Cultural Diplomacy Series: Ephrat Asherie

Aisha Ahmad Post

Executive Director

Newman Center for the Performing Arts

Ephrat Asherie

Artistic Director

Ephrat Asherie Dance Company

Ephrat "Bounce" Asherie is a NYC-based director, choreographer, performer and b-girl and a 2016 Bessie Award Winner for Innovative Achievement in Dance. Asherie has received numerous awards to support her work including Dance Magazine's Inaugural Harkness Promise Award and two National Dance Project Awards. In 2019 she was the recipient of a NYFA Fellowship and is currently a Jerome Hill Artist Fellow. As Artistic Director of Ephrat Asherie Dance (EAD), Asherie's work has been presented on stages nationally and internationally with commissions from companies including Malpaso and Parsons Contemporary Dance and additional commissions from Vail Dance Festival, Fall for Dance, River to River, Firatatrrega, Works & Process at the Guggenheim and the Kennedy Center.  Additional directorial work includes UNDERSCORED: On Screen at Lincoln Center, FLOORISH,  Solo Chini: Un Dia en Nueva York and In the MOment: A Drawing Dance. Her most recent work for the stage UNDERSCORED --  awarded a 2019 Creation and Development Award from the National Performance Network and a 2022 National Dance Project--premiered in November 2022 at Works & Process at the Guggenheim and is currently touring the country.  Asherie is honored to have been mentored by Richard Santiago (aka Break Easy) and to have worked and collaborated with Michelle Dorrance, Doug Elkins, Rennie Harris, Bill Irwin, Gus Solomons jr, and Buddha Stretch, among others. Asherie earned her BA from Barnard College, Columbia University in Italian and her MFA from the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee where she researched the vernacular jazz dance roots of contemporary street and club dances. She is a co-founding member of the all-female house dance collective MAWU and is forever grateful to NYC’s underground dance community for inspiring her to pursue a life as an artist.  For more information please follow EAD on Instagram @ephratasheriedance.

Arturo O'Farrill

Pianist, Composer, and Educator

Born in Mexico and raised in New York, Arturo O’Farrill is a prolific pianist, composer, and passionate promoter of Latin music and its cultural heritage. Arturo is the founder and Artistic Director of the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance, a non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of Afro Latin music through performance, education and preservation.



Throughout his career, he has played with several bands and orchestras all over the world, including his own Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra and the Arturo O’Farril Sextet. He has also performed with Ballet Hispánico and the Malpaso Dance Company, and composed pieces for the Evidence Dance Company and the Alvin Ailey Dance Company.