Artists in Residence | Harkness Dance Center

For 90 years, the Harkness Dance Center has fostered and supported dance innovation …

The 92NY Harkness Dance Center Artists in Residence program provides artists with rehearsal space, a stipend, opportunities to both lead and participate in workshops within our School of Dance and Dance Education Laboratory’s vibrant communities and an opportunity to have their own work showcased during APAP.

The residency was designed to support the creation and performance of new works, giving these artists a place to create, explore and share their vision with the Harkness audience. As we enter a new era, we have also expanded the residency to follow the changing needs of our resident artists and companies. There are now opportunities to develop company/artist specific educational platforms, connect across disciplines with other artists affiliated with 92NY and to forge larger support networks through relationships with companies connected to the Harkness Dance Center.

The Harkness Dance Center Artists in Residence (AIR) program receives funding from the Harkness Foundation for Dance and Howard Gilman Foundation, Inc.

Meet our 2024/25 Artists in Residence

Ephrat “Bounce” Asherie

Ephrat “Bounce” Asherie is a NYC-based director/choreographer, performer and b-girl and a 2016 Bessie Award Winner for Innovative Achievement …

Omar Román De Jesús

Omar Román De Jesús (Bayamón, Puerto Rico) is a queer Puertorriqueño choreographer and the director of the NYC-based dance company …

Omar Román De Jesús

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.

Rachna Nivas

Rachna Nivas (pronounced RUHTCH-NAA NIH-VAAS) is a performing artist, choreographer, educator, community organizer, and activist …

Rachna Nivas

Rachna Nivas (pronounced RUHTCH-NAA NIH-VAAS) is a performing artist, choreographer, educator, community organizer, and activist of Indian classical art with a mission to uphold the authenticity of her artistic heritage while thoughtfully advancing its modernity. She is one of the most accomplished kathak dance practitioners of her generation, called by critics “revelatory” and “charismatic” who “radiates power and grace”. Her work is rooted in elevating feminine consciousness and Eastern philosophies that challenge Eurocentric cultural paradigms. Having risen to principal dancer in legendary master Pandit Chitresh Das’ acclaimed company for 17 years, Rachna is a senior torchbearer of a significant lineage of kathak dance. Today she is growing her solo body of work in a generative chapter of her artistic journey. She is also Co-Artistic Director of Leela Dance Collective and directs Leela’s New York City kathak training center.

Rachna was awarded the prestigious Dance Research Fellowship of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts in 2023 and the NYC-based CUNY Dance Initiative Artist Residency in 2024. Her original works include Reclaiming the Divine Feminine, an embodiment of the wild tantric Goddess Kali, personifying the uncontainable power and paradoxes of feminine wholeness; Unedited, a risk-bound tour-de-force solo highlighting improvisation with live musicians; SPEAK, a cross-genre collaboration bringing together kathak and tap, bridging Indian and African-American artistic heritage, co-created with Rukhmani Mehta, Dormeshia, and Michelle Dorrance; Son of the Wind, a large-scale dance drama on the great epic Ramayana; Meera, the story of a medieval Hindu princess who liberates herself from patriarchy through poetry, song, and dance.

Notable presentations of Rachna’s works include LA’s Broad Stage & Ford Theaters, San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Wolf Trap Performing Arts Center, Green Music Center, Kimmel Center, Maui Arts and Cultural Center, Mumbai’s Royal Opera House, New Delhi’s Epicenter. Her works have been funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, New Music USA, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, California Arts Council, Zellerbach Family Foundation, and Alliance for California Traditional Arts.

As an educator and community organizer, Rachna has trained and mentored hundreds of students of all backgrounds on both the West and East Coasts with a vision to foster the next generation’s lineage-bearers. She is also passionate in engendering a larger sense of pride and reclaiming of Indian artistic tradition amongst the South Asian community. In addition to directing Leela New York’s training center, Rachna has taught in numerous educational residencies, most notably at Verdon/Fosse Legacy Summer Training Program, New York’s Kuperberg Center for the Arts Mosaic Program, New Orleans’ Treme Center, Miami’s Conservatory of Arts, Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, and many more.

2023/24 AIR

Annie Rigney
Roderick George

2022/23 AIR

MeenMoves
Music From The Sole

2021/22 AIR

92NY’s INSIDER article about the performers

Passion Fruit Dance Company
Baye & Asa

2020/21 AIR

92NY’s INSIDER article about this very unique AIR year

Dorrance Dance (educational)
Shamel Pitts | TRIBE

2019/20 AIR

Ivy Baldwin
Kimberly Bartosik
Kazunori Kumagai
Kyle Marshall

2018/19 AIR

Ephrat Asherie
Alethea Pace
Chuck Wilt
Hee Ra You

2017/2018 AIR

Joanna Kotze
Larissa Velez-Jackson
Kensaku Shinohara
Pam Tanowitz

2016/2017 AIR

Adam Barruch
Johnnie Cruise Mercer/TheREDProjectNYC
Netta Yerushalmy
Yin Yue

2015/2016 AIR

Christopher Williams
John Jasperse
Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born
Tina Croll

History

Since 1935, 92NY has been at the forefront of dance innovation—welcoming modern dance legends like Martha Graham, Alvin Ailey, Jerome Robbins and Merce Cunningham to perform, teach and create here.

As part of our commitment to dance and with the support of the Harkness Foundation, 92NY has nurtured talent with artist and dance company residencies and space grants, offering rehearsal space, funding, teaching opportunities and performance venues for major dance talent, including resident companies José Limón Dance Company and the Don Redlich Dance Company in the 1970s.

Harkness is proud of its involvement with major choreographers who have changed the way we see dance and understand the experiences of others, including Pearl Lang who premiered her seminal work The Possessed here in 1976 and Eleo Pomare whose politically-charged work first appeared in the 60s. Both artists continued to perform, teach and create at the Harkness Dance Center with long-standing space grants through the 1990s.

From 2007-2015, Harkness Dance Center resident company Doug Varone and Dancers brought its kinetic energy, technical mastery and innovative approach to dance to 92NY. Varone conceived of and curated the Stripped/Dressed format for the Harkness Dance Festival inviting artists to “strip down” to discuss the creative process before performing works.

For more information, email or call us at 212.415.5552.

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Artists in Residence (AIR)