Brian Brooks

Brian Brooks

A Guggenheim Fellow in Choreography, Brian Brooks recently completed a Mellon Foundation Creative Artist Fellowship at the University of Washington, and three years as first-ever Choreographer in Residence at Chicago's Harris Theater for Music and Dance, creating dances for Hubbard Street Dance, Miami City Ballet, and others. His New York City-based group, the Moving Company, has been presented by venues including The Joyce Theater, NY City Center, Jacob’s Pillow, the American Dance Festival, and BAM’s Next Wave Festival. From 2012-2019, Brooks created multiple duet productions in which he performed alongside NYC Ballet Associate Artistic Director and former principal dancer Wendy Whelan, accompanied by the Grammy-nominated string quartet Brooklyn Rider. He has choreographed several off-Broadway productions including A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2013), directed by Julie Taymor, and Pericles (2016), directed by Trevor Nunn.

In conjunction with his extensive teaching, he has created dances for schools including Princeton University, Rutgers University, The Juilliard School, Boston Conservatory, and Ballet Tech. Following three years as a performer with daredevil choreographer Elizabeth Streb’s company, Brooks has frequently taught at the group’s Brooklyn studio, SLAM, leading classes in technique, repertory, and creative process. For 5 of his 12 years as a Teaching Artist at the Lincoln Center Institute, he served as the elected Chapter Leader of the TA Union, represented by the United Federation of Teachers. He was a founder and managing director of WAX from 1999-2004, an organization that provided services to over 750 emerging performing and visual artists through subsidized rental packages and hands-on production assistance at its flexible theater space and gallery in Brooklyn.