Emily Coates (dancer and choreographer)

Emily Coates is American dancer, choreographer and educator. She is a former member of the corps de ballet of the New York City Ballet and currently an Assistant Professor Adjunct of Theater Studies at Yale College an Assistant Professor Adjunct of Directing at the Yale School of Drama and a director of the dance theatre program at Yale University, having directed the Dance Studies curriculum housed in Theater Studies at Yale since its inception in 2006 .^[1]

Biography

Coates was given the School of American Ballet Mae L. Wein Award for Outstanding Promise in 1992 and became a member if the New York City Ballet Company the same year. She went on to dance with NYCB for six years and then joined the White Oak Dance Project at the invitation of one if its two founders, Mikhail Baryshnikov.^[2][3] She danced with White Oak from 1998 until 2002, then performed with Twyla Tharp Dance from 2001 until 2003 and has been with Yvonne Rainer since 2005. Among Coates' career highlights are; three duets with Mr. Baryshnikov, and roles in Karole Armitage's "The Last Lap", Mark Morriss's "The Argument" and Erick Hawkins’ "Early Floating"as well as lead turns in pieces by George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins and Lucinda Childs. among others.

Coates received her BA from Yale in 2006 and then her MA from the Yale School of Arts and Sciences in 2011.^[4] Simultaneously she has been the director of the dance theatre program at Yale University, having directed the Dance Studies curriculum housed in Theater Studies at Yale since its inception in 2006 .

As a choreographer her most recent work (based on her collaboration with Yale Professor and physicist Sarah Demers with music by Will Orzo) "Incarnations" was performed at the Danspace Project at St. Marks Church in the Bowery in March of 2017.^[5]

Coates has also written extensively about dance for publications such as Performing Arts Journal(PAJ)^[6] and the Huffington Post^[7]

References