The Juilliard School has named Melissa Toogood as dean and director of its dance division, the school announced on Tuesday. Toogood, a Bessie Award-winning dancer who was a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in its final years, succeeds Alicia Graf Mack, who is to become the artistic director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Toogood, who is Australian and lives in Sydney, will begin on July 1.
“I’ve had many types of experiences and worked with many kinds of dancers and companies, Toogood, 43, said in a phone interview. “I’ve always been reaching for new knowledge.”
Damian Woetzel, president of the Juilliard School, called her “one of the extraordinary artists of our time” and said: “I’ve watched her stage, I’ve watched her teach, I’ve watched her develop dancers at all levels, but really focusing on the younger dancers. And I have seen her develop her own leadership in that way that is inspiring.”
Toogood, who started teaching at the Cunningham school at the choreographer’s request, continued to dance in New York after Cunningham’s company performed for the last time in 2011. “I had a really intense freelance career, which is challenging and uncertain, and I hope to prepare young people for all of those outcomes,” she said. “Because I can speak to it personally.”
Toogood stages Cunningham dances and has performed with companies and choreographers including Kyle Abraham, Michelle Dorrance, Jamar Roberts and Pam Tanowitz, with whom she has had an 18-year collaboration.
At Juilliard, she hopes to broaden her students’ understanding of the roles of art and artists. “I really think of art as an act of service, whether to an idea or a community or a work,” she said. “If a choreographer just makes you walk across the back of the room, they wouldn’t put that in a piece if it wasn’t important. I want them to leave as comprehensive thinkers and understanding that there are no small parts and that kind of connection to each other and the work and every role you play, whether it’s seemingly important to you at that time or not, is important.”
When Toogood was a student at New World School of the Arts in Miami, its dean, Daniel Lewis, told her that she would “make a great dean one day,” she said. “At the time, I was really annoyed. I was like, I want to be a dancer. I want to have a career.”
But the idea had been planted. “I’ve always been ambitious,” Toogood said, “but over the last few years, I found myself being more ambitious for others.”
In additional faculty and leadership news at Juilliard, Mario Alberto Zambrano, currently the associate director of the dance division, will become associate dean and director. Carla Körbes, a leading dancer with New York City Ballet and Pacific Northwest Ballet, will start a new position as ballet chair and join the faculty full time. And Jamar Roberts, the choreographer and former Ailey dancer, will join the department as distinguished visiting faculty and serve as an Arnhold Creative Associate at large.
For Toogood, who will relocate to New York City with her husband and 7-year-old son, the new job is a homecoming.
“I spent my whole adult life and career in America; I feel like an American artist,” she said. “I want the students to be able to go wherever in the world that they are able to contribute and to be themselves. But Juilliard is right for me now.”
Gia Kourlas is the dance critic for The Times. She writes reviews, essays and feature articles and works on a range of stories.
The post Melissa Toogood Named New Director of Juilliard’s Dance Division appeared first on New York Times.
