MUSICIAN | THE DUNHAM LEGACY REVISITED PROGRAM
Hasan is a multi-percussionist, singer and composer who found his first musical expressions in the tonal arts of the drum. He has studied in the teaching discipline for most of his adult life with such notables as Chief Bey (shekere and bell), Babafeami (Conga), Nana Vasconcelos (berimbau and caxixi), Little Ray Romero (timbales), and Mbemba Bangoura on (Djembe).
Hasan was born in Savannah, Georgia. He has been interested in sound and rhythm from his earliest childhood; later, he expanded this exploration to incorporate voice and the mbira. He is a guardian of the traditions of his ancestry and allows these influences to ground his approach to music.
Over his career, Hasan has nurtured and molded a dynamic and unique vocal ability. A founding member of the Spirit Ensemble and Heritage OP, these associations with kindred spirits have allowed Hasan to mature as a composer. He has penned a collection of works for dance and the media arts, and is a co- writer credit on the film, Brooklyn Babylon. He is a 1998 Ethnic Dance Award Recipient from Dance Giant Steps Inc.
Hasan has a 33-year history in conducting African musical instrument demos, student assembly programs, in-school artist residencies and youth empowerment workshops. He has performed with a number of artists including The Winard Harper Sextet, Snow, Hassan Hakmoum, Zimbabwean Mbira Master Ephat Mujuru, Salieu Suso, Abdullah Ibrahim and Ekaya, The Meditations, VieuxDiop and many more.
The Dunham Legacy Revisited | Artist Faculty
Cleo Parker Robinson is founder and artistic director of the 53-year-old Denver-based artistic institution, CLEO PARKER ROBINSON DANCE (CPRD), leading a professional Ensemble (CPRDE), Cleo II (her 2nd company), a Youth Ensemble, an Academy of Dance, an International Summer Dance Institute, a 240-seat theater, and numerous community outreach programs nationally and internationally. She has received honors and awards from corporate, civic, community, and artistic entities world-wide, bringing CPRDE to myriad organizations and venues for performances, teaching residencies and community engagement programming. A teacher/choreographer and cultural ambassador, she and CPRDE have performed nationwide and throughout Europe, the Caribbean, Asia, and the African continent, with their most recent international tours taking them to Bogota, Colombia in Spring of 2019 and Mexico in Fall of 2019.
Ms. Parker Robinson’s awards and honors include the Colorado Governor’s Award for Excellence (1974), Denver Mayor’s Award (1979), induction into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame (1989), and the Blacks in Colorado Hall of Fame (1994). Recognized in Who’s Who in America Colleges and Universities she holds an Honorary Doctorate from Denver University (1991), an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Colorado College (2003), an Honorary Doctorate of Public Service from Regis University in Denver (2008), an Alumni Award from University of Denver (2021), the 2020 Honorary Degree, Doctor of Humane Letters, Honous Causa from CU Boulder, and was named an Honorary Member of the International Association of Dance Medicine and Science (2021).
In 1991, Ms. Parker served on the task force creating a permanent location for the Denver School of the Arts (DSA), Denver’s first performing arts magnet school, and was subsequently honored In September 2017 at their 7th Annual Fall Gala, in recognition of her long-term commitment to excellence in arts education. She is also co-founder of the National Bahamian Dance Company, based in Nassau. In 2011, Ms. Parker Robinson was voted an Honorary Lifetime Trustee of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, in recognition of her longtime commitment and lasting impact on the Center. In June 2017, she received the highly prestigious DanceUSA Honor Award and in September 2017, the Randy Weeks Arts Leadership Award from the Denver School of the Arts. In March 2023, Ms. Parker Robinson, along with the other four founders of the International Association of Blacks in Dance (IABD), was honored at the White House as the IABD received the 2021 National Medal of the Arts.
Ms. Robinson has served on NEA panels on Dance, Expansion Arts, Arts America, and Inter-Arts panels for the USIS, and for the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts as well as other national task forces, boards, and committees on the arts. In April 1999, she was appointed by then-President William Jefferson Clinton, with Senate confirmation, to serve for four years on the National Council on the Arts, a 14-member panel advising the Chairman of the NEA on agency policy and programs, reviewing and making recommendations on grant applications.
Since 2011, Ms. Parker Robinson has significantly returned to her greatest passion as a choreographer, creating and presenting Dreamcatchers: The Untold Stories of the Americas and the world premiere of her Romeo and Juliet, in collaboration with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. In 2014, Ms. Parker Robinson premiered Reaching to Higher Ground in answer to resurging racial and human rights infractions world-wide. In Spring 2017, she re-staged two works, melding classical and jazz composition with the power, passion and beauty of modern dance – Romeo and Juliet and Porgy and Bess. Fall 2017 saw the premiere of Copacetic: A Tribute to Jonathon “JP” Parker, honoring her late father. In Spring of 2018, she premiered Lark Ascending in collaboration with the Boulder Philharmonic. Her Rhapsody in Black, created in collaboration with CPRD Associate Artistic Director, Winifred R. Harris, premiered at the Newman Center for the Performing Arts, University of Denver. In January 2019, in collaboration with the Denver Brass, she choreographed an innovative interpretation of Bernstein’s On the Town and Spring 2019 saw a collaboration with the Colorado Ballet entitled The MOVE/ment as part of the Tour de Force series at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House, Denver Center for the Performing Arts.
In 2019, she traveled to UMKC, Kansas City, to set a work on the students of CPRDE alum Gary Abbot, entitled Check Cashing Day in tribute to the jazz genius of Bobby Watson and Milt Abel. In August 2021, she premiered Standing On the Shoulders, a work commissioned by the Vail Dance Festival. September 2021 saw the debut of her work Freedom Dance, created in collaboration with jazz icon Dianne Reeves and CPRD co-founder and poet, Schyleen Qualls and in October 2021, she premiered R.I.Power, an original work commissioned by the Colorado College Fine Arts Center in Colorado Springs. Her newest work, Sacred Spaces?, set to an original score by Adonis Rose, Director of the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, premiered in September 2022 at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. As part of its mission and vision to preserve the legacy of Black Dance in America, the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble also proudly holds within its extensive repertoire the works of many of the icons of American dance, including those of Katherine Dunham, Donald McKayle, Alvin Ailey, and Eleo Pomare. Cleo Parker Robinson continues to be dedicated to celebrating the human experience and potential through the Arts and Education. Her life-long vision of “One Spirit, Many Voices” remains strong and steadfast, expanding to welcome, embrace, and sustain all people.
THE DUNHAM LEGACY REVISITED PROGRAM | ARTIST FACULTY
Gelan Lambert, currently a principal artist and assistant to Reginald Yates, is originally from Miami, FL and is of Haitian descent. He received a BFA in Dance from the Juilliard School, where he was awarded The Martha Hill Prize for Excellence in Dance Artistry and Leadership. Also, Mr. Lambert has trained at The Ailey School, Broadway Theater Project, The Joffrey Ballet School, and The School of American Ballet.
Alongside his training, his professional credits include The Martha Graham Dance Company, Sean Curran Company, Fosse (1st National Tour), A Christmas Carol (Madison Square Garden Theater), City Center Encores Golden Boy, NYCOpera’s Alcina/Turandot, and a featured performer for the Jacob’s Pillow Katherine Dunham Tribute conceived and directed by Reginald Yates. Additional performance credits include the Broadway/Nigeria/World Tour in Bill T.Jones’ FELA!, playing the role of JK (rhythm tapper)/Ogungun, which was described by Ben Brantley of the New York Times as “…the brilliant, tap dance artist sui generis.” Mr. Lambert has also presented solo concerts at Jacob’s Pillow, Stella Adler Studio (Resident Artist), Florida International University, City Center Studio, Long Island University, and George Faison Firehouse Theater.
In addition to his performance credits, Mr. Lambert has choreographed works for The Royal Shakespeare Company, The Public Theater, GabeStage, and choreographed Ohio University’s Antony & Cleopatra, which premiered in Stratford-upon-Avon, England in November of 2013 and NYC’s The Public Theater in March 2014.
Mr. Lambert is a 2022 recipient of the Drama Desk Award for Choreography for Paradise Square Broadway and has received awards including being a YoungArts Winner, a Presidential Scholar for the Arts, a National Society of Arts and Letters Winner, and a Jerome Foundation Fellow to Ghana, West Africa.
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CONTEMPORARY PROGRAM | ASSOCIATE CHOREOGRAPHER TO RONALD K. BROWN
Arcell Cabuag is a first-generation Filipino-American from San Jose, CA. He moved to New York City to attend the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, where he was introduced to Ronald K. Brown. Soon after, he joined EVIDENCE, A Dance Company as the first apprentice, became a company member one year later, and has served as Associate Artistic Director since 2004. He currently teaches EVIDENCE repertory at Princeton University and is thrilled to be the newly appointed Youth Arts Academy Director of Education.
Performance credits include: dancing with Camille A. Brown, Mekeda Thomas, “Rock the House” for Paramount Pictures; The Shoji Tabuchi Show (Branson, MO); the Richard Rodgers Centennial Production of “The King and I”, and dance festivals worldwide. Arcell taught classes and performed with EVIDENCE throughout Africa as a US Ambassador with Dance Motion USA. TV Credits include; “Law & Order: SVU’s Choreographed” and “Codorniu Cava” commercial with PILOBOLUS shot in Barcelona and aired on Spanish television. He has assisted Mr. Brown in creating repertory on Philadanco Dance Company, MUNTU Drum and Dance Company, TU Dance, Ballet Hispánico, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Cuba’s Malpaso Dance Company, and served as associate choreographer for the Tony Award winning Broadway and national touring productions of The Gershwin’s’ “Porgy and Bess”.
Mr. Cabuag is proud to serve the dance community as a long standing educator and advocate nationally and abroad. Education, advocacy, and teaching EVIDENCE repertory work includes; Professor of Dance at Long Island University (Brooklyn Campus), Co-Artistic Director of the Restoration Dance Youth Ensemble, Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York University, University of Massachusetts, Boston Arts Academy, Peridance Certificate Program, The Ailey Fordham BFA & Certificate Programs, Florida State University, University of the Arts, Kent State, DeSales University, Coker College, Marymount Manhattan College, and Boston Conservatory.
Arcell is a 2004 New York Dance and Performance ¨Bessie¨ Award winner for his performance and work with EVIDENCE.
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ARTIST FACULTY | THE DUNHAM LEGACY REVISITED PROGRAM
Briana Reed (St. Petersburg, FL.) began her dance training at The Academy of Ballet Arts under the direction of Suzanne Pomerantzeff, studying Ballet, Jazz and Russian Character. Ms. Reed continued her studies at The Pinellas County Center for the Arts at Gibbs High School under the direction of Reginald Yates. She spent her summers studying at The Ailey School as a scholarship student. These summers studying at The Ailey School broadened her view of dance as a vehicle for expression far beyond making beautiful shapes. During high school Ms. Reed joined Dundu Dole Urban African Ballet under the direction of Jai Hinson, which gave Ms. Reed several opportunities to perform. These performances intensified Ms. Reed’s passion for performing. Ms. Reed received a scholarship to study at The Juilliard School and upon graduation she was accepted into Ailey II. A year later Ms. Reed auditioned and was accepted into The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater where she performed as a Principal Dancer for sixteen seasons. Ms. Reed has performed works by Alvin Ailey, Talley Beatty, Ulysses Dove, Lester Horton, Hans Van Manen and Billy Wilson. She has worked with and performed works by world-renowned choreographers Kyle Abraham, Karole Armitage, Robert Battle, Mauro Bigonzetti, Anthony Burrell, Camille Brown, Ronald K. Brown, Lynn Taylor-Corbett, Donald Byrd, George Faison, Dana Foglia, Rennie Harris, Geoffrey Holder, Judith Jamison, Bill T. Jones, Abdul Latif, Jonathan Lee, Alonzo King, Jaquel Knight, Donald McKayle, Earl Mosley, Ohad Naharin, Benoit Swan Pouffer, Redha, Dwight Rhoden, Matthew Rushing, Twyla Tharp, Shin Wei and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. Performing with Alvin Ailey has allowed Ms. Reed to tour in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chilé, China, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Israel, Japan, Mexico, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Scotland, Singapore, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Trinidad/ Tobago and The UK. In 2010 Ms. Reed was honored to perform at The White House in tribute to Judith Jamison and in 2013 was invited by Mrs. Obama to speak to First Lady Michelle Obama’s mentees of the White House Leadership and Mentoring Initiative at the Kennedy Center. Ms. Reed is also a two time recipient of the Key to the City of St. Petersburg, FL. honored for her work in the performing arts and education. Ms. Reed is an ABT ® Affiliate Teacher, who has successfully completed the ABT® Teacher Training Intensive in Primary through Level 3 of the ABT® National Training Curriculum and has successfully presented students for examinations, earning her the distinction ABT® Teaching Fellow. Ms. Reed has taught at The Harlem School of the Arts, ballet at The American Ballet Theater JKO School, Steps on Broadway, Steps Youth and master classes for Educational Performance Tours New York. Ms. Reed currently teaches at Steps On Broadway, as an Apollo Teaching Artist, The Institute of American Musical Theater, Platinum National Dance Competition and company classes for Ronald K. Brown’s Evidence, A Dance Company. Ms. Reed is a licensed Gyrotonic instructor and Yoga enthusiast. Ms. Reed has been honored to perform on Good Morning America, ELLEN, she appears in Carmen and Geoffrey a documentary that chronicles the lives of historic African American icons Geoffrey Holder and Carmen de Lavallade, Mercedes Benz Fashion Week for designer Tracy Reese, NETFLIX The Get Down Directed by Baz Luhrmann, MTV VMAS with Beyoncé, and Saturday Night Live. In 2017 Ms. Reed was chosen to show her work at The Camerata New York Dance Festival performed at the Theater at St. Jean NYC. In 2018 Ms. Reed was a cast member of We Are Here, directed by Steven Hogget with music curated by Nile Rodgers, written by Oliver Award winner Michael Wynne, a four week intensive cast collaborative choreographic endeavor performed at La Mama Experimental Theatre Club renamed The Glitter Loft for performances. Ms. Reed choreographed and was the lead actor in a short film titled The Miracle Twerker directed by Nick Minas screened at The Directors Guild and Steiner Studios which was the official selection for several film festivals and awarded the 2019 National Board of Review Grant. Ms. Reed choreographed Tonya Pinkins’ Truth and Reconciliation: Womyn Working It Out, a collection of seven plays written by and about women directed by Tony Award winning actress Tonya Pinkins performed at The Tank NYC. In January of 2021 Ms. Reed started a beaded jewelry company, Briana Reed Beadz, in which she makes custom high vibrational beaded jewelry using precious and semi-precious gemstones. Ms. Reed was Associate Choreographer for Roders & Hammerstein’s Cinderella Directed by Kenny Ingram. Ms. Reed is currently working as choreographer on a production of Bat Boy The Musical at City College New York, Directed by Nick Minas; as well as a social justice focused residency with Western Washington University Dance Department, Director Susan Haines, to be presented January 2023.
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MUSICIAN | THE DUNHAM LEGACY REVISITED PROGRAM
Don Laurin is a percussionist and melodic storyteller whose heart is firmly rooted in traditions of the African Diaspora. Don has composed music for the University of South Florida, The Cumberland County Playhouse, The Irene Rodriguez Company, and the University of the South Pacific – Fiji. He is glad to be returning to Jacob’s Pillow this summer. @ask_a_griot
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THE DUNHAM LEGACY REVISITED PROGRAM | ARTIST FACULTY
DANCE & BLACK POPULAR CULTURE SCHOLAR
Dr. Halifu Osumare is Professor Emerita in the Department of African American and African Studies (AAS) at University of California, Davis, and was the Director of AAS 2011-2014. She has been a dancer, choreographer, arts administrator, and scholar of black popular culture for over forty years. With a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, and an MA in Dance Ethnology from S.F. State University, she is also a protégé of the late renowned dancer-anthropologist Katherine Dunham and a Certified Instructor of Dunham Dance Technique.
As an artist-scholar, Dr. Osumare has performed, taught, and conducted research not only in the U.S., but also in the African countries of Ghana, Nigeria, Malawi, and Kenya, and recently in Brazil. Her dancing, teaching and writing spans the traditional African to the contemporary African American. She has been recognized as one of the foremost scholars of global hip-hop, publishing The Africanist Aesthetic in Global Hip-Hop: Power Moves in 2007 and, and The Hiplife in Ghana: West African Indigenization of Hip-Hop in 2012, resulting from her 2008 Fulbright Fellowship at the University of Ghana, Legon. She has published numerous journal articles and book chapters on hip-hop, dance, black choreographers, and Katherine Dunham.
Dr. Osumare published her autobiography Dancing in Blackness, A Memoir in 2018 that won the 2019 Selma Jeanne Cohen Prize in Dance Aesthetics and the American Book Award. She also won the Dance Studies Association 2020 Distinction in Dance Award for lifetime achievement in performance, scholarship and service to dance, recognizing her contribution in dance in many arenas.
As a dancer in the 1970s, she was a soloist with the Rod Rodgers Dance of New York City, and is noted particularly as a Choreographer/Director of theater works by poet and playwright Ntozake Shange. After working with Ms. Shange in her pre-For Colored Girls Who’ve Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf tenure in the Bay Area, she later directed Shange’s For Colored Girls, and choreographed her From Okra to Greens—A Different Kinda Love Story, Spell # 7, and Boogie Woogie Landscape for university theater departments and community theater groups. She has also choreographed for San Francisco’s American Conservative Theater, including Miss Ever’s Boys in 1988, August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone in 1989, and Pecong in 1993 for which she won the Bay Area Drama Critics Circle Award for choreography.
As an arts administrator, Dr. Osumare founded Everybody’s Creative Arts Center in Oakland in 1977, and over the next ten years saw its transition into CitiCentre Dance Theatre (CDT), becoming one of the anchor tenet’s in Oakland’s Alice Arts Center, now the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts. She not only became a member of CDT professional dance company, but also helped establish California’s multicultural arts movement. She has been a panelist for the California Arts Council, National Endowment for the Arts, The Pew Center for the Arts, and Haas Creative Fund. Between 1989-1995 she was the Founder and Executive Producer of her national dance initiative Black Choreographers Moving Toward the 21st Century.
Since retiring in 2016 from UC Davis, Dr. Osumare has returned to dance theater, choreographing the acclaimed work, “In The Eye of the Storm.” Subsequently, Sacramento State University dancers came together to realize her vision of the current 21st century social, political, and spiritual crisis, evidenced in the new civil rights movement “Black Lives Matter,” producing her 2019 choreography “Resistance/Resilience.” Like her mentor Katherine Dunham, she has dedicated her life to the intersections of the arts and humanities for a better world.
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GUEST CHOREOGRAPHER | CONTEMPORARY BALLET
Andrew McNicol is a freelance British choreographer noted as a “rising star” (BBC News) and “talented beyond his years.”
Born in Hull, his choreographic work began whilst studying at The Royal Ballet School, where he won the Kenneth MacMillan Choreographic competition. He later completed his formal training with an MA at Central’s Professional Choreographic Programme.
Andrew has choreographed internationally, including for Joffrey Ballet (Chicago), The Royal Ballet (London), Royal Ballet of Flanders (Belgium), Northern Ballet (Leeds), BalletX (Philadelphia), twice for New York Choreographic Institute (New York) and Tulsa Ballet (Oklahoma) among others.
He was the recipient of the 2018 BalletX Choreographic Fellowship and created Requiem, hailed as “powerful and sensitive” (Main Line Times). In 2019 he created Yonder Blue for Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet, receiving critical acclaim; “gives a sense of awesome wonderment” (Chicago Tribune) “A rare gem of a ballet that transcends the here and now” (Lynn Shapiro).
Andrew is a versatile choreographer, alongside creating narrative and abstract modern ballets for the stage, he has also created award-winning dance works for film and site-specific projects, most notably for The London Olympics 2012.
Andrew founded McNicol Ballet Collective (MBC), to forge new artistic collaborations across arts disciplines that use the rich language of ballet to address contemporary themes. MBC has already been hailed as “a daring project from McNicol” (Teresa Guerreiro, Culture Whisper), and “this company is wide awake and ready to go” The Reviews Hub 2021.
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THE DUNHAM LEGACY REVISITED PROGRAM | LEGACY ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
Keith Tyrone Williams is a proud native of East St. Louis, Illinois, and has performed, directed and choreographed throughout the United States and extensively in Europe. As Artistic director, Keith directed, choreographed, and produced “The Ties That Bind”, a riveting theatrical work performed by his company, Innervison Dance Theatre. He has directed Twenty-Six Pebbles and Counting, The Colored Museum, Bubbling Brown Sugar, Once on This Island, Five Guys Named Moe, The Wiz, A Motown Christmas, Little Shop of Horror, and served as choreographer for St. Louis Black Rep, (Raisin, Black Nativity, Sarafina, and Death and King’s Horseman).
As an actor, he co-starred in “The Full Monty” at Stages St. Louis for which he won the prestigious Kevin Kline Award, and his choreography for Sarafina, a musical about South African apartheid, received rave reviews and garnered him another Kevin Kline Award for best choreography. His Broadway, national, and international credits include Once On This Island, Legs Diamond, Five Guys Named Moe(LA Ovation and NAACP nomination) The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber (British Royal Command Performance), Bubbling Brown Sugar, Starlight Express, On The Town, and Katherine Dunham Gala at Carnegie Hall.
He most recently received the honor of Arts Educator of the Year (2018) from Arts and Education Council of Greater St Louis. Keith is also a distinguished recipient of the NAACP Award for his contributions to the cultural arts and Arts -In –Education, Eminent Educator Award/PHi Delta Kappa, African American Heritage Award/Links inc., 2019 Marquis Inaugural Award, and a 2014 St. Louis Regional Arts Commission Fellow.
As an arts educator, Keith was recently featured in I Am East St. Louis Magazine honoring natives who defy the negative stereotypes associated with the city. Keith is very proud to be among the few people certified by Katherine Dunham to teach the world-renowned Dunham Technique and was selected by Katherine Dunham as instructor for Library of Congress documentary on Dunham Technique. Keith holds a BS (Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville), Master of Arts in Directing, MFA/Directing (Lindenwood University).
“To Whom Much is Given, Much is Required!”
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CONTEMPORARY BALLET | ARTIST FACULTY
Since 1999, under the artistic leadership of Stephen Mills, Ballet Austin has emerged as one of the nations’ premiere dance organizations. The Washington Post recognized Ballet Austin as “one of the nations’ best-kept secrets” in 2004. In his inaugural season as artistic director he attracted attention from around the United States with his world-premiere production of Hamlet, hailed in Dance Magazine as “…sleek and sophisticated.” He has led the company through four tours to The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC including their Ballet Across America Festival. The company has performed Mills’ work in New York at The Joyce Theater as well as on tours of Canada, France, Italy, Israel and China.
Known for his innovative collaborations, Mr. Mills has worked collaboratively with such luminaries as Grammy Award-winners Asleep at the Wheel and Shawn Colvin, visual artist Trenton Doyle Hancock, DJ Spooky, and internationally renowned flamenco artist José Greco II.
With over thirty years of experience, Mr. Mills has created more than 40 works for companies in the United States and abroad. His ballets are in the repertories of such companies as The Hong Kong Ballet, Ballett Augsburg (Germany), American Ballet Theater Studio Company, Washington Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet Theater, Atlanta Ballet, Colorado Ballet, BalletMet/Columbus, Dallas Black Dance Theater and Texas Ballet Theater among others. In 1998, he was the only American choreographer awarded Prix d’Auteur at the Rencontres Chorégraphiques Internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis in Paris, France. In 2004 he was awarded the Steinberg Award for choreography at the Festival des Arts de Saint-Sauveur in Montreal. Mills has been honored with the Humanitarian Award from the Anti-Defamation League for his work Light/The Holocaust and Humanity Project as well as the Visibility Award from The Human Rights Campaign. He has served on the Board of Trustees of the national dance service organization Dance/USA. He has also been active as a teacher at the national landmark, Jacob’s Pillow summer dance program.
Mr. Mills has performed with a wide variety of companies, dancing a very diverse repertoire. He was a performing member of the world-renowned Harkness Ballet and The American Dance Machine under the direction of Lee Theodore. He also performed with the Cincinnati Ballet and The Indianapolis Ballet Theater among others. He has danced principal roles in the Balanchine repertoire as well as works by Choo-San Goh, John Butler, Ohad Naharin, Vicente Nebrada, Domy Reiter-Soffer and Mark Dendy.
Mills has been invited to present his work Light/The Holocaust & Humanity Project for Holocaust Remembrance Day at the United Nations in New York. Additionally he has presented a TED Talk about the work and was recently invited to contribute a podcast about this ground-breaking work for the archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. He has been a keynote speaker for a discussion of artistic representation of the Holocaust, the first of its kind in Israel, at the Acco Festival along with representative from Yad Vashem. Mr. Mills has been awarded a Warren Fellowship at the Holocaust Museum Houston.
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