Joyce Theater's Aaron Mattocks to Step Down

Linda Shelton, Executive Director of The Joyce Theater Foundation, announced today that Aaron Mattocks, the organization's Director of Programming, will step down effective July 15, 2022. Since arriving at The Joyce over four years ago, Aaron programmed artists that celebrate the diversity of voices and forms that make our city the world's dance capital and helped strengthen The Joyce's legacy as one of the world's top presenters of dance artists. An official search for Mattocks's replacement will commence immediately.

Linda Shelton said today, "During Aaron's tenure, our audiences were treated to dozens of Joyce debuts including Ayodele Casel, Dormeshia, Indigenous Enterprise, and Black Grace, and more live music than ever before. The COVID-era digital presentations he programmed were awarded three 2021 New York Dance and Performance Awards (aka "Bessies") for outstanding new productions. Working alongside Aaron, The Joyce had successful collaborations with Prototype Festival, Carnegie Hall, Bang on a Can, and Dance Lab New York's inaugural Women of Color in Classical Ballet lab. Although Aaron will no longer be our Director of Programming, I look forward to working together on future projects in other capacitites and the board and I wish him only the best."

Aaron Mattocks added, "I am grateful to Linda Shelton and the board of directors for the opportunity that The Joyce has provided me over the last several years to serve the dance field in such an impactful way. Coming directly from my career as a performing artist and independent producer, my time at The Joyce has been rigorous and unflagging, richly rewarding, and hugely educational. My knowledge of the field is forever changed. I am inspired by so many incredible artists and colleagues who do this difficult work each and every day, and I look forward to exploring my evolving role with artists and being a core part of the creative process in the months and years to come."

Aaron Mattocks is a Pennsylvania native, Sarah Lawrence College alumnus, two-time New York Dance and Performance (Bessie) Award nominee for Outstanding Performer (2013, 2016) and was named one of 2016's best performers by Dance Magazine. He is the director of programming at The Joyce Theater (2018 - 2022) and former executive director of Big Dance Theater, producing director for Pam Tanowitz, company and general manager for the Mark Morris Dance Group, and has independently produced projects, premieres and tours for Faye Driscoll, Beth Gill, and Steven Reker.

His work with choreographer Annie-B Parson in live performance, film and music from 2009 - 2017 included projects with Mikhail Baryshnikov, Wendy Whelan, Jonathan Demme, David Byrne, David Lang, and the Martha Graham Dance Company, among others. He toured internationally with Ms. Parson and Paul Lazar/Big Dance Theater from 2009 - 2017, and nationally with Jessica Grindstaff and Erik Sanko/Phantom Limb Company from 2011 - 2018, for which he also served as Rehearsal Director under choreographer Ryan Heffington.

He was the associate choreographer for Jonathan Demme's feature film Ricki and the Flash, choreographed by Annie-B Parson and starring Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline and Audra McDonald, and has assisted Ms. Parson on a solo for ballerina Wendy Whelan which premiered at the Royal Opera House/London in 2015; David Lang's the public domain, a choral project for 1,000 singers at Lincoln Center/Mostly Mozart in August 2016; I used to love you for the Martha Graham Dance Co. which premiered at The Joyce Theater in February 2017; and The Road Awaits Us for the Elixir Ensemble at Sadler's Wells/London in June 2017.

As a performer, he has also created roles in premieres by Ursula Eagly, Doug Elkins, David Gordon, John Heginbotham, Jodi Melnick, Stephen Petronio, Steven Reker, Christopher Williams, and Kathy Westwater; appeared as a guest artist with Yoshiko Chuma, Faye Driscoll, John Kelly, Dean Moss, David Parker, Karen Sherman, and in the Bessie Award winning immersive production Then She Fell; and has performed in projects by 600 HIGHWAYMEN, Joanna Furnans, Shaun Irons/Lauren Petty, Courtney Krantz, Abigail Levine, and Amanda Villalobos.

In the fall 2017 season, he produced the Simone Dinnerstein/Pam Tanowitz collaboration New Work for Goldberg Variations for Duke Performances, commissioned by Duke, Peak Performances @ Montclair State University, Opening Nights Performing Arts at Florida State University and Summer Stages Dance at the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston. He also produced and performed in Big Dance Theater's 17c, commissioned by Carolina Performing Arts at UNC Chapel Hill, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Old Vic/London, FringeArts Philadelphia, and The Yard.

Under his leadership, artists have received multiple NEFA/National Dance Project Production and Touring grants; Guggenheim, New York Foundation for the Arts, Foundation for Contemporary Arts and United States Artists Fellowships, as well as awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, the MAP Fund, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Howard Gilman Foundation, the O'Donnell Green Music and Dance Foundation, and many others. He was the first full time administrator in Big Dance Theater's 25-year history, winning support from the NYSCA Regional Economic Development Council and the Emma A. Sheafer Charitable Trust to support his producing vision and leadership initiatives.

He has successfully produced artists and engagements with many of the nation's leading presenting organizations, including the Walker Art Center, the Wexner Center, the ICA Boston, Fusebox Festival, CounterCurrent Festival, Mass MoCA, Mass Live Arts, FringeArts Philadelphia, American Dance Festival, and the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College.

He has served as a reviewer, nominator and/or panelist for the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) National Dance Project (3 year term, 2019 - 2021); NEFA's Center Stage Cultural Diplomacy Exchange; Multi-Arts Production (MAP) Fund; Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Program; Guggenheim Fellowship; MacArthur Fellows Program; and Gibney Dance Center's Dance in Process Residency, and has been an invited speaker for symposiums at Dance NYC, Dance USA, Association of Performing Arts Professionals (APAP), Gibney Dance, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and Movement Research.

As a dance writer, he was commissioned to be a 2013-2014 Context Notes Writer for New York Live Arts, after completing a year as guest editor for Movement Research's Critical Correspondence, and as guest curator for Sarah Maxfield's One-Shot. His writing was also featured in Maxfield's Nonlinear Lineage series, and has been published by The Performance Club, Culturebot, Hyperallergic, Critical Correspondence, The Brooklyn Rail, the Baryshnikov Arts Center, Hartford Stage, and the BAM Next Wave Festival. His own performances have been supported with a residency from TOPAZ ARTS and shown at AUNTS (American Realness), THROW (The Chocolate Factory), FLICFest (Irondale Center), for Sarah Maxfield's One-Shot and In and Out of Uniform (Museum of Arts and Design and Abrons Arts Center), at 92Y Fridays at Noon, and for Movement Research at the Judson Church.

He has taught movement for actors at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts' Playwrights Horizons Theater School and given masterclasses and lectures at Keene State College, Duke University, Sarah Lawrence College, Florida State University, Emerson College, and Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts.