Bill T. Jones (artistic director/co-founder/choreographer: Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company; artistic director: New York Live Arts) was the Associate Artist of the 2020 Holland Festival and recipient of the 2014 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award; the 2013 National Medal of Arts; the 2010 Kennedy Center Honors; a 2010 Tony Award for Best Choreography of the critically acclaimed FELA!; a 2007 Tony Award, 2007 Obie Award, and 2006 Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation CALLAWAY Award for his choreography for Spring Awakening; the 2010 Jacob's Pillow Dance Award; the 2007 USA Eileen Harris Norton Fellowship; the 2006 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Choreography for The Seven; the 2005 Wexner Prize; the 2005 Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award for Lifetime Achievement; the 2005 Harlem Renaissance Award; the 2003 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize; and the 1994 MacArthur "Genius" Award. In 2010, Mr. Jones was recognized as Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government, and in 2000, The Dance Heritage Coalition named Mr. Jones "An Irreplaceable Dance Treasure."

Mr. Jones choreographed and performed worldwide with his late partner, Arnie Zane, before forming the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company in 1982. He has created more than 140 works for his company. Mr. Jones is the Artistic Director of New York Live Arts, an organization that collaborates with boundary-pushing artists, advocates for their vision and fortifies a creative future. For more information visit www.newyorklivearts.org.

Misty De Berry is an Assistant Professor of Performance Studies at NYU Tisch. Interdisciplinarity is a touchstone to her work as an academic and artist. She began her training in the academy in an arts conservatory where she studied classical acting and dance-movement theatre. Her subsequent creative scholarship and practice led her to extensive training in Transformative Justice across the greater Chicago metropolitan area, specific to Black & Afro-Caribbean queer communities navigating repair after encounters with gender-based violence. Her turn to theoretical practice has thus been intimately shaped by an organic amalgamation of methods, analytics and conceptual frameworks. 

Her scholarship, service and arts practice thus center wisdom inherited primarily from Black feminist thought, queer of color critique, performance and Black critical theory, along with studies in transformative justice and disability studies. Currently she is serving as co-founder and co-director of "Promiscuous Care and Performance," a national humanities institute housed at Dartmouth College that centers scholars, artists and activists working across the fields of performance studies, disability justice and Black & Afro-Caribbean Feminist thought.