Dean Allyson Green is a choreographer, visual artist, curator and arts educator. Integrating artistic creative development and education, advocacy for the arts, and service to the local and international community has been the mission of her multi-faceted career. Her creative research has been particularly influenced by two decades of residencies in East and Central Europe, South America, and Mexico; community projects for arts engagement; and ongoing site-specific collaborations with visual artist Peter Terezakis that explore the intersection of art and technology and environmental issues. 

Since stepping into the role in 2014, Dean Green has cultivated a student-first approach that emphasizes a dynamic and open-minded community. Through Dean’s Hangouts and informal lunches, she regularly meets with students to better understand their thoughts, concerns, and visions. As part of her student advocacy, Dean Green has prioritized financial accessibility as a central mission of her tenure. Driven by collaborations with leadership and generous donors, her teams have raised a total of $184 million dollars to support the students and mission of the school.

Recognizing a need for updated facilities to match the school’s world-class programs, Dean Green has shepherded widespread developments and expansions of Tisch facilities. Her leadership steered the construction of 370 Jay Street in downtown Brooklyn, which houses the ITP/IMA, the NYU Game Center, and the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, including the creation of the Clive Davis Gallery. Dean Green also spearheaded the development of performance spaces in the new John A. Paulson Center, including the Iris Cantor Theatre, African Grove Theatre, Theater C, workshops, and studios.

In 2021, in collaboration with President Hamilton and the Tisch external affairs team, Dean Green secured the largest gift in the school’s history from the Lucas/Hobson Family Foundation to establish the Martin Scorsese Institute of Cinematic Arts. The new Institute includes the Martin Scorsese Virtual Production Center (opened Fall 2024), the Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies, and support for student scholarships and internships.

Shaped by her own work as a researcher and scholar, Dean Green has consistently sought enhanced opportunities for creative research at the school. In 2014, she launched the Tisch Initiative for Creative Research to establish best practices for research across all artistic disciplines. Building on this success, in 2023 she would develop the Center for Research and Study, uniting Tisch’s three scholarly departments focused on theory, historical research, and critical and social analysis relevant to art-making.

Dean Green has similarly prioritized pathways to creative funding. In collaboration with Tisch alumna, Dean’s Council member and NYU Trustee Sharon Chang, she established the Future Imagination Fund in 2018 to empower citizen artists to address complex societal challenges through interdisciplinary collaboration. In 2020, Dean Green launched a new resource opportunity, HEAR US, to advance innovative student projects that enrich Tisch’s artistic and scholarly community through unique perspectives and inclusive storytelling.

Other exciting new programs conceived during Dean Green’s tenure include the Collaborative Arts BFA program, Interactive Media Arts BFA program, Global Interactive Media Arts Low Residency MA program, a relaunched tuition free MFA in Dance: Interdisciplinary Research program, the Virtual Production MPS program, and a graduate film initiative for indigenous storytellers.

Dean Green is a full professor in the Tisch School of the Arts Department of Art and Public Policy, with an affiliation in the Department of Dance, and will continue to teach in both areas. From 2012 to 2014, she was the Associate Dean of the Tisch School of the Arts Institute of Performing Arts (IPA) and oversaw all of the performing arts departments, as well as Art and Public Policy and Tisch Open Arts. She began shaping the vision for the IPA with new programming ideas for cross-department collaborations and artists-in-residence, and continued Dean Mary Schmidt Campbell’s decade-long plans for a new performing arts center. She served as the Tisch Global Dean for Curriculum, and led the integration of Tisch study abroad programs into NYU’s global network. Dean Green, in collaboration with the departments, developed new curriculum initiatives that allow Tisch students to study within NYU’s global locations. She also served on the university-wide Space Priorities Working Group and the Distinguished Teaching Award committee.

Previously, Dean Green served as the Chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of California, San Diego, in partnership with the La Jolla Playhouse. She earned the rank of Full Professor in Dance at UCSD in 2003. Previously, she was an Assistant Professor of Dance at San Diego State University from 2001 to 2003. She has developed BA, BFA, MA, MFA, and PhD curriculum that included the launch of a new graduate program in dance theater, as well as new courses for the study of aesthetics and criticism, arts citizenship, arts management and entrepreneurship, art and technology, collective creation, and somatic arts workshops with medical leaders, neuroscientists, and community organizers. 

Additionally, she served as the Artistic Director of Sushi Performance and Visual Art, a contemporary interdisciplinary arts center in San Diego from 2003 to 2005. She was named one of the outstanding arts leaders in San Diego for her work in the direction of national and international festivals, with programming in dance, visual art, music, performance art, spoken word and theater; and for developing cross-cultural arts events in the San Diego/Tijuana border region. Recent projects included the creation of the Cal-Laboratory Kitchen for international artists, the Arts in Action Festival, and the Wonderland International Dance Festival with Martin Wolleson, UCSD ArtPower!. 

Based in NYC from 1986 to 2001, Dean Green established a distinguished career as a performer, choreographer, and graphic designer. She was a noted performer in the companies of Yoshiko Chuma SOHK, Charles Moulton, Doug Varone, Randy Warshaw, and Bill Young, as well as with numerous independent choreographers. A frequent international collaborator, she created projects with choreographers José Navas and Dominique Porte (Montreal, Canada); Meg Stuart (Brussels, Belgium); Ben Wright (London, Great Britain); Iskra Sukarova (Skopje, Macedonia); Cosmin Manolescu (Burcharest, Romania); Olga Zitluhina (Riga, Latvia); and Lux Boreal Contemporanea Danza (Tijuana, Mexico).

As a choreographer, she has created over 100 dance theatre works that have been presented in 18 countries and throughout the United States since 1993. Her bibliography reflects an extensive body of commissioned national and international works in major venues, universities, companies, and festivals, which have achieved consistent critical acclaim and funding from the top foundations. Her company, Allyson Green Dance, has been supported by the Joyce Mertz Gilmore Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, The Fund for U.S. Artists at International Festivals, the U.S. Department of State, The National Endowment for the Arts, the Pew Charitable Trusts, CEC ArtsLink, and 10 fellowships from The Suitcase Fund, with major funding from The Trust for Mutual Understanding and the Rockefeller Foundation. 

In addition to her work in the performing arts, Dean Green maintained a visual arts career as a painter and an award-winning graphic designer for numerous arts organizations and PBS television. She was the creative director of Allyson Green Design from 1983 to 2001, which received awards including Emmys for her design work in print, television, and dance film.  

Dean Green also has extensive training in music, and creates original sound scores, set, costume and projection designs for her dance theater works. In her creative projects, she regularly collaborates with composers, most notably Alan Stones, Paul Dresher, Guy Yarden, and Mio Morales.

Dean Green received a BFA cum laude in Visual Art from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. She was awarded the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship for graduate studies by the National Department of Education and received her MFA in Choreography from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, where she was named the Fine Arts Graduate student of the decade.