Jeff Edwards

Jeff Edwards was a leading dancer with New York City Ballet, Zurich Ballet, and Lyon Opera Ballet. During his years as a performer (1983-98), he created original roles in dances by Jerome Robbins, William Forsythe, and Bill T. Jones, and he was featured in works by Balanchine, Petipa, Nijinski, Jiri Kylian, Mats Ek, and Maguy Marin. He collaborated with Agnes DeMille in the recreation of her ballet The Others.

Edwards is featured in The Balanchine Essays, a definitive guide on the Balanchine technique. He has taught for conservatories and professional ballet companies around the world including American Ballet Theater, San Francisco Ballet, Cedar Lake Ensemble, Boston Ballet, Ballett Frankfurt, Le Ballet du Grand Theatre de Geneve, Les Ballets de Monte Carlo, Norwegian National Ballet, and the Royal Ballet School. He has lectured at Yale, U.C.L.A., and Williams College, and has taught ballet at Harvard College, Cornell, Princeton, and Brown universities. As a student at Brown University Edwards designed and taught a course on contemporary dance repertory. In 2001, he became the director of education at Twyla Tharp Dance. In 2002, he worked and studied for a year under Michael Kaiser at the Kennedy Center on an arts management fellowship. He then served as associate artistic director of the Washington Ballet and later in the same position for Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company. He has staged the work of George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, William Forsythe, Christopher Wheeldon, and Alexei Ratmansky.

Edwards was the resident choreographer with the Broadway musical Billy Elliot from 2009 to 2011. He served as ballet master on David Cromer’s production of Nikolai and the Others at Lincoln Center Theater in 2013. More recently, Edwards has collaborated with Damian Woetzel on productions for the Kennedy Center Honors, Fall for Dance, and regular seasons at City Center Theater. He was born in Butler, Pa., and lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, with his husband and their two sons. He has been on the faculty at Juilliard since 2012.