Singer-songwriter Brendan Urie had a request: He wanted to begin his band Panic! At The Disco’s “Sad Clown” music video with a pony step. Choreographer Monika Felice Smith was happy to oblige—and to take the absurd, over-the-top vibe Urie was going for to an even more elevated extreme. The resulting video features dancers in big […]

Jack Wolff works double duty as an outstanding demi-soloist at Houston Ballet and a rising choreographer. Whether he’s dancing a lead in Stanton Welch’s Maninyas or making one of his own ballets, Wolff dazzles. It’s hard to separate the dancer from the dance as Wolff’s space-slicing­ precision and expansive movement quality also inform his dancemaking. […]

Zoï Tatopoulos’ choreography gets called a lot of things, but the one label that she keeps hearing is “alien.” As seen in her choreography for FKA twigs’ 2024 music video “Eusexua,” Tatopoulos’ approach to dance—writhing, crawling, contorting, and entirely mesmerizing—is challenging the possibilities of the body in commercial choreography. Role: Independent choreographer, represented by McDonald/Selznick […]

When Hope Boykin appeared on the cover of Dance Magazine in 2023, it was a longtime dream fulfilled. But it played out a bit differently than the choreographer, who for 20 years was one of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s most recognizable performers, had long imagined. In her cover photo, rather than dancing, she sits […]

Renowned multi-hyphenate dance and theater artist Lynne Taylor-Corbett died on January 12, 2025, at age 78. For decades, her presence in the dance, musical theater, and entertainment industries was substantial and constantly evolving. She tailored her movement style to ballet companies, modern dance groups, Broadway shows, hit movies, and commercials. The through line in her […]

Yet since transitioning from primarily a dance artist to primarily a choreographic artist, I’ve found my collaborators and mindset shifting from week to week. Going on the road to work on multiple projects a year, living out of a suitcase, isn’t the easiest lifestyle. You are perpetually encountering new artists and spaces. With that comes the dreaded impostor syndrome: Am I experienced enough? How will people receive what I’ve created? Will the dancers connect with what I’m building? Those questions had been holding me hostage.

Dance was inescapable in my childhood. My parents are dance teachers and ran a school out of our New Jersey home for more than 40 years. When I was old enough to answer the phone, instead of “Blackstone residence,” I was instructed to say “STUDIO!” Photos from an early ’90s family trip reveal my dad proudly wearing a T-shirt that says “Dance or Die—New York City.” I remember feeling embarrassed that he was wearing something that so loudly proclaimed his love of dance to all the other “normal” families.

Since 1956, the annual song competition, a sequined spectacle of original songs from member countries of the Euro­pean Broadcasting Union, has launched Abba, Celine Dion, and Riverdance, among other memorable acts. While Eurovision has long been immensely popular in Europe, until recently it has been much less widely known in the U.S.