Permanent Guest Faculty

Kelby Brown

KELBY BROWN received his professional training from the School of American Ballet, (the official school of the New York City Ballet). Kelby has performed with Los Angeles Ballet, Pacific NW Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet, State Ballet of Missouri and Ballet Chicago. His other credits include the Metropolitan Opera in Lincoln Center, Cirque du Soleil, Los Angeles Opera and Celine Dion’s Las Vegas Spectacular, “A New Day”.

Some of Mr. Brown’s teaching credits include: American Ballet Theater,(where he is a certified teacher under the ABT National Training Curriculum, Primary through level 5), Alvin Ailey, State Ballet of Missouri, Ballet Chicago, Joffrey Ballet, PACE University and Broadway Dance Center.

Africa Guzman

AFRICA GUZMAN was born in Madrid. She studied with her mother at the “Escuela de Ballet y Danza Española Africa Guzmán” and at the “Escuela del Ballet Nacional de España” directed by Lola de Avila.

She was awarded Honors by both the “Real Conservatorio Profesional de Danza de Madrid” and “The Royal Academy of Dancing” during her training as a dancer. In 2007 she obtained a “Diploma in dance. Specialty: Choreography and Interpretation Techniques of Dance”. She won first price in classical dance at the County of Kent, 1985; at the County of Sussex, 1987; in the “Concurso Nacional de Danza Monteprincipe”, 1987.

In January 1988 she joined “Ballet del Teatro Lirico Nacional” (now “Compañía Nacional de Danza”) directed by Maya Plisetskaya where she danced principal roles in classical and neoclassical repertoire in ballets from Marius Petipa, George Balanchine, Michail Fokine, Alberto Mendez, Ray Barra, etc.

Under Nacho Duato´s artistic direction with CND (june 1990) she was promoted to Principal Dancer and she took part in many of Duato´s creations as well as dancing in most of his pieces until 2010.

In 2003 she joined “Netherland Dans Theater” until 2005 when she returned to CND. Africa has worked as well with numerous choreographers such as Jiri Kylian, William Forsythe, Mats Ek, Ohad Naharin, Paul Lightfoot y Sol León, Hans Van Manen, Jorma Elo, Johan Inger, Angelin Prejolcaj, Olga Roriz, Paul Norton, Nicolo Fonte, Örjan Anderson, Gustavo Ramirez, Meryl Tankartd, André Gingras. Africa has danced all around the world and has been a frequent guest at international ballet galas throughout Europe, Asia, United States, South America, Australia and New Zeland.

She presented her first choreography in Madrid, “Reflejos de un Lied”, for the “Taller Coreográfico of the Compañía Nacional de Danza” in 2000. Since then she has choreographed several works for the “Joffrey Ballet School” and the “Alvin Ailey School” in New York, and the “Conservatorio Profesional de Danza Carmen Amaya” and “Ballet Joven Africa Guzmán” in Madrid.
In 1999 she filmed several episodes for Spanish television (TVE) of the series “Step to step with Nacho Duato”, in 2004 she filmed for Dutch television (NPS) “Kerst met het NDT”, in 2010 she filmed the documentary “Nacho Danse la Danse” by Alain Deymier.

She teaches in “Escuela de Ballet Africa Guzmán” and “Conservatorio Profesional de Danza Carmen Amaya” in Madrid. She has worked as guest teacher for “Joffrey Ballet School” and “Peridance Capezio Center” in NY, and “The Academy of Performing Arts” in Prague. In 2012 she is invited to judge the classical ballet exams for the private dance career ACADE. As Nacho Duato´s assistant she has been invited in 2013 to the Bolshoi Ballet Academy in Moscow.

Valerie Madonia

VALERIE MADONIA started her training with Maris Battaglia at the American Academy of Ballet in Buffalo, NY and continued at the National Ballet School of Canada graduating in 1979. While at the National she was a recipient of the prestigious Peter Dwyer Award for Dance Excellence. She danced professionally for more than 20 years first with the National Ballet of Canada from 1979-1981 (under the direction of Alexander Grant), at American Ballet Theatre 1981-1986 (under Mikhail Baryshnikov) and at the Joffrey Ballet 1987-1997 (under Robert Joffrey and Gerald Arpino).

She began as a member of the corps de ballet and eventually established herself as a leading ballerina with the Joffrey Ballet. Madonia had the honor of dancing with Alonzo Kings Lines Ballet, Armitage Gone! Dance, Complexions Dance, Inc., Configuration Ballet as a company member and as a guest artist with Alaska Dance Theatre, Russian Ballet Theatre, Lemon Sponge Cake Contemporary Ballet, Vilar Center, and at Le Gala des Etoiles numerous times in Montreal and Greece. She performed the role of the Princess in Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival in 2001 and with the New York Philharmonic in 2005, conducted by Alan Gilbert and accompanied by Pinkus Zuckerman. In 1995, Madonia began organizing performances to tour Southwestern Colorado with other professional dancers and established her own project based company, Alpine Dance, Inc. from 1994-2001. Madonia appeared in six PBS Dance in America Specials and is featured in four dance books, most prominently in, Classical Ballet Technique, by G.W. Warren.

In 1997, Madonia helped produce and direct a 5 year performance residency between the Joffrey Ballet and the Telluride Society for Performing Arts. In 2002 she produced the Washington Ballet, Momix and Rythmec summer residencies in Telluride as well.

She has been teaching for 21 years, served on the faculty at the New School University in NYC from 2000- 2003, taught for the Joffrey Ballet School from 1996- 2004 and directed the Joffrey School South Workshop in Georgia from 2003-2010. She teaches biannually in Yokohama, Japan and is frequently a master teacher at The Four Corners Dance Experience and for the Regional Dance America Festivals. She is an adjudicator and master teacher for the Youth American Grand Prix. Madonia has been a guest teacher for The Joffrey Ballet of Chicago, Alaska Dance Theatre, Louisiana Delta Ballet, Colorado Ballet and Boulder Ballet.

She founded the Telluride Dance Academy in 1998, served as the Artistic Director and a teacher at the Academy from 2006-2010. From 2011-2013, she began teaching and directing the newly formed Palm Arts Dance. She currently serves on the Palm Arts Board of Directors. Her choreographic credits include a full length Cinderella, The Nutcracker, Polar Express, Appalachian Spring, solo works for the NYC Dance Now Festival, and for dancers in Colorado Ballet, Ballet West, Dayton Ballet and Boulder Ballet.. Ms. Madonia was the Academy Director, Summer Intensive Director, Pre Professional Division Founder and Director at Colorado Ballet from 2013-2017.

Brian McSween

BRIAN MCSWEEN was born and raised in Charlotte, NC where he began dancing in ballet, tap and jazz at the Charlotte City Ballet. He attended the Joffrey Ballet School for two summers before being accepted into the school, and the Joffrey Concert Dancers under full scholarship. He worked seasonally with Joffrey, ABT, and Grand Rapids Ballet before joining Aspen Ballet Company full time. After two years he returned to the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago where he performed varied roles throughout the repertoire. Brian has also worked with Complexions: A Concept in Dance, has taught around the country and has choreographed for Charlotte City Ballet. He was seen in the Robert Altman film “The Company”, and was the advanced ballet instructor for ChiArts, Chicago’s performing arts high school. He is currently a ballet master with Ballet Memphis.

Meg Paul

MEG PAUL brings a wealth of significant professional experience in ballet and Broadway performance, as well as in teaching at the national level and has worked closely with important dance pioneers and choreographers in the field; from the repertoire and artistic direction of Gerald Arpino and Robert Joffrey, to works by Sir Frederick Ashton, George Balanchine, William Forsythe, Dwight Rhoden, and Alonzo King. Her thirty-year career encompasses a wide range of national and international experience in performance, choreography, directing, teaching, program development, community engagement, and arts management.

From 1983-1994 she was a principal dancer with the world- renowned Joffrey Ballet, including vast national and international touring credits with the company. For Twyla Tharp’s Tony award-winning Broadway musical, Movin’ Out, she served as dance captain and lead performer from 2001-2005. Her extensive credentials are of the highest caliber and her awards include The Princess Grace Award, winner of The International Dance Competition of the Americas, Detroit Renaissance Hero Award, Sue Nine Endowment for Faculty Achievement Award, and the Copperfoot Award.

Co-founder of World Arts Inc., Ms. Paul’s New York City based performing arts agency celebrated a decade of representing and producing tours for national and international companies including Nacho Duato’s Compania Nacional De Danza, Les Ballets De Monte Carlo, Complexions Contemporary Ballet, Les Grand Ballets Canadian, Dance Cuba, Les Ballets Africains, The Washington Ballet, and more.

Ms. Paul has choreographed dozens of original dance works at the collegiate level and for professional dance companies. Her piece, seed, made for the Maggie Allesee Department of Theatre and Dance, was selected for the National American College Dance Association gala performance at The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., 2015.

Trinette Singleton

TRINETTE SINGLETON began her professional career with New York’s Joffrey Ballet in 1965, having received her early training with Harriet A. James in her home state of Massachusetts. She has toured throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe, performing in ballets by notable choreographers such as Joffrey, Arpino, Ashton, Balanchine, Cranko, DeMille, Jooss, and Tudor. She was thrust into national prominence in 1967, appearing in the multi-media ballet, Astarte, created for her by Robert Joffrey. Following her performing years, Ms. Singleton became Ballet Mistress/Teacher for the Joffrey Ballet, as well as Administrative Assistant to Robert Joffrey. She later joined the Faculty and Advisory Board of the Joffrey Ballet School, where she still teaches. She joined Ballet Theatre Pennslvania as Ballet Mistess/Choreographer in 1990, and acted as BTP Artistic Director in 1994. In 1995, she formed Bravo!Dance with Nana Badrena, a faculty member of The Joffrey Ballet School. She also taught in the BFA Program at The New School University in NYC, in 1999. Currently, Singleton is co-artistic director of Repertory Dance Theatre in Allentown, and also serves as a faculty member in the DeSales University Department of Performing and Fine Arts. She has been artistic director of The Joffrey Texas Workshop in San Antonio since 2006, and serves as guest teacher for The Joffrey Ballet in Chicago. She staged Arpino’s Viva Vivaldi for ARB and choreographed Capriccios (2012) and Dreams Interrupted (2014) on the company.

William Whitener

WILLIAM WHITENER performed worldwide and on Broadway with The Joffrey Ballet, Twyla Tharp Dance, Bob Fosse’s Dancin’, New York City Opera and Martha Clarke’s Garden of Earthly Delights. He choreographed over sixty dances for Boston Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Kansas City Ballet, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal, Ballet Hispanico, Seattle Repertory Theater, Seattle Opera and John Curry’s Ice Theatre. He has also created dances for stage and television for Ann Reinking, Tommy Tune, Bill Irwin and Faith Prince and staged the debut of American Ballroom Theater at The Kennedy Center and BAM. Mr. Whitener has set Twyla Tharp’s ballets in the U.S and France and assisted Mr. Robbins with pre-production for Jerome Robbins’ Broadway. He served as Artistic Director for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal and Kansas City Ballet. He was an evaluator for the International Ballet Competition in Jackson, Mississippi, a jury member of Benois de la Danse and has served on a variety of panels including the NEA and Pew Charitable Trust Fund. He has taught ballet, modern dance and composition at Harvard University Summer Dance, Cornish College of the Arts, University of Washington, Pacific Northwest Ballet and was the Director of Dance at Concord Academy.

Robert Battle

ROBERT BATTLE became artistic director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in July 2011 after being personally selected by Judith Jamison, making him only the third person to head the Company since it was founded in 1958. Mr. Battle has a long-standing association with the Ailey organization.

A frequent choreographer and artist in residence at Ailey since 1999, he has set many of his works on Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Ailey II, and at The Ailey School. The Company’s current repertory includes his ballets Ella, In/Side, Mass, No Longer Silent, and The Hunt. In addition to expanding the Ailey repertory with works by artists as diverse as Kyle Abraham, Mauro Bigonzetti, Ronald K. Brown, Rennie Harris, and Paul Taylor, Mr. Battle has also instituted the New Directions Choreography Lab to help develop the next generation of choreographers.

Mr. Battle’s journey to the top of the modern dance world began in the Liberty City neighborhood of Miami, Florida. He showed artistic talent early and studied dance at a high school arts magnet program before moving on to Miami’s New World School of the Arts, under the direction of Daniel Lewis and Gerri Houlihan, and finally to the dance program at The Juilliard School, under the direction of Benjamin Harkarvy, where he met his mentor, Carolyn Adams. He danced with The Parsons Dance Company from 1994 to 2001, and also set his choreography on that company starting in 1998. Mr. Battle then founded his own Battleworks Dance Company, which made its debut in 2002 in Düsseldorf, Germany, as the U.S. representative to the World Dance Alliance’s Global Assembly. Battleworks subsequently performed extensively at venues including The Joyce Theater, Dance Theater Workshop, American Dance Festival, and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival.

Mr. Battle was honored as one of the “Masters of African-American Choreography” by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 2005, and he received the prestigious Statue Award from the Princess Grace Foundation-USA in 2007. He has honorary doctorates from The University of the Arts and Marymount Manhattan College. Mr. Battle was named a 2015 Visiting Fellow for The Art of Change, an initiative by the Ford Foundation. He is a sought-after keynote speaker and has addressed a number of high-profile organizations, including the United Nations Leaders Programme and the UNICEF Senior Leadership Development Programme.

Larry Keigwin

LARRY KEIGWIN is a native New Yorker and choreographer who has danced his way from the Metropolitan Opera to downtown clubs to Broadway and back. He founded KEIGWIN + COMPANY in 2003 and as Artistic Director, Keigwin has led the company as it has performed at theaters and dance festivals throughout New York City and around the world.

KEIGWIN + COMPANY presents Keigwin’s electrifying brand of contemporary dance on a myriad of stages including, The Kennedy Center, The Joyce Theater, Works & Process at the Guggenheim, New York City Center, among others. Since his company’s premiere performance at Joyce Soho in 2003, Keigwin has created dozens of dances for himself and his dancers, as well as for the Royal New Zealand Ballet, The Martha Graham Dance Company, New York Choreographic Institute, The Juilliard School, Vail International Dance Festival, and many others.

His work in musical theater includes choreography for the 2011 production of the musical Tales of the City at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, and the off-Broadway production of Rent, for which he received the 2011 Joe A. Callaway Award from the Stage Directors & Choreographers Foundation. In 2013, Keigwin choreographed the Broadway musical If/Then, starring Idina Menzel. He was most recently selected as one of the first choreographers to be commissioned by Paul Taylor’s American Modern Dance.

Keigwin has designed and choreographed special events including Fashion’s Night Out: The Show in New York, which was produced by Vogue magazine and featured more than 150 of the industry’s top models. Keigwin has also mounted 11 versions of Bolero, his acclaimed large-scale community project that has been commissioned by communities across the country. Keigwin has created Keigwin Kabaret, a fusion of modern dance, vaudeville, and burlesque presented by the Public Theater at Joe’s Pub and by Symphony Space.

As a dancer, Keigwin has danced at the Metropolitan Opera in Doug Varone’s Le Sacre Du Printemps and Julie Taymor’s The Magic Flute, in addition to his work with Mark Dendy (receiving a Bessie Award in 1998 for his performance in Dream Analysis), Jane Comfort, John Jasperse, Doug Elkins, Zvi Gotheiner, and David Rousseve. He appeared in the Broadway show Dance of the Vampires, the off-Broadway show The Wild Party and the Julie Taymor, Oscar nominated film Across the Universe.

He is a co-founder of the Green Box Arts Festival in Green Mountain Falls, Colorado, a multi-disciplinary festival designed to increase cultural opportunities in the region, as well as provide creative residencies to young, emerging choreographers. Keigwin is a member of the Stage Directors & Choreographers Society.

Clifford Williams

Clifford Williams trained School of American Ballet , The Ailey School and The Juilliard School . Williams joined Complexions Contemporary Ballet in 2003 after dancing with the Dance Theatre of Harlem from 2001-2003. Williams  joined Compañia Nacional De Danza under Nacho Duato as a principal in 2007 before returning to Complexions as a principal dancer in 2009 , after which he became an artist-in-residence and then eventually Rehearsal Director. Williams has set numerous Dwight Rhoden works on schools and has assisted the choreographer on many projects for professional companies and So You Think You Can Dance. Williams’ television credits include Debbie Allen’s The Hot Chocolate Nutcracker(BET) Dance Dreams(Netflix) Flesh and Bone (Starz) and In The Heights (motion picture)