Launched in 2011, City Center’s Choreography Fellowship supports choreographers at critical stages in their careers. The Fellowship, which provides three choreographers with a creative home at City Center for one year, reflects City Center’s long history of nurturing dance makers from George Balanchine to Christopher Wheeldon.

Each Choreography Fellow receives 150 hours of free rehearsal time in City Center’s studios, a generous stipend, and administrative support for their fundraising, technology, and marketing needs. We help our Choreography Fellows develop the tools to sustain their companies long into the future—a future that often ends up being on City Center’s mainstage. Several Fellows have returned to create new works for Fall for Dance and choreograph shows at Encores! Off-Center.

2020-2021 Choreography Fellow

HELEN SIMONEAU
Helen Simoneau, originally from Rimouski, Québec, is the Artistic Director and Founder of Helen Simoneau Danse. Described as “a choreographer-on-the-rise” by Dance Magazine, Simoneau creates work that exists at the intersection of intent and impact. Her commissions include The Juilliard School, Oregon Ballet Theatre, the American Dance Festival, UNC School of the Arts, The Yard, Springboard Danse Montréal, The Ailey School, the University of the Arts (PA), and the Swiss International Coaching Project (SiWiC) in Zurich. Simoneau was a resident artist at Baryshnikov Arts Center, NYU/Tisch, Bates Dance Festival, New York Dance Lab, The National Choreographic Center in Akron, and the University of Buffalo via the Creative Arts Initiative. She has received fellowships from The Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU, Ailey’s New Directions Choreography Lab, the Bogliasco Foundation, and twice from the North Carolina Arts Council. Her work has been presented nationally and internationally at The Guggenheim Museum (NY), Dance Place (DC), Joyce SoHo (NY), Tangente (Montréal), the Aoyama Round Theatre (Tokyo), the LIG Art Hall Busan (South Korea), Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out (MA), PACT-Zollverein in Essen (Germany), Athens International Dance Festival (Greece), and the Shanghai Dance Festival (China). Simoneau was awarded first place for choreography at the Internationales Solo-Tanz-Theater Festival in Stuttgart, Germany.

Past Fellows
2011–2012: Emery LeCrone, Andrea Miller, Shen Wei
2012–2013: Brian Brooks, Beth Gill, Pontus Lidberg
2013–2014: Camille A. Brown, Gabrielle Lamb, Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener
2015–2016: Kyle Abraham, Jessica Lang, Reggie Wilson
2016–2017: Michelle Dorrance, Liz Gerring, Pam Tanowitz
2017–2018: Gemma Bond, Ronald K. Brown, John Heginbotham
2018-2020: Ephrat Asherie, Caleb Teicher, Netta Yerushalmy

City Center’s Choreography Fellowship program is supported by the Mertz Gilmore Foundation and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.