Twyla Tharp Dance: Diamond Jubilee

Since graduating from Barnard College in 1963, Twyla Tharp has choreographed more than 169 works: 129 dances, 12 television specials, six Hollywood movies, four full-length ballets, four Broadway shows, and two figure skating routines. She received one Tony Award, two Emmy Awards, 19 honorary doctorates, the Vietnam Veterans of America President's Award, the 2004 National Medal of the Arts, the 2008 Jerome Robbins Prize, and a 2008 Kennedy Center Honor. Her many grants include the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship. She is a member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Today, ballet and dance companies around the world continue to perform Tharp’s works. In 1992, Tharp published her autobiography Push Comes to Shove. She went on to write The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life, followed by The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together. In 2019, her fourth book Keep It Moving: Lessons for the Rest of Your Life was published. Today, Tharp continues to create.

Alexander Peters was born and raised in State College, PA, and began his early dance training with teacher Nicole Swope. He was later accepted to the School of American Ballet and attended as a recipient of the Andrei Kramarevsky Scholarship. Peters is currently a principal dancer with Miami City Ballet and has performed across the U.S., Canada, and Europe. His extensive repertoire includes works by George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Alexei Ratmansky, Twyla Tharp, Paul Taylor, and many others. Throughout his career, he has originated featured roles in numerous works and has additionally filmed archival segments with the George Balanchine Foundation. He has previously performed with both Pennsylvania Ballet and Kansas City Ballet and has received a Princess Grace Award and the 2010 Mae L. Wein Award for outstanding promise.

Angela Falk is from the San Francisco Bay Area and received her BFA from The Juilliard School in 2017, where she was awarded the Joseph W. Polisi “Artist as Citizen” prize. Since 2018, she has been a member of the CCN Ballet de Lorraine in France. Falk previously danced for Limón Dance Company and the Merce Cunningham Trust, among others, and is very excited to join Twyla Tharp Dance for the 60th Anniversary Tour.

Daisy Jacobson is from Los Angeles and earned her BFA in Dance from The Juilliard School in 2017. Soon after, she joined Benjamin Millepied’s LA Dance Project (LADP), where she performed in new works and repertoire by Millepied, Justin Peck, Kyle Abraham, OhadNaharin, Martha Graham, Bella Lewitzky, Janie Taylor, Madeline Hollander, Gianna Reisen, Jill Johnson, Bobbi Jene Smith, and Or Schraiber. In 2022, Jacobson guested with Twyla Tharp Dance and performed in the revival of In The Upper Room and Nine Sinatra Songs. Since leaving LADP to pursue freelance work, Jacobson has danced in Tharp’s Ocean’s Motion and The Ballet Master for the company’s season at The Joyce Theater and in How Long Blues at Little Island in 2024. Jacobson was also a guest artist at Vail Dance this summer, where she reconstructed and performed Tharp’s 1903 and premiered Justin Peck’s new work, Nine Freights. She will be joining the festival again in 2025. Jacobson is also a part of Millepied’s new production in Paris, GRACE. She is a YoungArts Award winner as well as a Princess Grace Award nominee and a U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts. Jacobson is thrilled to join Twyla Tharp’s 60th Anniversary Tour of 2025.

Kyle Halford is a 2021 BFA graduate from the University of Arizona and received the undergraduate Creative Achievement Award his junior year. Upon graduation, Halford joined Eisenhower Dance Detroit as a company member, where he performed featured roles in new works by Maleek Washington, Hope Boykin, Tamisha Guy, and many other choreographers. In 2023, Halford moved to New York City to pursue his passion and has been working with Twyla Tharp since, including her new work for Little Island last year, How Long Blues. Aside from his work with Tharp, Halford was recently a guest artist with Mark Morris Dance Group and is a company member with Skyla Schreter Dance. A few other highlights this past year include an evening-length work by Alexander Anderson, film projects by Chelsea Thedinga and Dylan Pearce, and a new solo creation by Igal Perry. Halford is ecstatic to be joining Twyla Tharp Dance for this momentous tour in celebration of Tharp’s accomplishments.

Marzia Memoli, from Palermo, Italy, graduated with high honors from the Academy of Teatro Carcano in Milan. Memoli attended the Maurice Bejart School under the direction of Michael Gascard. She was asked to perform by Artistic Director Gil Roman in The Ninth Symphony and Le Sacre du Printemps with the Bejart Ballet Lausanne. In 2016, she joined the Martha Graham Dance Company. Her repertory with the company include Graham’s The Rite of Spring as the Chosen One, El Penitente, Chronicle, Cave of the Heart as the Princess, Satyric Festival Song, Diversion of Angels, Dark Meadow Suite, Act of Light, and Deep Song. She performed works by Hofesh Shechter, Elisa Monte, Bobbi Jene Smith, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Maxine Doyle, Pam Tanowtiz, Sonya Tayeh, Pontus Lidberg, Micaela Taylor, Lar Lubovitch, Andrea Miller, and Jamar Roberts. In 2022, she performed for Twyla Tharp in In the Upper Room and Nine Sinatra Songs at New York City Center. She is a recent recipient of the Fini International Rising Star Award 2023. Memoli is currently working with Twyla Tharp for this 2024/2025 season.

Miriam Gittens was born and raised in Fresno, CA, where she received a diverse dance education at The Dance Studio of Fresno. She earned a BFA from The Juilliard School in 2017. Following graduation, Gittens joined chuthis., a project-based company presenting the work of Peter Chu, and continues to collaborate there. In 2018, she joined Ballet BC under the direction of Emily Molnar. Gittens had the extreme honor of performing works by Aszure Barton, Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar, William Forsythe, Johan Inger, Felix Landerer, Ohad Naharin, Out Innerspace, Crystal Pite, and Medhi Walerski—spanning over four seasons. In 2022, Gittens returned to New York to join Gibney Company, where she is currently an artistic associate. In 2023, Gittens was featured in Dance Magazine's “On the Rise” column.

Molly Rumble is a freelance artist based in New York City. She began studying ballet in her hometown of Virginia Beach, VA, at Ballet Virginia and Virginia Beach Ballet Academy. Rumble continued her dance training at Butler University under the direction of Larry Attaway and graduated cum laude in 2020 with her BA in dance pedagogy. While dancing with Butler Ballet, she performed notable roles such as the principal woman in Gerald Arpino's Light Rain and a soloist in Patrick de Bana’s Falling Sky. In 2021, Rumble joined the City Ballet of San Diego, where she performed principal and soloist roles, including Queen of the Dryads in Don Quixote and Snow Princess in The Nutcracker. She then moved to New York City in 2022 to freelance and has since performed with multiple companies and dance projects. Rumble has traveled to Europe and the U.K. while performing with the Berlin-based ballet collective Ballet Surreal; has guested as a principal with Prague Festival Ballet; and has most recently danced with English National Ballet in Derek Deanne's Swan Lake in-the-round at the Royal Albert Hall.

Nicole Morris, a movement artist from Sarasota, FL, has been passionate about the arts from a young age. She trained intensively with Cheryl Copeland and Sarasota Ballet before earning her BFA in dance from Florida State University. After graduation, Morris moved to New York City, where she began working with Kristin Sudeikis and Jackie Nowicki’s NOW Dance Project. She continues to perform actively with Kristin Sudeikis Dance. As a concert dancer, Morris has performed works by Twyla Tharp, Al Blackstone, Reed Luplau, Lauren Lovette, Troy Schumacher, Hope Boykin, Melissa Hough, Josh Prince, and Cherice Barton. She has also participated in pre-production workshops for several Broadway shows. Morris's additional credits include music videos for Darlingside’s All the Lights in the City, Ben Harper’s Uneven Days and Disappear, and Alison Sudol’s The Runner—all choreographed and directed by Kristin Sudeikis. Morris is so excited to be a part of Twyla’s 60th Anniversary Tour!

Oliver Greene-Cramer was raised in southern Vermont, where he received his early training at the Brattleboro School of Dance and Burklyn Ballet Theatre before obtaining his BFA from the SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance. Prior to Twyla Tharp Dance, Greene-Cramer was a member of Lar Lubovitch Dance Company, Ballet Austin, and Los Angeles Dance Project. In his career, Greene-Cramer has performed works by Twyla Tharp, Pam Tanowitz, Lar Lubovitch, Pontus Lidberg, Christopher Wheeldon, George Balanchine, Merce Cunningham, Anthony Tudor, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, Stephen Mills, Benjamin Millepied, Septime Webre, Salia Sanou, Thang Dao, Janie Taylor, Dimitri Chamblas, and others. Additionally, he has had the privilege of performing in such festivals as Jacob’s Pillow (2019), Danza in Arte a Pietrasanta (2017), Vail Dance Festival (2023), and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (2011, 2013, 2019). Greene-Cramer has also performed in works by artists Rodney McMillian (Against a Civic Death in 2018), Jack Ferver (Mon Ma Mes in 2019), and Madeline Hollander (Devotion in 2023).

Reed Tankersley is from Northern California and earned his BFA from The Juilliard School in 2014. Shortly after, Tankersley joined Twyla Tharp’s 50th Anniversary Tour and has continued to perform with the company in numerous Tharp works, including In the Upper Room, Nine Sinatra Songs, How Long Blues, The Fugue, Brahms Paganini, Ocean’s Motion, and Eight Jelly Rolls. He has also worked as a repetiteur for Tharp’s Baker’s Dozen. In 2019, Tankersley ran away to the circus and toured the country as the lead performer in Cirque du Soleil’s Volta. Tankersley is a YoungArts Award winner and one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch.”

Renan Cerdeiro was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. At a young age, he began practicing in various dance styles at the Escola de dança Alice Arja in Rio de Janeiro, where he did most of his training. In 2008, Cerdeiro was named a finalist at the Prix de Lausanne in Switzerland and was awarded a scholarship to train at Miami City Ballet School. Within two years, he was invited by the company's founding artistic director, Edward Villella, to join the Miami City Ballet as a company apprentice. In 2013, he was promoted to principal dancer by current Artistic Director Lourdes Lopez. Cerdeiro has performed numerous principal roles in works by George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Christopher Wheeldon, Alexei Ratmansky, Liam Scarlett, Twyla Tharp, Paul Taylor, Nacho Duato, Pam Tanowitz, Brian Brooks, Peter Martins, Sir Kenneth Macmillan, Richard Alston, and original works by Justin Peck. Additionally, Cerdeiro has performed leading roles in classics such as Petipa's Coppélia, Giselle, and Don Quixote, John Cranko's Romeo & Juliet, and Alexei Ratmansky’s Swan Lake. Cerdeiro has danced at New York City Center and the Koch Theater in NY; participated in multiple Works & Process projects at the Guggenheim Museum; engaged in the Vail Dance Festival and Nantucket Dance Festival; and performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, the Music Center and Cal Performances in CA, Jacob’s Pillow in MA, the Harris Theater in Chicago, the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, and at the Bolshoi Theater in Russia as part of the Benois de la Danse Gala. Cerdeiro was named one of the world’s “Top 25 Artists to Watch in 2011” by Dance Magazine. Most recently, Cerdeiro has been guesting as a principal dancer and working with Twyla Tharp Dance.

Zack Gonder grew up near Chicago and trained at the Chicago Academy for the Arts under the tutelage of Randy Duncan. He graduated from The Juilliard School in 2018, where he performed works by Austin McCormick, Aszure Barton, Pam Tanowitz, Richard Alston, Gustavo Ramirez Sansano, and Crystal Pite. He recently was in the Broadway show Illinoise at the St. James Theater, as well as its off-Broadway runs at the Park Avenue Armory and the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. He has performed with Pam Tanowitz Dance, Brian Brooks Moving Company, PARA.MAR Dance, Zvi Dance, and the Mark Morris Dance Group. He is very excited to be part of Twyla Tharp Dance.

Constance Volk is a musician, painter, and illustrator. She is a member of Ensemble Dal Niente, the Grossman Ensemble, and the Chicago Wind Project. She has collaborated with Lookingglass Theater, Alarm Will Sound, Eighth Blackbird, and Third Coast Percussion. She has exhibited paintings at Bridgeport Art Center, Zhou B Art Center, Miller Beach Arts and Creative District, and Rendezvous Arts. Her illustrations are featured with “Density Seeds,” an offshoot of the “Density 2036” solo flute repertoire project. Volk is the creator of Connie’s Characters, a series of mix and match coloring books full of wacky weirdos. Her paintings, poster art, coloring books, and music can be found at constancevolk.com.