Jaclynn Villamil

The American Dance Festival (ADF) will award the 2019 Balasaraswati/Joy Anne Dewey Beinecke Endowed Chair for Distinguished Teaching to longtime Paul Taylor Dance Company rehearsal director Bettie de Jong. A ceremony will take place on Thursday, June 27, 2019 in Reynolds Industries Theater at the opening night performance of the Paul Taylor Dance Company.

The American Dance Festival (ADF) will award the 2018 Balasaraswati/Joy Anne Dewey Beinecke Endowed Chair for Distinguished Teaching to two central figures in the breaking community, celebrated hip-hop dance artists Ana 'Rokafella' Garcia and Gabriel “Kwikstep” Dionisio. A ceremony will take place on Wednesday, June 27, 2018. Time and location TBD.

Cherylyn Lavagnino has an MFA in Dance from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, as well as a BA in Philosophy from USC. Lavagnino toured nationally as a soloist with the Pennsylvania Ballet. She has performed a range of classical repertoire and contemporary work by choreographers including Balanchine, John Butler, Hans Van Manen, and Tere O'Connor, and the diversity of these experiences has informed the dialogue between classical and contemporary in her work with Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance. Ms. Lavagnino has created over forty works in the past fifteen years, and since 2000 the platform for her choreography has been Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance. Many of those works were created in collaboration with composers Scott Killian and Jane Chung. CLD continues to support a Live Music and Dance incentive their performances. Lavagnino's choreography has been presented in New York City: by Danspace Project at St. Mark's Church, Dance Theater Workshop, Symphony Space, DanceNow/NYC, Kaatsban International Dance Center and The Joyce Theatre's 'Evening Stars' series. Ms. Lavagnino is an Alpert Award nominee for choreography and recipient of a space grant residency from the Baryshnikov Arts Center. Her choreography has been supported by the American Music Center's, Live Music for Dance grant and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Manhattan Creative Communities Fund.