Ballet Hispánico's Artistic Director & CEO Eduardo Vilaro To Appear On THE DANCE HISTORIAN IS IN

Ballet Hispánico, the nation's renowned and the largest Latinx cultural organization in the U.S. recognized as one of America's Cultural Treasures, will be featured on The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts' David Vaughan's The Dance Historian Is In on June 30, 2021 at 1pm ET. Registration for this FREE event is required at EventBrite.

As part of Ballet Hispánico's celebration of five decades of bringing dance, education, and innovation to audiences around the world, Artistic Director Eduardo Vilaro joins the New York Public Library to share clips from the Jerome Robbins Dance Division's moving image archive and beyond.

David Vaughan was the archivist of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and author of Merce Cunningham/65 Years and Frederick Ashton and His Ballets. From 2012-2017, Mr. Vaughan held monthly screenings of his favorite dance films and videos from our collection. Mr. Vaughan passed away in October 2017, and the Jerome Robbins Dance Division continues screenings in his honor with guest hosts.

Eduardo Vilaro is the Artistic Director & CEO of Ballet Hispánico. He was named Ballet Hispánico's Artistic Director in 2009, becoming only the second person to head the company since its founding in 1970, and in 2015 was also named Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Vilaro has infused Ballet Hispánico's legacy with a bold brand of contemporary dance that reflects America's changing cultural landscape.

Mr. Vilaro's philosophy of dance stems from a basic belief in the power of the arts to change lives, reflect and impact culture, and strengthen community. He considers dance to be a liberating, non-verbal language through which students, dancers, and audiences of all walks of life and diverse backgrounds, can initiate ongoing conversations about the arts, expression, identity, and the meaning of community.

Born in Cuba and raised in New York from the age of six, Mr. Vilaro's own choreography is devoted to capturing the Latin American experience in its totality and diversity, and through its intersectionality with other diasporas. His works are catalysts for new dialogues about what it means to be an American. He has created more than 40 ballets with commissions that include the Ravinia Festival, the Chicago Sinfonietta, the Grant Park Festival, the Lexington Ballet and the Chicago Symphony.

A Ballet Hispánico dancer and educator from 1988 to 1996, he left New York, earned a master's in interdisciplinary arts at Columbia College Chicago and then embarked on his own act of advocacy with a ten-year record of achievement as Founder and Artistic Director of Luna Negra Dance Theater in Chicago. The recipient of numerous awards and accolades, Mr. Vilaro received the Ruth Page Award for choreography in 2001; was inducted into the Bronx Walk of Fame in 2016; and was awarded HOMBRE Magazine's 2017 Arts & Culture Trailblazer of the Year. In 2019, he received the West Side Spirit's WESTY Award, was honored by WNET for his contributions to the arts, and was the recipient of the James W. Dodge Foreign Language Advocate Award. In August 2020, City & State Magazine included Mr. Vilaro in the inaugural Power of Diversity: Latin 100 list.

In January 2021, Mr. Vilaro was recognized with a Compassionate Leaders Award, given to leaders who are courageous, contemplative, collaborative, and care about the world they will leave behind. He is a well-respected speaker on such topics as diversity, equity, and inclusion in the arts, as well as on the merits of the intersectionality of cultures and the importance of nurturing and building Latinx leaders.