January 24, 2001 Contact: Janet Kessin

The Juilliard Dance Division, under the artistic direction of Benjamin Harkarvy presents the Spring Dance Performances with the Juilliard Orchestra conducted by Jeffrey Milarsky, on Thursday, February 22, Friday, February 23, and Saturday, February 24 at 8 PM, and Sunday, February 25 at 3 PM. All performances are in the Juilliard Theater. The program includes Intimate Voices choreographed by Igal Perry to music by J.S. Bach; Against the Grain, by Darrell Grand Moultrie, music by Steve Reich and Ryuichi Sakamoto; and Paul Taylor's Musical Offering, also set to Bach. Tickets are $15 and available at the Juilliard Box Office, 60 Lincoln Center Plaza, Monday through Friday, 11 AM - 6 PM. The Juilliard Theater is located at 155 West 65th Street. For more information please call (212) 769-7406.

The Spring Dance program celebrates a variety of "home-grown" choreographic talent with the inclusion of works by Juilliard alumni Paul Taylor and Darrel Grand Moultrie. Beyond training exceptional dancers, the Juilliard Dance Division's encouragement of students' choreographic talents has helped many alumni distinguish themselves as "dance-makers." Mr. Taylor became a Juilliard dancer in 1952, when the Division was only a year old, and Mr. Moultrie graduated from the School just last year. The Juilliard Dance Division presents Mr. Taylor's Musical Offering in celebration of his 70th birthday this year. In addition to the Spring Dance Performances Juilliard choreographers are featured in upcoming concerts in May at The Juilliard School.

Igal Perry, founder and director of the Peridance Center and the Peridance Ensemble in New York City, is internationally known as a teacher and a choreographer, and has choreographed and taught in the Far East, Israel, and for numerous companies across Europe. Beginning his dance career at age sixteen with Karmon, a folk dance company in Israel, he joined the Bat-Dor Dance Company in 1968, where he trained in both classical ballet and Graham technique. Mr. Perry has worked with leading teachers and choreographers including Alvin Ailey, Inessa Alexandrovich, John Butler, Rudi Van Dantzig, Benjamin Harkarvy, Lar Lubovitch, and Paul Sansardo. He has headed the ballet department at Jacob's Pillow and helped found and co-directed the Clive Thompson Dance Company. In 1983 Igal Perry celebrated the opening of Peridance Center and a year later founded his dance company. In recent years, Mr. Perry's international engagements as teacher and choreographer have included Bat-Dor Dance Company (Israel), the Scapino Rotterdam (Holland), Laterna Magica (Prague), and Kwang-Ju City Ballet Company (Korea), among others. Mr. Perry first staged Intimate Voices at The Juilliard School in 1997; he also created the ballet Mourning Song for Juilliard in 1998.

Darrell Grand Moultrie was born and raised in Harlem, NY. After beginning his training in musical theater and dance at the Harbor Conservatory for the Performing Arts in East Harlem, he studied opera and dance at LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and the Performing Arts. Eventually focusing on his most powerful artistic force - dance - Mr. Moultrie received his bachelor of fine arts degree from Juilliard in May 2000 and at graduation earned the School's prestigious Martha Hill prize for outstanding achievement and leadership. Now pursuing a career as both a choreographer and performer, his choreography has been presented at Alice Tully Hall, Aaron Davis Hall, Juilliard Theater, Clark Studio Theater, and the Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival, as well as at many schools throughout the United States. His most recent commissioned work, Pulse, was critically praised after its premiered by Connecticut Ballet this past fall. As a performer Mr. Moultrie was seen this past summer in Milan, Italy at La Scala Opera House in a production of West Side Story and has worked as an understudy for Lar Lubovitch's Fall 2000 production of Men's Stories. Currently, Mr. Moultrie is working as an actor on his first film project and choreographing throughout New York City and the United States.

Born in Pennsylvania, Paul Taylor has been a force in dance for four decades. From 1955 until 1962, he was a soloist with the Martha Graham Dance Company while at the same time presenting his own work in concerts in both the United States and Europe. In 1959, he danced with the New York City Ballet as guest artist in George Balanchine's Episodes. A recipient of many awards for his work, Mr. Taylor has been honored by the National Medal of Arts (1993), the Kennedy Center Honors (1992), and the Algur H. Meadows Award for Excellence in the Arts (1995). Also in 1995 he was named one of 50 prominent Americans honored in recognition of their outstanding achievement by the Library of Congress' Office of Scholarly Programs. Paul Taylor was elected to knighthood by the French government as Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1969 and has since been elevated to the ranks of Officier (1984) and Commandeur (1990). In January of 2000, he was awarded France's highest honor, the prestigious Legion d'Honneur, for exceptional contributions to French culture. He is the recipient of three Guggenheim Fellowships, a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (often called the "genius award") and the Samuel H. Scripps ADF Award, among other honors. Since 1968, when Aureole first entered the repertory of the Royal Danish Ballet, over 65 companies worldwide have licensed numerous works created by Mr. Taylor for performance. These companies include: American Ballet Theatre, Ballet Rambert, Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan, English National Ballet, Guangdong Modern Dance Company of China, Joffrey Ballet, New York City Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, and Teatro alla Scala of Milan. Over 125 licenses have been issued to date. In addition to his internationally renowned Paul Taylor Dance Company, Mr. Taylor formed Taylor 2, a company of six young dancers representing the next generation in the Taylor tradition, in 1993.