2001 | Gus Solomons Jr
Gus Solomons Jr (SB ’61, Architecture) is a dancer, choreographer, writer and actor, who graduated from MIT in 1959. He created the title role in Donald Byrd’s The Harlem Nutcracker (1996-99); directs PARADIGM, a repertory dance company for veteran performers. Solomons is an Arts Professor at NYU/Tisch School of the Arts; writes about dance for Dance Magazine, Gay City News, DanceInsider.com, and Metro Daily, and has danced in the companies of Pearl Lang, Donald McKayle, Martha Graham, and Merce Cunningham.
In 2000, Solomons won a Bessie (New York Dance and Performance Award) for Sustained Achievement in Choreography. In 2004, he was awarded the Balasaraswati/Joy Anne Dewey Beineke Chair for Distinguished Teaching at the American Dance Festival, and in 2006-2007, he was a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar, lecturing at several U.S. universities.
