Performance Calendar

About

Henning Rübsam is artistic director of Sensedance, a resident choreographer for Hartford City Ballet, has been a Juilliard faculty member since 2006, and is a visiting guest artist at Texas Academy of Ballet. He is on faculty for the Certificate Program at the Peridance Capezio Center in New York.

Rübsam earned his bachelor’s degree in dance from Juilliard, where his mentors included Martha Hill and Elizabeth Keen. While at Juilliard, he performed as the Faun in the Nijinsky/Debussy ballet, worked extensively with Anna Sokolow, and toured internationally with the Limón Dance Company. Upon graduation, he founded Sensedance and continued to dance with other choreographers, namely Duncan Macfarland, Murray Louis, and Alwin Nikolais. Rübsam appeared as a guest dancer with a myriad of contemporary choreographers, among them the delightful Beverly Blossom, and in works by dance pioneers Isadora Duncan, Kurt Joos, and Doris Humphrey. His comprehensive dance training, which was initially ballet-based while growing up in his native Germany, not only includes all major modern and contemporary dance techniques, but also encompasses Classical Spanish Dance, Indian Dance, Tap and Jazz Dance, a summer course at the School of American Ballet, and studies in dance film with Michael Kidd and Stanley Donen at the Sundance Institute.

Among Rübsam’s citations are a Jerome L. Greene Fellowship, a Lincoln Center Fellowship, a Manhattan Spirit Award as “best male dancer,” a choreography award from Stephens College, and an award for his advocacy from Dancers Responding to AIDS. He is the first dance artist to receive the Distinguished Artist Award from Bergen College and had the honor to represent the U.S. at the Danza Nueva Festival in Lima with his company.

Rübsam also works for theater and opera as a choreographer and director. He has been a guest choreographer and teacher for ballet, contemporary dance companies, and universities throughout the Americas as well as in Australasia and Europe. His dance writing has appeared in Dance Magazine and its annual Stern’s Performing Arts Directory, Pointe Magazine, Ballet Review, and Juilliard. He was the American correspondent for the European publication Dance-for-You. He has implemented a dance appreciation program at Juilliard for the general public, taught dance history at SUNY Purchase College Conservatory of Dance, has given lectures for the Young Patrons Program at Lincoln Center, and was the first dance artist to speak at the GEL conference, where he subsequently conducted a workshop. In 2015, he became a founding board member of the Beverly Blossom Foundation. In the commercial field, he has choreographed and directed numerous high-profile events, most recently the celebration of Planet Fitness going public at the New York Stock Exchange in August and the annual Fundraising Gala for the Norwalk Maritime Aquarium in April of 2015.