Damian Woetzel

Damian Woetzel (born May 17, 1967) is an American choreographer.

Woetzel was a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, where he performed from 1985 until 2008.

He performed in the school's annual workshop in 1985 and then joined the New York City Ballet, where he rose through the ranks and became a principal dancer in 1989.

Since 2006, Woetzel has been the artistic director of the Vail Dance Festival, where he presents dance performances and commissions.

Under Woetzel's direction, the festival has received wide acclaim for its innovation and growth as a nationally recognized showcase for dance, featuring such performances as the debut of Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company, and the launch of New York City Ballet MOVES.

The annual International Evenings of Dance galas have become renowned for Woetzel's curation of first-time partnerships across companies and countries, as well as the presentation of young, emerging stars making their debuts in new repertory.

In 2007, he earned an MPA degree from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

He also frequently performed with companies like the Kirov Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, until his retirement from the stage in 2008.

Woetzel has also choreographed a number of ballets for NYCB and other companies.

Among his awards, Woetzel has received the Harvard Arts Medal.

and the inaugural Gene Kelly Legacy Award.

In 2009 and 2010, Woetzel produced and directed the World Science Festival Gala Performances at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall.

In the fall of 2009, Woetzel co-founded and began directing the Jerome Robbins Foundation's New Essential Works (NEW) Program, which supports choreographers and dance companies during the current financial crisis by giving grants to enable the production of new works.

In 2009, Woetzel launched the Studio 5 performance series at New York's City Center, which featured in-depth examinations of dance artists and companies highlighted by in-studio performances and demonstrations; topics of discussion ranged from musicality to collaboration to musical theatre; and featured companies included American Ballet Theatre, the Paul Taylor Dance Company and Dance Theater of Harlem.

For the 2010 event he created an arts salute to science honoring the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, featuring performances by Yo-Yo Ma, John Lithgow, and Kelli O’Hara among others.

In June 2010 Woetzel piloted "Arts Strike," a new effort to have celebrated artists engage educators and students, schools and communities, highlighting and sharing the unique power of the arts to empower, enrich and educate.

The first events have taken place in Vail, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, D.C., and almost all have featured Woetzel with Yo-Yo Ma in schools, engaging with students and their teachers to promote learning through the arts.

Most recently, Woetzel piloted the High Line Arts Education Project, an Arts Strike organized in New York in collaboration with architect Elizabeth Diller.

Woetzel works with Yo-Yo Ma on his Silk Road Connect program in the New York City Public Schools.

In June 2010, Woetzel directed the culminating year-end event which took place at New York's Museum of Natural History, and featured the participation of the Silk Road Ensemble and 450 6th grade students.

Woetzel was the Director of Arts Programs at the Aspen Institute from 2011 to 2018.

Under Woetzel's direction events curated by the Aspen Institute Arts Program include: the inaugural US-China Forum on the Arts and Culture in Beijing, in partnership with Asia Society and the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries.

American and Chinese artists and cultural representatives engaged in the forum included Joel Coen, Meryl Streep, Yo-Yo Ma, Alice Waters, Liu Ye, and Ge You.

In June 2011, the culminating year-end event opened the Central Park SummerStage series.

In June 2012, the Arts Program curated multiple sessions, film screenings and cultural exchanges at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

In October 2012, the Arts Program hosted the inaugural Aspen Arts Strategy Group, convening over 30 arts leaders from around the nation in New York City.

In December 2012, Woetzel and cellist Yo-Yo Ma organized a participatory visit to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, MD, where musician Arthur Bloom and his MusiCorps program help wounded warriors to overcome injuries and recover their lives through intensive music practice.

In August 2012, The New York Times' Alastair Macaulay wrote that the 2012 Vail International Dance Festival presentations "were distinguished above all by catholic taste and brilliant programming. They merit superlatives" and that the International Evenings I gala "was simply the best gala I have attended in decades."

Writing the same week, Wendy Perron of Dance Magazine compared Woetzel to the legendary impresario Serge Diaghilev, and praised Woetzel for engaging and educating audiences through spoken introductions to each work, and for his commitment to collaboration with live musicians.

Woetzel has instituted a number of other initiatives as director, including bringing the educational arts program "Celebrate The Beat" - the Colorado associate of Jacques d'Amboise's National Dance Institute - to the Vail Valley, to reach local underserved children in the public schools.

In December 2012, Woetzel co-produced the tribute to legendary ballerina Natalia Makarova as part of the 35th annual Kennedy Center Honors, and in 2014 he co-produced the tribute to ballerina Patricia McBride.

For his contributions to the Emmy Award-winning CBS special, Woetzel was honored by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for the 2012-2013 Primetime Emmy Awards.

In April 2013, Woetzel directed and produced a "jookin' jam session" at New York's Le Poisson Rouge, featuring the Memphis jooker Charles "Lil Buck" Riley with special guests including dancer Ron "Prime Tym" Myles, Yo-Yo Ma (cello), Marcus Printup (trumpet), Cristina Pato (galician bagpipe), John Hadfield (percussion) and the ensemble Brooklyn Rider.

The evening featured a specially commissioned world premiere for solo cello by Philip Glass, co-choreographed by Woetzel and Lil Buck.

Alastair Macaulay wrote in The New York Times, “As Lil Buck performed with an array of distinguished musicians on Tuesday night at Le Poisson Rouge, a series of extraordinary windows seemed to open, each revealing a new and imagined realm.”

Charles “Lil Buck” Riley and Ron “Prime Tyme” Myles were awarded Bessies in the Outstanding Performance category for their appearances in Lil Buck @ Le Poisson Rouge.

In May 2017, Woetzel was named President of the Juilliard School, replacing Joseph W. Polisi.

Woetzel was originally trained in Boston at E. Virginia Williams ballet school, studying with Williams and Violette Verdy, and then moved to Los Angeles at 15 where he studied with Irina Kosmovska at the Los Angeles Ballet School.

He then joined John Clifford's Los Angeles Ballet and toured nationally with this company including to New York City where he made his debut at the Joyce Theater.

At 17, Woetzel moved to New York City to attend the School of American Ballet and study with Stanley Williams and Andrei Kramarevsky.