Guest Artists

QCC Dance hosts world class guest artists who work with our dance majors. Located in New York City, the QCC Dance Program has access to an outstanding range of nationally recognized and currently performing guest artists. Our students work with the same guest artists as students at the strongest BFA programs in the country, and they work with these guests as 1st and 2nd year students. Students have opportunities to perform the choreography of guest artists, take master classes with guest artists, and participate in lecture demonstrations with guest artists. QCC students have performed the work of such notable artists as Jawole Willa Jo Zollar (Walking with Pearl. . . Southern Diaries - a Bessie Award winning piece of choreography), Kyle Abraham (MacArthur Genius Award winner), Tatiana Desardouin (Bessie Award winner) and Paul Taylor. The experience of working with these guests and performing their choreography is integral to their training for a career in dance.

Since 2009, QCC dance majors have performed the work of Robert Battle, recent Artistic Director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. The first year, Battle himself and Erika Pujic set Battlefield on student dancers and his company, Battleworks, performed on campus. Every year since then, Erika Pujic, former principal dancer and rehearsal director for Battleworks, has set a dance by Battle. Working with Pujic, digging into the intricacies, details, and percussive rhythms of Battle’s choreography has been an integral part of the students’ training and of the program.

In addition to the Battle piece, every year, QCC Dance hosts a different guest artist who teaches master classes, gives lecture demonstrations and sets a piece on the students. Recent guest artists have worked in a multiplicity of forms including hip hop, House, Step, Gumboots and  modern dance. This is in part made possible by our partnership with the CUNY Dance Initiative which brings professional NYC dance artists into CUNY Campuses to teach and rehearse in unused studio space. This partnership gives students a chance to make connections with working artists and to investigate different dance forms and different creative approaches.