Robert Garland was a member of the Dance Theatre of Harlem Company achieving the rank of principal dancer. After creating a work for the DTH School Ensemble, Arthur Mitchell invited Robert Garland to create a work for The Dance Theatre of Harlem Company and appointed him the organization’s first Resident Choreographer. He was also Director of the Professional Training Program of the DTH school, and the organization’s webmaster. In addition to choreographing several ballets for DTH, Mr. Garland has also created works for New York City Ballet, Britain’s Royal Ballet, Oakland Ballet and many others. His commercial work has included music videos, commercials and short films, including the children’s television show Sesame Street, a Nike commercial featuring New York Yankee Derek Jeter, the NAACP Image Awards, a short film for designer Donna Karan, and the “Charmin Cha-Cha” for Proctor and Gamble. Mr. Garland holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from the Juilliard School in New York City. Mr. Garland is currently the Dance Theatre of Harlem School Director as well.

For a half century, choreographer William Forsythe has explored the boundaries of classical and contemporary movement, collaborating with dancers, musicians, designers, and other artists to create some of the most innovative work in contemporary performance. Born in New York, Forsythe danced with The Joffrey Ballet before joining Stuttgart Ballet, where he was appointed resident choreographer in 1976. Over the next seven years, he created new works for the Stuttgart ensemble and ballet companies in Munich, The Hague, London, Berlin, Frankfurt, Paris, New York, and San Francisco. In 1984, he began a 20-year tenure as director of Frankfurt Ballet, where he created works such as Artifact, Impressing the Czar, and Eidos:Telos. His early choreography extended and accelerated traditional ballet movement, an electrifying leap forward that had a profound and lasting impact on contemporary ballet. Forsythe’s works have been performed by ballet companies around the world. After the closure of Frankfurt Ballet in 2004, he established The Forythe Company, running that company until 2015. He is currently a professor at the University of Southern California’s newly created Glorya Kaufman School of Dance.