Q&A With Courtney Henry, Artist in Residence

The Dance Division’s artists in residence program invites professional artists to spend a semester engaging with students—this year’s is Courtney Henry.

Henry, who is teaching Ballet Lab and the fourth-year partnering classes this spring, spoke with Alexandra Tweedley, the administrative director of the Dance Division.

By Alexandra Tweedley

Tell us a bit about yourself.

I was a writer before falling in love with the power and connection that dance and performance opened up in me. I’m a thinker, educator, mentor, and now mother.

My journey began as a graduate of Dreyfoos School of the Arts in West Palm Beach, Florida. After being invited to perform at the Youth of America Grand Prix Stars of Today/ Stars of Tomorrow Gala as a New York finalist, I got a scholarship to attend the Ailey School for the summer and continued my studies at Fordham. I left my Fordham cohort a few months before graduating to make my artistic home with Alonzo King LINES Ballet in San Francisco, where I danced for seven years and toured and performed in 26 countries. I have had the privilege to create and collaborate in world premieres with international artists including Zakir Hussain, Jason Moran, Lisa Fischer, Jim Doyle, and Jim Campbell. And I was awarded the Princess Grace USA and Chris Hellman Dance awards.

In 2018, I flew to Berlin as a guest soloist with Richard Siegal’s Ballet of Difference and Staatsoper Berlin, and there I began writing again for national and international dance publications, training in theater, and researching.

I’ve since received an MFA from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where I was awarded the president’s award for innovative and creative research, and I also served as an artist in residence.

All of my practices spring from a liberatory imagining through Afrofuturism, where time and space are nonlinear. My most recent obsession is unraveling the ballet form so that more bodies can see themselves inside the practice.

What are your approaches to the Ballet Lab and partnering classes you’ve been teaching at Juilliard?
For Ballet Lab, my approach is scientific in the way of running toward “mistakes” as a way to learn more. My charge is to challenge the dancers with radical new imagery and connections of ballet with the outside world. It’s also to also offer an approach rooted in ease and flow while maintaining rigor. This, I hope, will lead to longevity in their careers and lives.

As for partnering, it’s ultimately a practice in listening. I’m using two pas de deux from the LINES Ballet repertoire to inspire the dancers to make personal choices inside choreography and to also sharpen the skill of world-making. That requires more depth than just the steps, and it attunes them to be more sensitive to the how: how they see, how they give and receive touch, and the essence they are emanating.

How has teaching at Juilliard been so far?
It has inspired so much growth! Which is what I’m always searching for. Teaching here has asked me to clarify my message and intent in asking more of ballet. It has affirmed my desire to work and play with technique as a tool to move the form forward. Working with the genius of the students has deepened my research within LINES repertoire and beyond.

What has excited you the most about being our artist in residence this semester?
There is so much to be inspired by here, from the city to the people to the musicians! I feel really at home being in an arts school setting. I love how the disciplines are spilling into one another just by moving through the hallways. I also revel in the fact that my approach is very different from what the dancers are used to. It’s exciting to stand with them in the gap between what was and what is possible.

Alexandra Tweedley is administrative director of the Dance Division

The Dance Division residency is sponsored by the Kathy Harty Gray Dance Theatre, which was founded by Kathy Harty Gray (BS ’71, dance)