Bio

Dalienne Majors began dance training in Omaha, Nebraska at the age of four with Cora Quick and later with Betty Jean Assmann, a former Radio City Rockette. While attending Omaha Central High School, she continued training with Valerie Roche at the Omaha Academy of Ballet and performed in musicals and plays at the Omaha Community Playhouse.

After high school, she attended the Juilliard School (BFA, 1972) studying with José Limón, Alfredo Corvino, Martha Graham, Anna Sokolow, and Anthony Tudor. During the 1970’s she performed with choreographers Francis Alenikoff, Hannah Kahn and Elizabeth Keen. In 1977 she acted and choreographed the original role of The Dancer in the Off-Broadway production of Jules Feiffer’s Hold Me.

Cast and crew of Hold Me, 1977. Photo by Martha Holmes.

In 1979 she choreographed the original WPA theater production of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater is by Kurt Vonnegut with music by Alan Menken, lyrics and direction by Howard Ashman.

The original cast and crew of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – plus Kurt Vonnegut (center), Howard Ashman (front row, second from left), and Alan Menken (front row, far right). Photograph © Jill Krementz; all rights reserved.

Returning to the Midwest in the 1980’s, Dalienne co-founded the Omaha Modern Dance Collective and Dance Theater of Omaha; taught at the Emmy Gifford Children’s Theater, Ballet Omaha and Omaha Academy of Ballet and was a Teaching Artist for the Nebraska Arts Council.

In the early 1990’s, she earned her MFA in Dance at the University of Iowa training with David Berkey, Alicia Brown, Helen Chadima, Françoise Martinet, and Alan Sener. During that time, Dalienne also choreographed and performed in Belgium and Bosnia with Yugoslavian artist Radovan Kraguly and at Studio Le Regard du Cygne in Paris with Amy Swanson.

In 1994, she joined the faculty at the Berkeley Carroll School in Brooklyn, NY, where she directed the K-12 dance program, taught yoga and choreographed the musical productions.

In addition to teaching at Berkeley Carroll, she performed in New York City in works by Sachiyo Ito, Elizabeth Keen, Noémie LaFrance, Elise Long, and Sarah Skaggs.

Dalienne founded Parents Who Dance (2005-2016), a collective of dancers who choreographed and performed dance works. Its latest members included Shawna Kent, Barbara Canner, Laura Staton, Jessica Ames and Tomomi Imai and guest choreographer Elizabeth Keen.  In 2014, her work “Möbius” was performed by the Nacre Dance Company in Saratoga Springs, NY.

Retired from Berkeley Carroll School after 24 years, Dalienne currently teaches Dance and Yoga in Brooklyn at Spoke the Hub Dancing, Brooklyn Heights Synagogue Preschool, Prospect Hill Senior Center and New York Presbyterian/Brooklyn Methodist Hospital. In July 2018, Dalienne choreographed the theatrical production Precious Metals by playwright Carolyn Harrison and directed by Tabitha Matthews, that received its premiere at the NY Theater Festival held at the Hudson Guild Theater in New York City.