The Joyce Presents DANCING DIALOGUES Featuring Ronald K. Brown, Patricia Delgado and More

The Joyce Theater Foundation will host three Dancing Dialogues, live virtual panel discussion with prominent dance makers and artists including Ronald K. Brown, Patricia Delgado, Virginia Johnson, and Francesca Harper, on Monday nights from July 20 - August 10 at www.Joyce.org/DancingDialogues. Sponsored by First Republic, Dancing Dialogues provide a unique opportunity for virtual interaction with Joyce Theater audiences and artists. While access to all of The Joyce's online resources is free, gifts of any size provide crucial support to The Joyce's current operations and will help to ensure the future of New York City's diverse dance landscape. For more information, please visit www.Joyce.org.

For nearly 40 years, The Joyce Theater has presented world-class dance performances in and around New York City. When live performances were put on hold in March, The Joyce created a successful platform to provide its audiences with a chance to see filmed dance presentations and artist engagements from the safety of their own homes. With Dancing Dialogues, The Joyce provides a unique opportunity for artists and audiences to more intimately connect, interact, and discuss current inspirations and issues affecting the dance world and beyond. The discussions will feature a variety of accomplished panelists such as Ronald K. Brown, Patricia Delgado, Francesca Harper, and Virginia Johnson, among others. Phil Chan and Adrian Danchig-Waring will each moderate a discussion, with one more moderator to be announced.

Although free, attendance requires reservations which can be secured by emailing Events@Joyce.org.

Dancing Dialogues Schedule:

~Subject to change~

July 20 at 6pm

Realized Cultural Resonance

Panelists Ronald K. Brown, Rosie Herrera, Emily Johnson, Virginia Johnson, and Michael Sakamoto discuss their experiences, cultures, and viewpoints as they are realized within their contemporary work with moderator Phil Chan.

July 27 at 6pm

Reinvention: The Art of Pivot

A discussion with panelists Patricia Delgado, Francesca Harper, and Vernon Scott about how featured dance artists have made significant professional shifts at various stages of their careers and how they've adapted to this change, moderated by Adrian Danchig-Waring.

August 10 at 6pm

Rebuilding Dance Audiences: Virtual to Actual

How the leaders of performing arts organizations are adapting their programming for a return to live performances following this "pause" with a roster of panelists to be announced.

Bios

A native of Brooklyn, Ronald K. Brown founded EVIDENCE, A Dance Company in 1985. He has worked with Mary Anthony Dance Theater, Jennifer Muller/ The Works and other choreographers and artists. Brown has set works on Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, 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.

Ron is the recipient of the 2020 Jacob's Pillow Dance Award. He has also won an AUDELCO Award for his choreography in Regina Taylor's award-winning play Crowns, received two Black Theater Alliance Awards, and a Fred & Adele Astaire Award for Outstanding Choreography in the 2012 Tony Award-winning Broadway and national touring production of The Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Among the many other awards Brown has received, he was also named Def Dance Jam Workshop 2000 Mentor of the Year. Brown is Co-Artistic Director of RestorationART Youth Arts Academy Pre-Professional Training Program / Restoration Dance Youth Ensemble, on the faculty of The Juilliard School and a member of Stage Directors & Choreographers Society.

Phil Chan is a co-founder of Final Bow for Yellowface, and most recently served as the Director of Programming for IVY, connecting young professionals with leading American museums and performing arts institutions. He is a graduate of Carleton College and an alumnus of the Ailey School. As a writer, he served as the Executive Editor for FLATT Magazine and contributed to Dance Europe Magazine, Dance Magazine, Dance Business Weekly, and the Huffington Post. He was the founding General Manager of the Buck Hill Skytop Music Festival, and the General Manager for Armitage Gone! Dance and Youth America Grand Prix. He served multiple years on the National Endowment for the Arts dance panel and the Jadin Wong Award panel presented by the Asian American Arts Alliance, and on the advisory board for Dance Magazine and the International Council for Parsons Dance Company. He also serves on the Leaders of Color steering committee at Americans for the Arts. He is the author of Final Bow for Yellowface: Dancing between Intention and Impact, and a 2020 New York Public Library Research Fellow.

Adrian Danchig-Waring was born in San Francisco, California. He began his dance training at the age of 11 at Dance Theatre Seven with David Roxander. Mr. Danchig-Waring entered the School of American Ballet (SAB) in the fall of 2001. In October 2002 he became an apprentice with New York City Ballet, and in June 2003 he joined the Company as a member of the corps de ballet. In 2009, Mr. Danchig-Waring was promoted to soloist and became a principal in 2013. Mr. Danchig-Waring is the Director of the New York Choreographic Institute, an affiliate of NYCB.

Patricia Delgado, Cuban-American, born in Miami, Florida was a principal dancer with the Miami City Ballet, where she performed works by George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Twyla Tharp, and Paul Taylor, among others, leading roles in Coppelia, Giselle, and Don Quixote and Romeo and Juliet. Elsewhere, she was seen in the Encores! production of Brigadoon and in the music video The Dark Side of the Gym for The National. She has created works with Alexei Ratmansky, Justin Peck, Pam Tanowitz, Jamar Roberts, and John Heginbotham. As a repetiteur for Justin Peck, she has staged In Creases and Heatscape. She is the Associate Choreographer to Justin Peck on the upcoming Steven Spielberg feature film West Side Story, and an Associate Producer on the 2020 Broadway revival of the show. Delgado is a member of the dance faculty at The Juilliard School, and is currently a Producer on a new musical directed and choreographed by Justin Peck, set to open on Broadway in September 2021.

After being named Presidential Scholar in the Arts and performing at the White House for President Reagan, Francesca Harper danced with The Dance Theater of Harlem and later with William Forsythe's Ballet Frankfurt. As a choreographer, she has worked with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Richmond Ballet, Tanz Graz, Hubbard Street II, and her own company, The Francesca Harper Project, which was founded in 2005 and tours Internationally. As a dancer, Harper performed in four Broadway shows including The Color Purple, and in touring productions such as Sweet Charity, Sophisticated Ladies, and Lady Day at Emerson Bar and Grill. She also served as a Ballet Consultant for the Oscar winning film, "BLACK SWAN." Fellowships include Urban Bush Women's Choreographic Center Initiative and The Ballet Center at NYU. New works include a new creation for Wendy Whelan, and her own autobiographical work, Unapologetic Body, supported by Urban Bush Women's CCI. She is currently engaged as Executive Producer with Sony Pictures on a series in development while also pursuing an MFA in performance creation at Goddard College.

Rosie Herrera is a Cuban-American dancer, classically trained lyric coloratura soprano, choreographer, and artistic director of Rosie Herrera Dance Theater in Miami. Her work has been commissioned worldwide by Ballet Hispanico, Jose Limon Dance Company, Moving Ground Dance Theater, Houston Met Dance, New World Symphony, and the American Dance Festival, among others. Rosie Herrera Dance Theatre has been presented by The American Dance Festival, Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Baryshnikov Arts Center, The Annenberg Center, Maui Arts and Cultural Center, and The Joyce Theater. Past collaborations include Walter Mercado, The South Miami Dade Cultural Arts Center, New World School of the Arts, and The University of Central Florida, as well as with the interdisciplinary performance ensemble/avant-garde cabaret Circ X. Past recognitions include a 2016 U.S. Artist Sarah Arison Choreographic Fellow, two MANCC choreographic fellows, Bates Dance Festival Artist in residence, a Bessie Schoenberg Fellow, and two Miami Dance Fellows. She was awarded a Princess Grace Choreographic Fellowship for her work with Ballet Hispanico in 2013.

Emily Johnson is an artist who makes body-based work. She is a land and water protector and an activist for justice, sovereignty and well-being. A Bessie Award-winning choreographer, Guggenheim Fellow, and recipient of the Doris Duke Artist Award, she is based in New York City. Originally from Alaska, Emily is of Yup'ik descent, and since 1998 has created work that considers the experience of sensing and seeing performance. Emily is trying to make a world where performance is part of life; where performance is an integral connection to each other, our environment, our stories, our past, present, and future. Emily hosts monthly ceremonial fires on Mannahatta in partnership with Abrons Arts Center. She was a co-compiler of the document, Creating New Futures: Guidelines for Ethics and Equity in the Performing Arts and is part of an advisory group, with Reuben Roqueni, Ed Bourgeois, Lori Pourier, Ronee Penoi, and Vallejo Gantner - developing a Global First Nations Performance Network.a??

A founding member of Dance Theatre of Harlem, Virginia Johnson was one of its principal ballerinas over a career that spanned nearly 30 years. After retiring in 1997, Ms. Johnson went on to found Pointe Magazine and was editor-in chief for 10 years. A native of Washington, D.C., Ms. Johnson began her training with Therrell Smith. She studied with Mary Day at the Washington School of Ballet and graduated from the Academy of the Washington School of Ballet. She went on to be a University Scholar in the School of the Arts at New York University before joining Dance Theatre of Harlem. Johnson is universally recognized as one of the great ballerinas of her generation and is perhaps best known for her performances in the ballets Giselle, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Fall River Legend. She has received such honors as a Young Achiever Award from the National Council of Women, Outstanding Young Woman of America Award, the Dance Magazine Award, a Pen and Brush Achievement Award, the Washington Performing Arts Society's 2008-2009 Pola Nirenska Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2009 Martha Hill Fund Mid-Career Award.

Michael Sakamoto is a dance, theater, and multi-media artist, and educator whose work has been presented in venues around the globe including REDCAT, Dance Center of Columbia College-Chicago, Vancouver International Dance Festival, Gotebørg Art Sounds, Audio Art Festival Krakow, TACTFest Osaka, and RMA Institute Bangkok. Recent touring works include Soil (NDP grantee), a collaboration with dance artists from Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam linking personal/historical narrative and cultural sustainability; Flash, a duo performance with Rennie Harris; and blind spot, a collaboration with composer Christopher Jette. Michael's current work-in-development is George/Michael, a two-man show with former performer George de la Peña. Michael is former faculty at California Institute of the Arts, Goddard College, Bangkok University, and University of Iowa. He is currently Interim Director of Programming and Director of Asian and Asian American Arts and Culture at the UMass Amherst Fine Arts Center.

Vernon Scott is a graduate of the Juilliard School under Martha Hill and, after graduation, danced with Rush Dance, Feld Ballet, Elisa Monte, Stephen Petronio, Pilobolus, Lar Lubovitch, Mark Morris and, among others, Mikhail Baryshnikov's White Oak Dance Project (also serving as Rehearsal Coordinator) and set his own work Layers on the company. He has appeared in benefits at Alice Tully Hall, The Metropolitan Opera House, and Carnegie Hall. He serves on not-for-profit boards such as The Martha Hill Dance Fund as President (and is Coordinating Producer for the commercially released documentary Miss Hill: Making Dance Matter); and formerly as Vice-President of Full Circle Productions that produced 360° Dance Company. He has held the positions of National Director of Showrooms for Grange Furniture, Inc, National Public Relations Manager for Aga Ranges, Special Events Manager and Executive Assistant to the Artistic Director at Baryshnikov Arts Center, and is currently Assistant Director of Special Events for The Joyce Theater.