Mario Alberto Zambrano

Mario Alberto Zambrano received his early training from the Houston Ballet Academy and the High School for Performing and Visual Arts before joining Hubbard Street Dance Chicago at the age of seventeen. In 1998, he joined Nederlands Dans Theater II, where he danced soloist roles in ballets choreographed by Jíri Kylián, Hans Van Manen, Paul Lightfoot and Sol Leon, Johan Inger, and Shusaku Takemuchi. In 2000, he accepted an invitation to join Batsheva Dance Company and was a member of the original creations of Ohad Naharin’s Virus and ‘Minus 16.’ Thereafter, he began studying literature at Open University in London while working intermittently as a guest artist with Ballet Frankfurt for the next five years. His honors in dance include a 1994 Presidential Scholar in the Arts, a 1995 Princess Grace Award, and a Best Male Dancer Prize from Tanz Magazine in 1999. In 2013, he graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop with an M.F.A. in English and published his debut novel Lotería with Harper Collins. He has been a literary fellow at MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Vermont Studio Arts, Scotland’s Hawthornden Castle, and was awarded a literary fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). As choreographer, writer, and educator, Zambrano has worked with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Nederlands Dans Theater II, The Joffrey Ballet School, Harvard University, Lewis & Clark University, and University of Iowa. He has published fiction and non- fiction in The Brooklyn Rail, Guernica: Arts and Literature, Gulf Coast, and Ploughshares Journal, and has served as Fiction Editor and Editor-in-Chief for the award-winning literary journal 12th Street published by New School. Currently, he is the Associate Director of Dance at the Juilliard School and Liaison and Summer Program Director for Orsolina28 in Moncalvo, Italy.