Janet Eilber

Artistic Director, Martha Graham Dance Theater

Janet Eilber (Artistic Director) has been the Company’s artistic director since 2005. Her direction has focused on creating new forms of audience access to Martha Graham’s masterworks. These initiatives include contextual programming, educational and community partnerships, use of new media, commissions from today’s top choreographers and creative events such as the Lamentation Variations. Earlier in her career, Ms. Eilber worked closely with Martha Graham. She danced many of Graham’s greatest roles, had roles created for her by Graham, and was directed by Graham in most of the major roles of the repertory. She soloed at the White House, was partnered by Rudolf Nureyev, starred in three segments of Dance in America, and has since taught, lectured, and directed Graham ballets internationally. Apart from her work with Graham, Ms. Eilber has performed in films, on television, and on Broadway directed by such greats as Agnes deMille and Bob Fosse and has received four Lester Horton Awards for her reconstruction and performance of seminal American modern dance. She served as Director of Arts Education for the Dana Foundation, guiding the Foundation’s support for Teaching Artist training and contributing regularly to its arts education publications. Ms. Eilber is a Trustee Emeritus of the Interlochen Center for the Arts. She is married to screenwriter/director John Warren, with whom she has two daughters, Madeline and Eva.

Eduardo Vilaro

Artistic Director, Ballet Hispanico

Eduardo Vilaro (Artistic Director & CEO) joined Ballet Hispánico as Artistic Director in August 2009, becoming only the second person to head the company since its founding in 1970. In 2015, Mr. Vilaro added the role of Chief Executive Officer to his responsibilities. He has been part of the Ballet Hispánico family since 1988 as a dancer and educator until 1996. After completing his master’s in interdisciplinary arts at Columbia College Chicago, he 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. Mr. Vilaro has infused Ballet Hispánico’s legacy with a bold and eclectic brand of contemporary dance that reflects America’s changing cultural landscape. Born in Cuba and raised in New York from the age of six, he is a frequent speaker on the merits of the intersectionality of cultures and the importance of nurturing and building Latinx leaders. Mr. Vilaro’s own choreography is devoted to capturing the Latin American experience in its totality and diversity, and through its intersectional points with other diasporas and ability to spurn new dialogues about what it means to be an American. He has created more than 40 ballets during his career for Luna Negra, Ballet Hispánico and commissions from the Ravinia Festival, the Chicago Sinfonietta, the Grant Park Festival, the Lexington Ballet and the Chicago Symphony. In 2001, he was a recipient of a Ruth Page Award for choreography. Mr. Vilaro 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, Mr. Vilaro received the West Side Spirit’s WESTY Award, was honored by WNET for his contributions to the arts, and, recently 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. He is a well-respected speaker on such topics as diversity, equity and inclusion in the arts. 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 can initiate ongoing conversations about the arts, expression, identity, and the meaning of community.

Jessica Tong

Associate Artistic Director, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago

Recently named Associate Artistic Director of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Jessica was raised in Salt Lake City where she attended the University of Utah and danced as a member of Utah Ballet. Tong went on to dance with BalletMet, Eliot Feld’s Ballet Tech, and Hubbard Street 2 before joining the main company for 11 years and becoming Rehearsal Director upon retirement. Throughout her career, Jessica was fortunate to perform locally and internationally in works by Hubbard Street founder, Lou Conte, andcontemporary greats Nacho Duato, Mats Ek, Jiri Kylian, and Ohad Naharin, to name a few. She has also originated roles in works by Aszure Barton, Alejandro Cerrudo, Jorma Elo, Victor Quijada, and Robyn Mineko Williams, among others.

Named one of Dance Magazine’s Top 25 to Watch in 2009, Jessica has served on the Dance Ambassador committee for Dance for Life Chicago, and in 2013 had the honor of traveling to North Africa as part of Dance Motion USA, a program sponsored by the US Department of State and Brooklyn Academy of Music that facilitated cross-cultural exchange through dance. Tong has set works by Alejandro Cerrudo and Penny Saunders, and since 2017 has assisted choreographers like Kyle Abraham, Brian Brooks, Rena Butler, and Florian Lochner on new creations for Hubbard Street. In 2020-2021 Tong is overseeing Hubbard Street’s first ever all-virtual Season 43, presenting five new dance films free of charge to online audiences everywhere.

Kyle Abraham

Artistic Director, A.I.M by Kyle Abraham

Recently featured in O, The Oprah Magazine, Kinfolk and Vogue Italia, 2018 Princess Grace Statue Award recipient and Lincoln Center Education Artist in Residence, Kyle Abraham is a 2013 MacArthur Fellow and 2016 Doris Duke recipient who began his dance training at the Civic Light Opera Academy and the Creative and Performing Arts High School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He continued his dance studies in New York, receiving a BFA from SUNY Purchase and an MFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, an honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from Washington Jefferson College, and is currently serving as a visiting professor in residence at UCLA. Mr Abraham is the founding Artistic Director of A.I.M, an American contemporary dance company, created in honor his history, experiences and artistic interests.

In November 2012, Abraham was named the newly appointed New York Live Arts Resident Commissioned Artist for 2012–2014. Just one month later, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater premiered Abraham’s newest work, Another Night, at New York’s City Center to rave reviews.

Rebecca Bengal of Vogue writes, “What Abraham brings to Ailey is an avant-garde aesthetic, an original and politically minded downtown sensibility that doesn’t distinguish between genres but freely draws on a vocabulary that is as much Merce and Martha as it is Eadweard Muybridge and Michael Jackson.” That same year, Abraham was named the 2012 Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award recipient and 2012 United States Artist Ford Fellow, before serving as a choreographic contributor for Beyoncé’s 2013 British Vogue cover shoot.

Abraham received a prestigious Bessie Award for Outstanding Performance in Dance for his work in The Radio Show, and a Princess Grace Award for Choreography in 2010. The previous year, he was selected as one of Dance Magazine’s 25 To Watch for 2009, and received a Jerome Travel and Study Grant in 2008.

In addition to performing and developing new works for A.I.M in 2019, he also choreographed and premiered The Bystander for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Only The Lonely for Paul Taylor American Modern Dance Company and Ash, a new solo work for American Ballet Theater principle, Misty Copeland to rave reviews.

Other commissioned works include; Untitled America, a 3-part commissioned work for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 2016, The Runaway for New York City Ballet in 2018, The Serpent and The Smoke, a pas de deux for himself and former New York City Ballet Principal Dancer Wendy Whelan as part of Restless Creature and choreographed for the feature-length film, The Book of Henry with acclaimed director, Colin Trevorrow.

In 2011, OUT Magazine labeled Abraham as the “best and brightest creative talent to emerge in New York City in the age of Obama.”

Victor Quijada

Artistic Director, RUBBERBAND

In 18 years, Victor Quijada and his RUBBERBAND have not only redefined breakdance codes within an institutional context and enlivened the Quebec dance scene, but have opened the way for new creators. Armed with a technique he conceived for dancers, the RUBBERBAND Method – an electrifying vocabulary combining the energy of Hip Hop, the refinement of classical ballet, and the angular quality of contemporary dance – and some 40 creations and collaborations in Canada and abroad behind him, Victor Quijada has always continued to evolve and innovate throughout his prolific career.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, the child of Mexican parents, Victor first danced in the b-boying circles and hip hop clubs of his native city. He trained with Rudy Perez from 1994 to 1996, then moved to New York City to join THARP! After spending three years with that company and following a stint with Ballets Tech, in 1999, he came to Montreal to join Les Grands Ballets canadiens in 2000. In 2002, he founded RUBBERBAND, throwing himself into deconstructing the choreographic principles he had learned by blending them with the raw ideology of his street dance origins. His creations – numerous short works and 15 full-length productions – are distinguished by a powerful theatricality, the energy of improvisation, and certain codes of film language, the whole sculpted with an incomparable precision of movement.

For several years now, Victor has taught the RUBBERBAND Method throughout the world in workshops and internships for many dance companies, dance schools, and universities, as well as on a yearly basis: in his company’s annual workshop; at the Académie du Domaine Forget in Charlevoix every summer; and in his classes at the Glorya Kaufman School of Dance at the University of Southern California (USC). As guest choreographer, he has created new works for dance and circus companies; notably in return commissions for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Pacific Northwest Ballet, and Scottish Dance Theatre.

Besides his stage productions, Victor has been involved in almost a dozen dance films, as director, choreographer, or dramaturge. His short film, Hasta La Próxima, was a finalist at the American Choreography Awards in 2004. He also choreographed the music videos “Man I Used to Be” by k-os, “La Garde” by Alexandre Désilets, and Elton John’s “Blue Wonderful”. His Gravity of Center – The Movie won Best Experimental Short at the CFC Worldwide Short Film Festival of 2012, among other awards, and was shown at several exhibitions and national and international festivals.

In the area of peer recognition, Victor Quijada was artist-in-residence at Usine C (2004) and at Place des Arts (2007-2011), and has won many awards, including Britain’s National Dance Award for Outstanding Modern Repertory (2003), the Bonnie Bird North American Award (2003, U.K.), the Peter Darrell Choreography Award (2003, U.K.), the International Touring Award of the Canadian Dance Alliance (2012), and two awards from the Princess Grace Foundation-USA (Choreography Fellowship, 2010; Work in Progress Residency, 2016).

In December 2017, Victor Quijada received the Award for Cultural Diversity at the Prix de la danse de Montreal and was in 2019 among the four finalists for the Charles-Biddle Prize, instigated by Culture pour tous and the Ministère de l'Immigration, de la Francisation and Inclusion (MIFI).

Jennifer Stahl

Editor in Chief, Dance Magazine

Jennifer Stahl is Dance Magazine’s editor in chief and Dance Media’s content director. A former senior editor of Pointe, she has also written for The Atlantic, Runner’s World and other publications. She holds a BFA in dance and journalism from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she performed work by such choreographers as Karole Armitage and David Dorfman. As a dancer, she performed for California’s Peninsula Ballet Theatre, Israeli choreographer Gali Hod and Cirque du Soleil’s 25th-anniversary celebration. She has also served as a judge for Youth America Grand Prix, the Capezio A.C.E. Awards, on the panel of the New York City Dance Alliance Foundation and as an adjudicator for the American College Dance Association.