Alison Manning ’08

About

Alison Manning ’08, 

Director of the Harkness School of Dance at the 92nd Street Y and is the former Executive Director and Co-Producer of The Yard on Martha’s Vineyard. At the 92Y Alison has been tasked with envisioning a new direction for the School and works hand in hand with the Director of Harkness Dance Center Taryn Kaschock Russell and Director of the Dance Education Laboratory Erin Lally to weave artistic excellence in performance, education, and practice throughout Harkness Dance Center. Alison worked with The Yard for 12 years to provide meaningful residency and performance opportunities for national and international performing artists, bringing the arts to the Vineyard community. She created the organization’s unique internship program and helped bring the Making It dance-making curriculum to fruition and into the Vineyard schools. She is the founding Co-Artistic Director and Choreographer of DanceTheYard, The Yard’s year-round professional dance company with creative/choreographic partner and company Co-Artistic Director Jesse Keller.

 

In addition to her administrative and choreographic roles, Alison teaches the Horton technique to all ages and communities, including at the 92Y’s Harkness Dance Center, in the Master’s division of NYU’s Steinhardt School, as part of the ‘Dance Master’s’ program and as a visiting master teacher at Wesleyan University and has guested at Peridance Capezio Center and STEPS on Broadway for the great master Horton teacher Milton Meyers, among others. Meyers was her mentor beginning in the 2007 Contemporaty Program at the School at Jacob’s Pillow through the present day and has played a critical role in her growth as a dancer and educator.

 

Alison also works as a professional freelance artist, currently dancing with Guggenheim awardee David Parker and The Bang Group and with actress Amy Brenneman and director Sabrina Peck; she has danced in the past with The Peggy Spina Tap Company, Xodus Dance Collective, the Next Stage Project, Naomi Goldberg Haas’ Dances for a Variable Population, and Boston-based Kinodance Company.

 

She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Marymount Manhattan College with a BFA in Modern Dance under the Direction of Katie Langan and a Minor in Art History. 

Biography

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