THE DUNHAM LEGACY REVISITED PROGRAM | ARTIST FACULTY
April Berry, dance director, master teacher, dance educator, and former internationally acclaimed principal dancer with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, was born and raised in New York. Ms. Berry began her professional training in ballet at the National Academy of Ballet and Theatre Arts in New York City under the founding direction of Thalia Mara, also founder of the prestigious International Ballet Competition in Jackson, Mississippi. As a young dance student Ms. Berry was a scholarship student and a company apprentice with the Dance Theatre of Harlem under directors Arthur Mitchell and Karel Shook. Ms. Berry’s professional dance career began in ballet at the age of 17 and she has danced with ballet companies in Switzerland, Italy, Washington, D.C., New Jersey, and Long Island. Berry studied modern dance techniques and jazz dance at the Ailey School in New York, and trained in African Caribbean folkloric and popular dance forms at the Escuela Nacional des Arts (National School of the Arts) in Havana, Cuba.
Ms. Berry has worked closely with many of the most celebrated choreographers and dance artists of the 20th century. She has danced the signature works of Alvin Ailey, Katherine Dunham, Lester Horton, George Balanchine, Todd Bolender, Choo San Goh, Hans Van Manen, Billy Wilson, John Butler, Talley Beatty, and Donald McKayle, as well as in works by other renowned choreographers from the world of ballet, modern/contemporary, and jazz dance.
As a former principal dance artist with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater Ms. Berry travelled the world working under Founding Artistic Director Alvin Ailey and Artistic Emerita Judith Jamison. Ms. Berry has represented the Ailey Company on two Ailey season posters, been featured in several Ailey Company videos and has performed on various television specials including two Kennedy Center Honors programs attended by two American Presidents and has been a guest artist with several dance companies, including the Teatro La Scala Ballet in Milan, Italy. Berry is featured in several notable dance books and publications including Ailey Spirit: The Journey of an American Dance Company by Robert Tracy, Alvin Ailey: A Life in Dance by former The New York Times dance critic Jennifer Dunning, Dancing Revelations by Thomas DeFrantz and The Black Tradition in American Dance by African American historian Richard A. Long, among others.
Ms. Berry has been actively involved in the field of dance education and community engagement since 1992. Ms. Berry is a certified master instructor in Dunham Technique, having successfully completed all certification requirements after extensive work with American dance pioneer Katherine Dunham. Berry has taught at Dance Theatre of Harlem, Charlotte Ballet and BalletMet, and has created award-winning dance scholarship programs and served as an artist-in-residence, guest lecturer, and adjunct faculty member at some of the most prestigious universities around the United States. She has presented at various dance conferences including the 2013 Dance/USA Conference in Philadelphia, two National Dance Education (NDEO) Conferences, several International Association for Blacks in Dance (IABD) Conferences and presented at the 2016 Collegium for African American Dance (CADD) Conference at Duke University and has written for Dance/USA’s online journal From the Green Room, and for The Society of Dance History Scholars publication, Conversations in Dance. April Berry is currently Director of Community Engagement and Education at Kansas City Ballet and on the dance faculty in the Kansas City Ballet School.
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