Announcing The 2025 Harlem Stage WATERWORKS Fellows
September 10
Harlem Stage is proud to announce the 20th anniversary of our groundbreaking WATERWORKS Commissioning Fellowship initiative through a landmark new partnership with the AILEY organization, which includes the iconic Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and The Ailey School.
Two cultural powerhouses have united to champion the next generation of choreographers. Four choreographers from within the AILEY community have been selected to develop and premiere original works as part of Harlem Stage’s 2025–2026 season, furthering a shared mission to support and to amplify choreographers and dancers of the Global Majority.
● Kamani Abu (Ailey II and Ailey/Fordham, BFA, 2025 Graduate )
● Derick McKoy, Jr (Ailey/Fordham, BFA, 2019 Graduate)
● Naia Neal (Ailey II Apprentice and Ailey/Fordham, BFA, 2025 Graduate)
● Kasey Orava (Ailey/Fordham, BFA, 2025 Graduate)
For two decades, WATERWORKS has stood as a sanctuary for fearless performance-making, commissioning artists whose works interrogate, inspire, and reimagine the contours of the field. The program embodies Harlem Stage’s unwavering commitment to the artist community and affirms a core principle: that artists not only deserve, but require the space, resources, and radical freedom to create without constraint.
"Twenty years ago, Harlem Stage launched WATERWORKS with a simple, but radical belief that artists of the Global Majority hold the blueprints for our cultural future. Today, this commissioning initiative has grown into a living archive of innovation and truth-telling," shared Dr. Indira Etwaroo, Artistic Director and CEO of Harlem Stage. "This inaugural collaboration with the American cultural treasure, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, signals a new chapter; one rooted in legacy, yet reaching toward what's next. We’re not just supporting dance-makers; we’re expanding upon spaces where movement becomes memory, and memory becomes movement. This is about cultivating brilliance, honoring our centuries-old continuum, and shaping the next wave of artmakers."