ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Sylvia Waters

Since Ailey II’s 1974 inception, Artistic Director Emerita Sylvia Waters has been responsible for the growth and expansion of one of the country’s most vibrant dance companies. Ms. Waters’ commitment to dance began when the art form was introduced to her in junior high school. She continued her studies with a scholarship at the New Dance Group, whose illustrious faculty included Alvin Ailey. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in Dance from the Juilliard School, where she studied with Antony Tudor, Martha Graham, Alfredo Corvino, and Mary Hinkson. While at Juilliard, she danced with Donald McKayle’s company, where she appeared in the CBS television production of They Called Her Moses, and also had the incredible opportunity of working with a young Hava Kohav — who later became an actress and Academy Award nominee performing very often at The 92nd Street Y, which was populated and attended by the entire New York dance community.

Ms. Waters toured in the European company of Black Nativity. While living in Paris, she worked with Michel Descombey, then director of the Paris Opera Ballet, and Milko Šparembleck. She also performed in Donald McKayle’s European production of Black New World and worked with Maurice Béjart’s company performing in Brussels and at the Summer Olympics in Mexico City.

Upon returning to the United States in 1968, Ms. Waters joined Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. In 1975, Mr. Ailey personally chose her to become artistic director of the Alvin Ailey Repertory Theater (now Ailey II), a position she held until stepping down in 2012.

Ms. Waters is the recipient of many awards and honors, including honorary doctorates from the State University of New York at Oswego and the Juilliard School. She is the recipient of a Bessie Award, the Legacy Award as part of the 20th Annual IABD Festival, Syracuse University’s Women of Distinction Award, and the prestigious Dance Magazine Award. She has served on several panels including the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Princess Grace Awards. She also served on the panel of the Seoul International Dance Competition for three years in Seoul, South Korea.

In the spring of 2010, Ms. Waters was a visiting professor at Harvard University. She is a consultant to the Ailey Archives and is interviewing former AILEY personnel — dancers and choreographers — for an oral history project.

Janet Eilber has been Artistic Director of the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance Company since 2005. Her creative curation has pioneered new forms of audience access to the Graham legacy and burnished the reputation of that storied Company. These diverse initiatives include her popular spoken introductions, thematic programming, unusual educational and cultural partnerships, licensing of the Graham classics, the use of new media and technology, commissions for today’s top choreographers and a wide range of creative events such as the Lamentation Variations. Ms. Eilber has reimagined the lost Graham solos Satyric Festival Song and Immediate Tragedy and remixed Graham choreography for productions of The Bacchae and Prometheus Bound at the Teatro Greco in Siracusa, Italy, and most recently for The Feast with the Long Beach Opera starring renowned countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński.

Ms. Eilber is a graduate of the Juilliard School where she was mentored by teachers of the Graham and Limón legacies and directed by José Limón in several of his classics. While still at Juilliard, she was invited to join the Graham Company where she worked closely with Martha Graham for almost a decade. She danced many of Graham’s greatest roles, had roles created for her by Graham, and was directed by Graham in most of the major roles of the repertory. She soloed at the White House, was partnered by Rudolf Nureyev, starred in three segments of Dance in America, and worked with Graham’s major collaborators such as Isamu Noguchi, Aaron Copland and Halston. She has since taught, lectured, and directed Graham ballets internationally for companies such as the Dutch National Ballet and the Paris Opera Ballet.

Apart from her work with Graham, Ms. Eilber has costarred in films such as Whose Life is it Anyway? with Richard Dreyfuss, and Romantic Comedy with Dudley Moore. She was featured in several television series in the 1980s and danced and acted on and off Broadway directed by such greats as Agnes DeMille and Bob Fosse. For her performance in Stepping Out directed by Tommy Tune, she was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Featured Actress in a Play. Ms. Eilber received four Lester Horton Awards for her reconstruction and performance of seminal American modern dance. She served as Director of Arts Education for the Dana Foundation, guiding the Foundation’s support for Teaching Artist training and contributing regularly to its publications. She is also a Trustee Emeritus of the Interlochen Center for the Arts.

At the 2022 celebration of the 50^th anniversary of her first performance with the Martha Graham Dance Company, Ms. Eilber received a letter from President and First Lady Biden saluting her half-century contribution to the arts in America. In 2023, she was honored with a Doctorate of Fine Arts from the Juilliard School. She is married to screenwriter/NYU professor John Warren, with whom she has two daughters, Madeline and Eva.

Dante Puleio (Artistic Director, He/Him), A widely respected former member of the Limón Dance Company for more than a decade, Puleio is the sixth Artistic Director in the Company’s 75-year history, a position that originated with Doris Humphrey. After a diverse performing career with the Limón Dance Company, touring national and international musical theatre productions, television and film, he received his MFA from University of California, Irvine. His research focuses on contextualizing mid 20th century dance for the contemporary artist and audience. He is committed to implementing that research by celebrating José Limón’s historical legacy and reimagining his intention and vision to reflect the rapidly shifting 21st century landscape.

Ronald K. Brown (Founder/Artistic Director) was raised in Brooklyn, NY, and founded EVIDENCE, A Dance Company in 1985. He has worked with Mary Anthony Dance Theater, Jennifer Muller/The Works, as well as other choreographers and artists. Brown has set works on Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Ailey II, Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, Jennifer Muller/The Works, Jeune Ballet d’Afrique Noire, Ko-Thi Dance Company, Philadanco, Muntu Dance Theater of Chicago, Ballet Hispánico, TU Dance, and Malpaso Dance Company.

He has collaborated with such artists as composer/designer Omotayo Wunmi Olaiya, the late writer Craig G. Harris, director Ernie McClintock’s Jazz Actors Theater, choreographers Patricia Hoffbauer and Rokiya Kone, composers Robert Een, Oliver Lake, Bernadette Speech, David Simons, and Don Meissner, and musicians Jason Moran, Arturo O’Farrill and Meshell Ndegeocello.

Brown is the recipient of the 2020 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award. His other awards and recognitions include the AUDELCO Award for his choreography in Regina Taylor’s award-winning play Crowns, two Black Theater Alliance Awards, and a Fred & Adele Astaire Award for Outstanding Choreography in the Tony Award winning Broadway and national touring production of The Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, adapted by Suzan Lori Parks, arranged by Diedre Murray, and directed by Diane Paulus.

Brown was named Def Dance Jam Workshop 2000 Mentor of the Year and has received a Doris Duke Artist Award, New York City Center Fellowship, Joyce Theater Artist Residency Center Fellowship, Scripps/ADF Award, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts Choreographers Fellowship, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, United States Artists Fellowship, a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award, Dance Magazine Award, and The Ailey Apex Award. Ronald K. Brown was a Creative Administration Research artist at NCCAkron and along with Arcell Cabuag is a 2024 Dance Teacher Magazine Awardee of Distinction recipient.

Brown is Co-Artistic Director of the Restoration Dance Youth Ensemble and a member of Stage Directors & Choreographers Society.

Doug Varone, the award-winning choreographer and director, works in dance, theater, opera, film, and fashion. He is a passionate educator and articulate advocate for dance. By any measure, his work is extraordinary for its emotional range, kinetic breadth and the many arenas in which he works. His New York City-based Doug Varone and Dancers has been commissioned and presented to critical acclaim by leading international venues for close to three decades.

In the concert dance world, Varone has created a body of works globally. Commissions include the Paul Taylor American Modern Dance Company, Limón Company, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Rambert Dance Company (London), Martha Graham Dance Company, Dancemakers (Canada), Batsheva Dance Company (Israel), Bern Ballet (Switzerland) and An Creative (Japan), among others. In addition, his dances have been staged on more than 75 college and university programs around the country.

In opera, Doug Varone is in demand as both a director and choreographer. Among his four productions at The Metropolitan Opera are Salome with its Dance of the Seven Veils, the world premiere of Tobias Picker’s An American Tragedy, Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps, designed by David Hockney, and Hector Berloiz’s Les Troyens. He has staged multiple premieres and new productions for Minnesota Opera, Opera Colorado, Washington Opera, New York City Opera, and Boston Lyric Opera, among others. His numerous theater credits include choreography for Broadway, Off-Broadway and regional theaters across the country. His choreography for the musical Murder Ballad at Manhattan Theater Club earned him a Lortel Award nomination. Film credits include choreography for the Patrick Swayze film, One Last Dance. In 2008, Varone’s The Bottomland, set in the Mammoth Caves of Kentucky, was the subject of the PBS Dance in America: Wolf Trap’s Face of America. Last season he directed and choreographed MASTERVOICES production of Dido and Aeneas at NY’s City Center, starring Tony Award winners Kelli O’Hara and Victoria Clark, alongside the Company. Most recently, he staged Julia Wolfe’s Pulitzer Prize winning oratorio, Anthracite Fieldsfeaturing the Bang on a Can All-Stars and the Westminster Choir.

Varone received his BFA from Purchase College where he was awarded the President’s Distinguished Alumni Award in 2007. Numerous honors and awards include a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, an OBIE Award (Lincoln Center’s Orpheus and Euridice), the Jerome Robbins Fellowship at the Bogliasco Institute in Italy, and two individual Bessie Awards. In 2015, he was awarded both a Doris Duke Artist Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Dance Guild. Varone teaches workshops and master classes around the world for dancers, musicians and actors.

David Dorfman, the choreographer and dance activist, has been making movement-based dance theater since graduating with an MFA in Dance from Connecticut College in 1981. In 1987 he founded David Dorfman Dance in NYC with the intention of creating accessible, politically and socially relevant work. DDD has toured the world from Tajikistan to El Salvador - via the State Department/Brooklyn Academy of Music for “Kinetic Diplomacy”, and with USAID on Violence Prevention with Youth Dance Groups. In February, DDD brought back classic work from 20 years ago as part of The Harkness Dance Center’s 90^th in the Downtown to Uptown. Past to Forward program. And in January premiered “truce songs”, about healing and the possible reincarnation of trust at The Space at Irondale in Brooklyn. A life-long educator, David has been a professor at Connecticut College since 2004 where DDD is Company-in-Residence. David choreographed Broadway’s “Indecent,” for which he was given a Lortel for its Off-Broadway run, and has also received a 2019 USA Fellowship in Dance, a Guggenheim, four NEA fellowships and a Bessie. In addition to DDD appearing in Harkness Dance Festival’s STRIPPED/DRESSED a decade ago, DD also appeared with Yoshiko Chuma and Vicky Shick, with Rebecca Rossen in a Sunday at 3, and has enjoyed teaching many classes and facilitating a DEL Movement Sentence Choir in Buttenwieser Hall. In his copious spare time, he has co-created and toured internationally a body of tragi-comic physical theater with dear friend Dan Froot, entitled “Live Sax Acts” – and he continues to dance profusely with cherished wife Lisa Race and beloved son Samson Race Dorfman.

Hope Boykin, a two-time “Bessie Award” winner, was an original member of Complexions, danced with Philadanco, and retired from twenty years as a member of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 2020. Hope has choreographed for numerous universities and dance companies including The Juilliard School, Kent State, USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance, Philadanco, Dallas Black Dance Theatre, Ballet X, Ballet Black of London, American Ballet Theatre Studio Company, Collage Dance Collective, and in 2024 created her fourth work for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, with a new work for Paul Taylor to premiere at the Kennedy Center in 2025.

In fall of 2023, Hope was featured in The New York Times and on the cover of Dance Magazine in recognition of her achievements as a creator, mover, maker, and motivator — high-lighting States Of Hope, a fully scripted, evening-length, new dance theater work, which premiered at The Joyce Theater to much acclaim.

The Other Side, a co-commission with the Kennedy Center, premiered in 2021 with a 2024 return for the Kennedy Center and a New York premiere at BAM. The Other Side brings Jacqueline Woodson’s the award-winning children’s book to life on stage. Hope continues to build on her work as a writer; blending her words and cadence as the foundation of her developing movement-language. As a director and dance-maker, Hope received a grant from the Mellon Foundation for her own #BoykinBubble residency, and in the fall of 2021, she premiered a full evening of her choreography, An Evening of Hope, at The 92nd Street Y. She created Beauty Size & Color a short film commenting on what has changed in the first twenty years of the 21st century on PBS.org which was nominated for a 2023 NY Emmy Award, as well as a weekend of her own work, Moments By Hope, a concert.

Hope’s passion for dance education is highlighted as she serves as Artistic Advisor for Dance Education for the Kennedy Center and Artistic Lead for the Kennedy Center Dance Lab. She is Artist-In-Residence at USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance and received the Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU Fellowship for 2022-23. In 2024, Hope founded not-for-profit HBArts Collective Inc., a collaborative space where creators refine their craft, build community, and shape the future in music, film, theater, and dance. Hope was nominated for the 2024 Washington DC Mayors Awards and honored as one of Crain’s Notable Black Leaders. With collaborator Al Crawford, HBArts Collective joined the first Doris Duke Performing Arts Technology Lab cohort.

Hope firmly believes there are no limits.

Omar Román De Jesús (Bayamón, Puerto Rico) is a queer Puertorriqueño choreographer and the director of the NYC-based dance company Boca Tuya. Currently, he is a proud Artist in Residence at 92NY. Omar is the inaugural Baryshnikov Arts Center Fellow at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park and a 2023 Dance Magazine Harkness Promise Awardee. His accolades include the 2022 Princess Grace Award in Choreography, the 2022 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Choreography, the 2022 Palm Desert Choreography Festival Grand Prize, and the 2020 Ann & Weston Hicks Choreography Fellowship at Jacob’s Pillow.

He has been commissioned to create works for over 20 companies and pre-professional schools, including The Paul Taylor Dance Company, The Juilliard School, Ballet Hispánico, BalletCollective, Limón 2, SALT Dance, St. Louis Dance Theater, MOVE NYC, Bruce Wood Dance, Joffrey Ballet Concert Group, Whim W’Him, Parsons Dance, The Ailey School, Kennesaw State University, James Madison University, and Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.

Omar’s works for stage and screen have been presented worldwide, receiving top recognitions through the Joffrey Academy of Dance’s Winning Works Choreographic Competition, Whim W’Him’s Choreographic Shindig, The Dance Gallery Festival, Reverb Dance Festival, and the International Dance Festival of Puerto Rico, where he was awarded the Ambassador of Dance medal. His screendance, Los Perros del Barrio Colosal, has been viewed by audiences in over 20 countries and was awarded Best of Screen Dance International as well as Best Choreography and Best Narrative at the ReThink Dance Film Festival. Over the past five years, he has toured internationally to Colombia, Panama, and the Canary Islands, and has presented work domestically in New York, Georgia, Washington, Pennsylvania, and California. In 2023, his piece Papagayos, commissioned for Ballet Hispánico, premiered at New York City Center and traveled to North Carolina for the American Dance Festival. Most recently, Like Those Playground Kids at Midnight was presented in celebration of the 92NY 150th anniversary.

Omar is fond of education and has experience teaching workshops and master classes all over the world for professional dancers, students with special needs, people with physical disabilities, and marginalized communities.

Yue Yin is a choreographer, founder and artistic director of YY Dance Company and the creator of FoCo Technique™. She began her training in Chinese classical and folk dance in Shanghai, China at the prestigious Shanghai Dance Academy and completed her MFA in dance at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2008. In 2018, Yin founded YYDC, a non-profit contemporary dance company dedicated to the teaching, production and performance of her original choreographic work. Yin is the creator of her signature FoCo Technique™ which is a unique contemporary form of dance movement rooted in Chinese classical and folk dance melded with the complexity and diverse influences of the immigrant experience. Overall the form grows from Yin’s own blended international background and a deep appreciation for precision, contrast, fluidity and musicality.

Yue Yin was the recipient of the 2021 Harkness Promise Award. This prestigious award recognizes her innovation in choreography and education. She was the winner of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago 2015 International Commissioning Project, winner of the 2015 BalletX Choreographic Fellowship, and winner of Northwest Dance Project’s 5th Annual Pretty Creatives International Choreographic Competition in 2013. Yin’s work has been commissioned from acclaimed organizations such as Gibney Company, Martha Graham Dance Company, Oregon Ballet Theater, NW Dance Project, BalletMet, Boston Ballet, Philadelphia Ballet, Limon Dance Company, Alberta Ballet, Balletto Teatro di Torino, Peridance Contemporary Dance Company, Juilliard School for Dance, USC Kaufman School of Dance, Tisch School of The Arts, Princeton and more.

Joan Finkelstein (EdD: Teachers College, Columbia University; MFA, BFA: NYU Tisch Dance) joined the Harkness Foundation as Executive Director in 2014. A native New Yorker, she has extensive professional dance experience, performing in modern, contemporary and Afro-Haitian companies and on Broadway; choreographing for ballet and modern companies and for theatrical projects; and teaching children, college students and adults nationwide. As Director of 92NY Harkness Dance Center (1992-2004) she supervised classes, the DEL program, performance festivals, workshops, space grants, lectures, and social dances. While Director of Dance for the NYC Department of Education (2004-2014) she spearheaded the Blueprint for Teaching and Learning in Dance, citywide dance assessments, and dance teacher professional development. Participating Writer: National Core Arts Standards in Dance (2014), New York State Learning Standards for the Arts – Dance (2017). Board service: Dance/USA, International Committee for the Dance Library of Israel, Actors’ Temple. Advisory boards: Dance/NYC (founding year), Dance Teacher Magazine, Martha Hill Fund, EFSD, NYFA. Honors: ICDLI (Hall of Fame, 2003), NDEO (2009 Leadership Award), La Mama (2011), NYSDEA (2014 Outstanding Leadership Award). Awards: NEA and NARB Choreographer Fellowships. Joan was a BESSIES NY Dance and Performance Awards Committee member for 16 years. In 2023 she earned a doctoral degree in dance education leadership and policy.