New York University Center for Ballet and the Arts Announces Two Joint Fellowships
The Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University announces new joint fellowships with The Juilliard School and Chelsea Factory supporting works-in-progress from artists Aaron Loux and Christopher Rudd.
The Spring 2023 CBA-Juilliard Fellowship provides Aaron Loux, a Juilliard Dance Division alum, with studio and office space as well as access to NYU’s academic resources while he works with Juilliard dancers to create a piece for the program Moving through Time: Baroque Dances Old and New. Set to music by Jean-Philippe Rameau, it premiered on May 1 at Alice Tully Hall.
The Spring 2023 CBA-Chelsea Factory Fellowship will provide similar in-kind support to Christopher Rudd, a Chelsea Factory Resident Artist. Rudd will have access to CBA’s studio and office space at 20 Cooper Square to develop Witness, a work he describes as a call to action that blends dance with contemporary circus and film. Featuring a team of Black collaborators and dancers, Rudd views the piece as a way to promote a conversation on race in America. It will be presented at Chelsea Factory in the fall.
These new fellowships build on the CBA’s mission to be a place for artists to develop new work and for scholars to explore new ideas. Now in its 9th year, the center has nurtured a community of 175 artists and scholars from around the world. Loux and Rudd join the center’s four 2022-23 fellows, Anurima Banerji, Hope Boykin, Brooke Holmes, and Kara Yoo Leaman, for weekly seminars and events.
About the Fellows
Aaron Loux is a New York City-based dance artist and educator. From 2010 to 2022, he was a member of the Mark Morris Dance Group, performing in more than 40 works by Morris and serving as assistant to the choreographer from 2017 to 2019. He has also performed with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, Christopher Williams, Charlotte Bydwell, and Arc Dance Company. He holds a BFA from The Juilliard School, is a certified yoga teacher, and leads dance and yoga classes for adults of diverse backgrounds, from beginners to professional dancers to persons living with Parkinson’s disease. He is currently pursuing a BA in English at Columbia University.
Christopher Rudd is a Jamaican-born dancemaker whose work is informed by his experience as a queer Black man in dance and transverse ballet, contemporary dance, and circus arts. He is a 2019 Guggenheim Choreography Fellow, the inaugural New Victory LabWorks Launch Artist and the creator of Touché and Lifted for American Ballet Theatre (ABT). Rudd is a resident artist for both Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) and Chelsea Factory, and was named one of American Theater Magazine’s 6 Theatre Workers You Should Know for 2023. As founder of RudduR Dance, he is a two-time Exchange Alumni through the U.S. State Department, having presented his works in the United States, Canada, France, Trinidad & Tobago, Burkina Faso, Ecuador, & Italy. Rudd has created works for the Alvin Ailey School, Duke University, and UNC School of the Arts and received residencies from CUNY Dance Initiative, Vendetta Mathea’s La Manufacture, Tofte Lake Center, Kaatsbaan, and STREB.
About the Center for Ballet and the Arts
The Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University (CBA) is an international research institute for scholars and artists of ballet and its related arts and sciences. It exists to inspire new ideas and new dances and to expand the way we think about the art form’s history, practice, and performance in the 21st century. The Center is made possible by founding support of the Mellon Foundation and ongoing support of NYU and CBA’s Center Circle.
About Chelsea Factory
Chelsea Factory exists to support artists and audiences and collectively navigate beyond the Covid-19 pandemic. With an emphasis on support for New York City-based artists, Chelsea Factory provides highly subsidized creation and presentation space, production resources, and dynamic connections that create transformative experiences for its partners across genres. Chelsea Factory was founded by Jim Herbert, Founder and Executive Chairman of First Republic Bank, with significant support from the First Republic Foundation. As a pop-up project with a finite organizational life, Chelsea Factory remains a collaborative and noncompetitive resource to the partners it serves, as well as a place for New Yorkers to find connection, inspiration, and joy. To learn more, visit ChelseaFactory.org.
About The Juilliard School
Founded in 1905, The Juilliard School is a world leader in performing arts education. The school’s mission is to provide the highest caliber of artistic education for gifted musicians, dancers, and actors, composers, choreographers, and playwrights from around the world so that they may achieve their fullest potential as artists, leaders, and global citizens. Led by President Damian Woetzel since 2018, Juilliard is guided in all its work by the core values of excellence; creativity; and equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging (EDIB). Juilliard is committed to enrolling the most talented students regardless of their financial background.