper Shuey is a Seattle-based visual artist, known for his video installations and sculptural performance. He is the Co-Artistic Director of zoe|juniper and is the Head Carpenter at the University of Washington Meany Hall. Since establishing himself in the late 1990s he has continued to gain a professional reputation for his works.
Virginia Tanner was an American dance instructor and founder of the University of Utah Children's Dance Theatre. Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, she began her formal dance training at the University of Utah. She studied with Doris Humphrey in New York City before returning to Salt Lake City in the early 1940s to establish her school for creative dance for children.
Holcombe Waller is an American composer, singer and performance artist. He lives in Portland, Oregon, and has performed across the United States and Europe, both solo and with his ensemble, The Healers. His father was from France, therefore he is a French American.
Jonah Bokaer is an American choreographer and media artist. He works on live performances in the United States and elsewhere, including choreography, digital media, cross-disciplinary collaborations, and social enterprise.
Liz Lerman is an American dance choreographer. She is the founder of the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange and creator of the Critical Response Process.
Aszure Barton is a Canadian-born choreographer.
Camille A. Brown is a dancer, choreographer, director and dance educator. She is the Founder & Artistic Director of Camille A. Brown & Dancers, and has congruently choreographed commissioned pieces for dance companies, Broadway shows, and universities. Brown started her career as a dancer in Ronald K. Brown’s Evidence, A Dance Company, and was a guest artist with Rennie Harris Puremovement, and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Brown has choreographed major Broadway shows such as Choir Boy, Once on This Island and Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert! that aired on NBC. Brown also teaches dance and gives lectures to audiences at various universities such as Long Island University, Barnard College and ACDFA, among others.
Kyle Abraham is an American choreographer and dancer. He founded his own company A.I.M by Kyle Abraham in 2006 in New York City and has produced many original works for A.I.M such as The Radio Show (2010), Absent Matter (2015), Pavement (2012), Dearest Home (2017), Drive (2017), INDY (2018), Studies on Farewell (2019), and An Untitled Love (2021). Kyle has also been commissioned to create new works for international dance companies such as Untitled America (2016) for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, The Runaway (2018) for New York City Ballet, The Bystander (2019) for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Only The Lonely (2019) for Paul Taylor American Modern Dance and Ash (2019).
Helen Pickett is an American choreographer for stage and film, and has been described as “one of the few prominent women in ballet today”.
Pam Tanowitz is an American dancer, choreographer, professor, and founder of the company, Pam Tanowitz Dance. She is a current staff member at Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts where she teaches dance and choreography. Her work has been performed at notable performance venues such as the Joyce Theater, the Joyce SoHo, and New York Live Arts, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Sarah Michelson is a British choreographer and dancer who lives and works in New York City, New York. Her work is characterized by demanding physicality and repetition, rigorous formal structures, and inventive lighting and sound design. She was one of two choreographers whose work was included in the 2012 Whitney Biennial, the first time dance was presented as part of the bi-annual exhibition. Her work has also been staged at The Walker Art Center, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, The Kitchen, and the White Oak Dance Project. She received New York Dance and Performance awards for Group Experience (2002), Shadowmann Parts One and Two (2003), and Dogs (2008). She has served as associate director of The Center for Movement Research and associate curator of dance at The Kitchen. Currently choreographer in residence at Bard's Fisher Center, she is the recipient of their four-year fellowship to develop a commissioned work with Bard students and professional dancers.
Marja Merisalo is a Finnish choreographer, dancer, director and cultural coordinator. She has the Master of Arts degree of Dance from the Helsinki Theatre Academy (Teatterikorkeakoulu) She represents contemporary art dance where she has developed her own styles. Marja Merisalo has worked as choreographer, dancer, actor, producer as well as director of theatre and dance projects. She has worked in numerous productions and theatres since 1982 including Q-teatteri in Helsinki, Helsinki City Theatre, the Student's Theatre of Helsinki (Ylioppilasteatteri) and the Finnish National Theatre.
Sondra Perry is an interdisciplinary artist who works with video, computer-based media, installation, and performance. Perry's work investigates "blackness, black femininity, African American heritage" and the portrayal or representation of black people throughout history, focusing on how blackness influences technology and image making. Perry explores the duality of intelligence and seductiveness in the contexts of black family heritage, black history, and black femininity. "Perry is committed to net neutrality and ideas of collective production and action, using open source software to edit her work and leasing it digitally for use in galleries and classrooms, while also making all her videos available for free online. This principle of open access in Perry's practice aims to privilege black life, to democratize access to art and culture, and to offer a critical platform that differentiates itself from the portrayal of blackness in the media". For Perry, blackness is a technology which creates fissures in systems of surveillance and control and thus creates inefficiency as an opportunity for resistance.
Blakeley White-McGuire born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is a dancer, choreographer, répétiteur, and educator. She is a Principal Guest Artist and former Principal Dancer of Martha Graham Dance Company. Described by Gia Kourlas of the New York Times as having a "powerful technique and dramatic instinct with an appealing modern spunk", White-McGuire has received widespread critical acclaim as a Graham dancer.
C. Davida Ingram is a conceptual artist specializing in gender, race and social practice. Her art explores desire, space, time and memory, while questioning 21st century black female subjectivity. She is also a public speaker and civic leader. She received the 2014 Stranger Genius Award in Visual Arts. In 2016 she was a Kennedy Center Citizen Art Fellow, a finalist for the 2016 Neddy Arts Award, and 2018 Jacob Lawrence Fellow. Ingram, along with Prometheus Brown of Blue Scholars, and Tony-nominated choreographer and director, Donald Byrd at the 2016 Crosscut Arts Salon: The Color of Race. In 2017 she was featured in Seattle Magazine's Most Influential Seattleites of 2017. In the same year she received the Mona Marita Dingus Award for Innovative Media.
Shamel Pitts is an American artist, choreographer, performer and teacher. He is the Founder and artistic director at TRIBE which is a New York-based multidisciplinary arts collective.
