Job - Stager/Régisseur/Rehearsal Director/Répétiteur/Einstudierung

 Finding the right title for a job is an oft contested issue in every institution. Yet it is the institutional and individual histories that define the responsibilities of each position. While English has many words that have been adopted from other languages, like French and German, one of my responsibilities in writing up license agreements for Paul Taylor's choreographic works, is to give a title to the job of staging/reconstructing/rehearsing/overseeing a dance for an institution that wants to perform one of Taylor's dances. 

Teaching class for Diablo Ballet in January 2026

Mr. Taylor was extremely proud of his American-ness and believed that written language was as particular as the details in his dances. So he preferred that an English word be used to describe the job of remounting one of his choreographic works on another company or school. Within the Taylor Company the care of Taylor's works, and all other repertoire to be performed, falls to the Artistic Director and the Rehearsal Director. For people setting the work on outside organizations I settled on using Stager, even though the only dictionary definition I could find was for someone who decorates and furnishes a physical environment to enhance its appeal (e.g. the person who sets up your house to appeal to buyers for an open-house showing).

Within the North American concert-dance industry, rehearsal director is the general fallback term used, whether it is an in-house or freelance individual that is caring for the choreography that dancers need to learn, rehearse, and perform. In ballet companies you will often find rehearsal directors being referred to as répétiteurs or régisseurs. The latter is often a person with more experience whose responsibilities go beyond just making sure that choreography is performed to the best technical standards. Régisseurs might have more responsibility than répétiteurs to the intent, context, and stage production (lighting, sets, costumes) of particular dances. But each institution gets to define the titles and the responsibilities of its staffing.

Stagers of Paul Taylor dances must have a very deep and close knowledge of all aspects of the individual works for which they are charged with remounting on a company or school. More than just the choreography, stagers will be responsible for approving casting, costumes, lighting, stage appearance, cues, music, et cetera. As such, institutions have the privilege of working with original cast members who were in the studios as Taylor created the work to be performed, or alumni dancers who have had the chance to perform the dance many times over. Taylor's audience and critical favorites have been kept in rotation in varying cycles, but if you danced with the company for more than ten years, you might well have danced in works from every decade of the company's existence since the 1950's.

In my parallel blog Richard's 2025 Fulbright to New Zealand you can read more about my own perspectives of what it takes to actually stage a Taylor dance. As the licensing director for all of Taylor's dances, I have been building histories and supporting materials for other stagers that mirror the kinds of information I have found to be invaluable when leading a staging project of my own. This might include interviews with original cast members, as well as documentation of what changes/adaptations Mr. Taylor may have made with subsequent revivals of the work for the Taylor Company itself. Additionally, Taylor has the largest number of Labanotated scores for individual dances, second only to George Balanchine.

"Company B", to songs of The Andrews Sisters, is one of Taylor's most popular dances to be licensed and performed by ballet companies around the world, since its premiere by Houston Ballet in 1991. Following the first decade or so of perennial performances, it has never been out of the annual repertory of the Taylor Company for more than a couple of years. In the first few months of 2026, "Company B" is being performed around the USA by four different ballet companies, and I have had the good fortune that the Taylor Foundation approved me to set the work alongside my peers. I had to give up a good portion of my field work to direct the licensing division of the Taylor Foundation. And applying my staging skills helps to move forward how I create documentation for, and application of, legacy works of dance for current and future generations of dancers and audiences.

True legacy dances are not just artifacts or intellectual exercises for dancers and audiences. Dance relies on the daily and seasonal practices of both technical and artistic craft for the performers. Great dances challenge dancers to meet technical demands, as well as to hone their artistic craft of embodying a role with their own unique presence. Such dances also offer audiences more than just entertainment and chances to see their favorite dancers on stage; they can transcend the mechanics of notes, steps, designs, and touch on emotions in ways unique to dance as an Art. While "Company B" may evoke the 1940's war time era, its rendering of human emotions range from aspiration, to optimism, to denial, to acceptance, and many human traits. It touches audiences for making music and emotions visible. Learning and seeing such works of Art sets a benchmark in life for performing and seeing other dances that help us to grow as people and as a culture.

Here's a chance to see clips of the stagers as they danced "Company B" over the years. We all bring such a wealth of experience as professional dancers and teachers to our work in passing on Taylor's works to new dancers and new audiences. I am also gratified by the fact that the directors who chose "Company B" for their companies to perform, have all had very different memorable experiences with the work, whether from dancing in it during their careers, or witnessing and aspiring to dance it in their younger years.

I was in Walnut Creek, California in early January to set "Company B" on the dancers of Diablo Ballet. 

Dancing to "Pennsylvania Polka" with Annmaria Mazzini, circa 2000.

Patrick Corbin was also working in January with Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 

"Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny, Oh!" Patrick Corbin with company women, circa 2000.

Connie Dinapoli is starting work in February with Texas Ballet Theater in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas. 

Constance Dinapoli with David Grenke in "There'll Never Be Another You", circa 1992.

 Amy Young-Klenendorst will also be working in February with Nevada Ballet Theatre in Las Vegas, Nevada. 

Amy Young with Sean Mahoney in "There'll Never Be Another You", circa 2013.

Throughout his life, Paul Taylor, had received commissions to create dances for companies other than his own. However, after a few disastrous projects, the last of which he and the company in question aborted, Taylor decided to only create new works with his own dancers. We were hand picked by Taylor to learn how to dance for him, and to take direction from him. Once the dance had been created in the studio, the designers (lighting, sets, costumes) would come in to make their contributions. Then the work would be transferred to the commissioning company by a designated stager, who was typically a current dancer or alumni of the company, to mount the work on the outside company. Taylor would attend final rehearsals and get it onto the stage for the world premiere by the commissioning company. Only then would his own company make their premiere of the work. "Company B" was one such commission.

Reflection anchors future possibilities...

In 2025, I started this writing this blog. It was originally intended to offer some perspective on how my ballet training aligned with many different forms of dance, and why a reader might be curious to come and take an adult beginner ballet class from me at the newly established Taylor Center for Dance Education in the heart of New York City. However, writing a blog in 2025 feels decidedly different than my previous online writing endeavors. I share news of each new post on social media, and there is little direct feedback on my posts. So the posts have evolved to offer my perspectives on how I see the dance world today, and where I think my place in it might land.

I'm pictured on this poster for the 1997 documentary about Paul Taylor,
with Patrick Corbin, Fancie Huber, and Thomas Patrick. Photo: Howard Schatz.

In 1993, I joined the Paul Taylor Dance Company as a dancer when I already had fifteen years as a professional dancer under my belt. My early dance training was in classical ballet, afro-Caribbean dance forms, and a hybrid Graham-Horton based modern. Prior to dancing for Paul Taylor, I had worked with ballet and contemporary dance companies, as well as independent performance projects, in the USA and internationally. And, in retrospect, I am deeply appreciative of my peripatetic early career. I got to work and meet with some of my generation's greatest choreographers, teachers, and regisseurs. Those individuals, no matter how brief, have left indelible influences on my own careers in dance as a performer, teacher and regisseur. My choreographic work seems hardly worth mentioning, but I have made enough attempts to appreciate the genius of those choreographers whose work I have both admired from the audience and had the privilege of dancing.

Paul Taylor died in 2018 at the age of eighty-eight, and this month in 2025, Hans van Manen died at the age of ninety-three. For me, these were two of the most influential choreographers that came out of the twentieth century, with whom I feel a very profound connection for completely different reasons. I spent fifteen years as a dancer in the studio with Paul Taylor, and I first saw him perform in 1969. I had never met Hans van Manen until 2016 when I was staging a Taylor dance on a program where van Manen was rehearsing his Grosse Fugue for Ballett am Rhein. I had read and seen photos of van Manen's work as a child and first saw his work performed on stage around 1979. Most striking to me was how easily I saw each performer as individual dancers in both choreographer's dances. And in the briefest of conversations I had with van Manen, he related a fond memory of meeting Paul Taylor at the Spoleto Festival in Italy during the early 1960's. When I shared the story with Taylor, he did remember meeting van Manen in Italy. They had a mutual respect for each others work, and believed in seeing the individual dancers in front of them, as they created or rehearsed their work. 

A documentary originally released in 2020 about Hans van Manen is available to stream online.

As I watched the most recent documentary on Hans van Manen, I was struck by how familiar his manner and intent during rehearsals on camera felt to me, from my memories of working with Taylor. In addition, it was such a pleasure to see a number of dancers with whom I had been working with on Taylor dances at Ballett am Rhein and Wiener Staatsballett rehearsing and performing van Manen's work in the film! I continue to be honored to have been filmed dancing Taylor's works for the 1997 documentary on Taylor, and I can only imagine how this current generation of dancers that worked with van Manen might treasure seeing themselves on screen with the master.

Hans van Manen in rehearsal with Doris Becker, Vincent Hoffman, Alexandre Simões, Sonia Dvořák.

Dancers are the legacy of choreographers. And those of us entrusted with bringing the works of choreographers no longer able to be here in person attempt to exemplify the detail, rigor and original intent behind the steps. In "Just Dance The Steps" van Manen is recorded as quoting George Balanchine which goes on to say that in doing the steps a dancer will find the meaning in the choreography. 

In rehearsal for Prime Numbers with Paul Taylor and cellist Alexis Pia Gerlach.

When Taylor would watch us dance, he would challenge himself, and us, to illustrate his intent by who we were as dancers and individuals. Yet he would rarely verbalize his thoughts or motives behind the steps. And in performance, there was often magic in feeling how your individual movement and intent were aligned to music, costumes, lights and scenic design. For me, staging a Taylor dance is about bringing out the best in each dancer and their relationship to the rest of the cast and the work as a whole. How I get there, is not only based on my experience of the work as a performer or understudy, but in as much information as I can gather about changes and adaptations that Taylor made as he revived work during his lifetime. I have been trying to document the evolution of each Taylor dance under my purview as licensing director for Paul Taylor's choreographic body of work, and make it available to the other regisseurs who stage Taylor's dances. Some of these exceptional professionals danced for Taylor long before me, a couple have tenures after my time. There is much to be learned about Paul Taylor from dances created and revived both before and after our respective eras in the company as dancers. 

In most aspects of our lives, we understand the value of learning from what has been established. Within the Arts, we learn the rules of grammar of our languages that have evolved through decades and centuries. Then we apply them to reading and acting and writing to communicate our ideas. Visual artists learn to draw, paint, sculpt and more, and their work is measured against the evidence left behind that helped to determine composition, balance, perspective, and aesthetic points of view. We learn music that is passed down aurally and for most musicians, they will learn to read what often becomes a standard form of notation, dependent on where you might be in the world. Unlike musicians, a relatively small percentage of dancers have ever learned any of the various forms of movement notation that exists, and so the process of learning and maintaining technical and artistic fluency still lies mostly on the human interaction of working and learning from each other in a studio or other such environment. 

What still remains common to speaking, visual and theatrical production arts, singing, and dancing is that they all require practise to become fluent in our delivery beyond just the words, the designs, the notes, the steps. Yet dance remains one of the most reliant on a human interactive tradition, much like environments that rely on oral or musical traditions that do not have physical documents to leave behind for future generations. 

With the lessons learned from masters of their Art such as Taylor, van Manen, and so many more, I feel as though there is a deep responsibility for us to play our parts in their legacy. A legacy upon which today's and the future's generations of artists can learn from what we know to be timeless and ever-meaningful contributions to our human need for expression, understanding, and emotional trancendence.

May all the amazing memories of your life be pillars of serenity in the coming years.

12 or 24 different dances... preparation and good habits are key!

I missed out on teaching my Adult Beginner Ballet class yesterday, and I was thrilled that my substitute was Beth Goheen. Beth is a teacher whom I first encountered while I was still a performing dancer, and I loved how her classes were always attentive to the most basic details of dance and movement.

By the time I retired from performing with Paul Taylor Dance Company, our annual New York performance seasons at City Center Theater, could cover as many as 24 different dances spread in a different combination of three or four dances for every show! And in my day, they were all dances choreographed by Taylor himself. 

Grid of Taylor dances in 2025 Lincoln Center season of PTDC, November 4-23.

Today, Taylor's dances still make up the majority of dances being performed by the company with exciting world premieres by resident and guest choreographers. 

As a ballet and modern dancer working for concert repertory companies, I was unsure of how varied the scope of Taylor's repertoire would be when I joined his company. I was not disappointed with the challenges of Taylor's many different choreographic works, all of which were created to be different from what he had done before. Dancing the range of works created as far back as 1956, through my retirement in 2008, provided a profound breadth of technical and artistic challenges that filled my fifteen years as a dancer for Paul Taylor.

Knowing how much I enjoyed being able to perform such a variety of dances upon demand was cultivated through great habits. I was privileged to have had great training to execute the most basic of physical actions as instinctive habits. These habits are the focus of my classes for the adult dancers who have found their way to join me on Tuesday evenings!

2025 screen capture from video of teaching Adult Beginner Ballet in October.

My previously mentioned experiment of videoing me teaching class has been started, and I have been able to post the videos on a YouTube channel that I share with the students in class. These are not meant as polished public clips, but more as review aids for dancers in class.

A fascinating boon for me was seeing how my exercises progressed through class in ways I had not necessarily anticipated. Back when I was still a teenager, one of my teachers took the time to explain how to build a class based on just one movement sequence (enchainment) broken down into its parts from pliés, to transference of weight, to center drills, to an adagio version, a petit allegro version, and ultimately a grand allegro version. This approach has anchored much of my teaching technique classes both in ballet and modern.

The concept of deconstructing, and building variations on the same movement phrase is also a common chreographic device, used to great effect by Taylor. Prime Numbers was created back in 1996, and two solos were built at the same time as a single sequence. Then my counterpart got to perform it to a slow adagio tune to open the dance, while I performed it much later as a quick allegro. 

1996 - Prime Numbers. Photo: Lois Greenfield

Articulation... is a good thing, especially in dance.

So... the Fall (autumn) season of dance in NYC has begun, and live audiences have an abundance of choices to make. If you have ever watched a live performance and wondered how it is possible that someone like you might be doing those amazing moves, those performers started training many years earlier. Yet you can start learning those basics in Adult Beginner dance classes, especially here in NYC! 

I love this recently published article about starting to learn ballet as an older person. Ballet at 70 ...

Every dancer eventually learns that there are infinite ways of using their feet, beyond just standing, walking and running. This is particularly true when avoiding trips, falls, sprains, and more serious injuries. Mostly, our feet are our connection to the ground, and paying attention to articulately using them builds good habits for complex choreography. 

1981 or so, a shot of my feet in rehearsals...

Indulge me for a minute when I speak about learning diction as a part of my early education under a British school system. Students started out by learning to enunciate our pronounciation of words (no matter our accent, I have a decidedly West Indian island lilt to my speech) and how words could be broken down into syllables. Ironically, I still have trouble determining how many syllables are attributed to different words, because of how my native accent might pronounce certain words. Take away from my digression, that I perceive physical articulation as akin to vocal enunciation.

Ballet is a great way to learn how to use our feet and build not only strength, but also understanding how they help us to balance and move. 

2025 candid shot of me rocking as I speak. Courtesy of my cousin, JoAnne.

As a dance teacher, I am often looking at how dancers use their feet in ads and now all over social media. 

Tiler Peck once guested with Paul Taylor Dance Company, and she is featured this season at our former home theater, City Center, while PTDC now shares her home theater at Lincoln Center! This is one of her Instagram promo reels.

Professional performers are expected to be the best of the best, and I am going to be blatantly biased as I include the preview for Paul Taylor Dance Company in their upcoming NYC season at Lincoln Center. I only ever performed with the company at City Center, but our new studios where I am teaching now lives easily within reach of both theaters. 

PTDC promo reel on Instagram.

The Taylor Center for Dance Education is filling with a huge range of dance and fitness offerings with exceptional teachers! Please come check us out on the

9th Floor, 307 W 38th Street, NYC, NY 10018, and you can sign up through 

our website Taylor Center for Dance Education

Dancing as we age... is not a new idea.

It is reassuring to see how many articles and perspectives I have had the pleasure to read about ageing and dance, over the past forty years! Most recently is this one, How dancers navigate changes that come with Age published in Dance Magazine. 

My perspective evolved as I aged, dealt with injuries, dealt with emotional maturity, dealt with identity, dealt with professional life versus personal choice... and so on. At the root of the questions for me was the evergreen "why?" Why was I pursuing dance, rather than some other activity, or profession, or means of expression, and more... 

Me aged 46 in Paul Taylor's De Sueños Que Se Repiten.

So here is how my perspective changed over the course of some sixty years.

As a child I learned that I could grow up to be a dentist, policeman, fireman, architect, and so many more, but not dancer! Dancing was something people did socially, and athletics were not professions even though I grew up watching Olympic track and field stars from Jamaica. Fortunately, I grew up thinking that age only had to do with being at the top of your game, not to do with participating in dance or sports. 

Yup! This is me...

As a teenager with the opportunity to start a ballet career, I thought that by 29 I would need to have a new profession lined up. Then overwork and injuries taught me to critically assess how I used my body as a dancer and a recreational athlete. This period also found me reflecting on defining myself as a person first and my occupation (dancer) afterwards.

Coppelia with Lizanne McAdams...

In my twenties, my world of movement had expanded to dancing and sporting with both able-bodied and physically challenged friends. Injuries, degenerative diseases, age, all demand and deserve our considered attention; our physical abilities are to be enjoyed in the moment, and less in the memories of what we once did.

With Matthew Soyster in performance...

My thirties deepened my focus on dancing and outdoor sports as befit my condition. Injuries and setbacks were managed with the knowledge that I had recovered with new found knowledge about myself before, and re-training was part of ageing and staying physically active.

Kayaking is like being partnered by water with a boat for legs...

I retired from performing as a dancer in my late forties, and acknowledged all the benefits I had gained from spending my life, to that point, focused on both how my body moved, as well as how to help others assess their physical abilities from the most basic actions to the most elite demands. For myself, minor injuries from once normal activities became more commonplace, and recovery took days or weeks longer than in the past.

During my fifties, I tried to balance movement instruction by modeling details and physical skills with actively addressing how rapidly my body changed without the demands of daily workouts, rehearsals and performances. It actually felt good to have the greater proportion of my weeks spent in more sedentary pursuits, and a less structured regimen of physical activity. I was also happy to no longer be pursuing a singular career, but exploring how to use my lifelong experience with movement and independence as building blocks for new projects and life choices about work.

2018 in India fulfilling a Fulbright Senior Teaching fellowship...

Now in my sixties, I am happy knowing that being physically active is both a choice and a privilege. I have learned to be efficient, and to notice changes in my physiology both dramatic and gradual. Adjunct to this self-awareness is how it heightens an empathetic approach to teaching and coaching dance, or other physical activities at all levels and stages in life. I may not be the perfect teacher for everyone, but I am confident that I am a good teacher for a large proportion of people who might want to join in one of my classes. 

2024 - teaching modern class. Photo: John Lyons

Testing good ideas... takes time!

 Okay. It's been a minute since I've been able to clear time to write a post here. I blame myself for having interesting ideas and then realizing that making them happen takes up time I don't always have available. In my last post, I mentioned the idea of filming myself teaching class exercises for my Adult Beginner Ballet students, so they could review what we had done in class during the week. I have to admit that attending one class a week on a new endeavor can seem like too little time to learn and retain information! And I appreciate that there is interest in adding a second class each week, but that is for another discussion. 

cropped screenshot of video set to film me demonstrating barre.

I do like the idea of begining adult dancers being able to review and practice what we do in class. This is not unlike professional dancers today being able to review video footage of their rehearsals each day, especially when they are learning or developing new choreography. 

However, my own sense of efficiency meant planning out the least intrusive method of filming class, and respecting that my students would not necessarily want to see themselves taking class. After class, I edited the footage into 8 short clips, to provide the clearest explanations and include the music played by our accompanist, should dancers wish to practice on their own. Yet even as I was editing this first attempt at recording class, I kept thinking of better ways to edit certain things (zooming in and cropping the frame, including some of the explanations beyond just giving the exercises, whether or not to have a video/still image available while the music plays, etc.) So in the interest of timeliness, I allowed myself to try and improve the next exercise, and left the earlier ones as I had done.

There is so much good (and more carefully planned) instructional video available online, that I would not dare to presume a general viewership for this little endeavor. But I will check with the dancers in class, if they took a look, AND if they have suggestions, OR if this was helpful in any way. For the time being, I am only sharing access to watch the videos if you have taken the class. As I mentioned before, the progression of each class is often dictated by the dancers in the class, and I don't want to be building a prescribed syllabus that may not work for the particular types of learners, and experience of the dancers in class. 

However, since I cannot provide more than one class a week for the Adult Beginner Ballet dancers (a few are able to take classes with other teachers, but others only take mine), I would like for them to have the chance to reinforce their learning. Even just mentally reviewing material on a daily basis has been proven to improve assimilation of new movement skills.

Recently, I have been playing with a language app on my phone to see how much German I remember, and it sends me an email reminder each day to do a short lesson. Mostly I can do a short lesson in about 5 minutes, so it is obviously not a serious commitment on my part. But German is a language that I used to spend about an hour a day following a language program, when I had no knowledge at all. 

I appreciate all that technology and communications infrastructures affords most of us these days, in terms of access to learning different skills. However, as a teacher from an earlier generation, I am trying to embrace how I might incorporate and add to the positive experience of the dancers who come to my classes. I am a self-taught cameraman/video-editor/online-content-generator, and I make lots of blunders! This self-taught thing though, means that I spend a lot of time just trying to figure out how to do things, as well as evaluating if what I am doing is effectively in line with my goals.

The Taylor Center for Dance Education has built a large and varied program of movement learning, from 3-D assisted body-mechanics analyses to yoga to ballet to modern to many other approaches. If you have not already danced in our new spaces at,

307 W 38th Street, 9th floor, in NYC, I hope you will come by and see what we are offering.

Until soon...

Dancer driven teaching...

 When I began taking dance classes as a child, my ballet classes were very much focused on learning the set sequences required by the syllabus. In turn these sequences would be performed infront of an external "examiner" for assessment of our execution and understanding. Well... maybe not so much understanding when the young dancers are pre-teenagers. This model still exists, but I think for adult dancers at a similar stage of learning dance (i.e. children's beginner ballet) there are so many more resources for how I approach teaching classes. 

Leading a class at Peridance in 2018 or 2019.

I recently asked my adult beginner ballet students if they thought it would be helpful to have some kind of documentation to review between their single weekly class. The consensus was that they would like to have an online video where they might be able to follow along and practice movements and sequences on their own at home. Initially, I thought this was a pretty good idea, and maybe I could make the time to film myself demonstating a series of exercises.

Then reality set in. Time is not something I find to be readily available in my week. Just keeping up with the content writing for this blog has become a challenge to carve out, and I am trying to post just once a week at this point. Another reality was that as I watch the enthusiasm of the adult dancers in class, I cater and adjust my exercises to suit the needs of the dancers on the day of the class. And I enjoy being able to create exercises to suit where the dancers' actions tell me what each progressive drill or sequence should be. 

Film instruction for dance was not a part of my awareness as a child. In truth, I imagine that it was on account of celebrities like Jane Fonda and Olivia Newton John making home exercise videos which came out in the early 80's, that "how to dance" learning by video became a thing. Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit the world, and suddenly we were teaching by video feed in real time. Most everyone has a smart phone with camera capabilities, and also the ability to play back or stream online content.  Yet the learning that can take place when both instructor and dancers are in the same space, is many times more effective than virtual learning. And yet I still find benefit in how well learning to dance can be enriched through virtual vido learning. But maybe there is also a place to include video learning, or at least video practice.

In the next few weeks I hope to experiment with video-taping myself demonstrating exercises during our sessions, which I will then make available to the sudents in class. At the very least, dancers would be able to practice on their own while accessing a record and guide of what they had done in class at any point in the week. This might also help in choosing the best progression of class goals based on how the dancers are developing and retaining material each week.

I do love watching online dance instruction videos, but they always strike me as requiring that the dancer observing, needs considerable knowledge about their own abilities, to truly benefit and progress.