Distinguished Alumni: Bill Evans
Modern Dance
Bill Evans, dancer, choreographer, teacher, movement analyst, speaker and writer, has earned the Guggenheim Fellowship; numerous fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts; the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence and Achievement in the Arts; Lifetime Achievement Awards from both the National Dance Education Organization and Dance Teacher Magazine; the National Dance Association Scholar/Artist Award; an honorary doctorate of fine arts from the Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, and many other recognitions for his five decades of leadership in the fields of modern dance, rhythm tap dance and Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis. In the most recent Dance Magazine Readers’ Poll he was named one of America’s three favorite tap artists. The Bill Evans Dance Company, founded in 1975, was for several years the most-booked professional dance troupe in the U.S. The company has performed in all 50 states, throughout Mexico and Canada and in many countries in Europe, Asia and Australasia. He has choreographed more than 200 works for professional dance companies, including his own (59 works), Repertory Dance Theatre (18 works), Ballet West, Concert Dance Company of Boston, Deutsche Oper Ballet—West Berlin, North Carolina Dance Theatre, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, Stars of American Ballet Theatre at Jacobs Pillow, and many others. He has worked as a guest artist in most of the college dance programs in North America, and has created or restaged three individual works and two full-evening productions under the National College Choreography Initiative and American Masterpieces, Dance—College Component programs of the National Endowment for the Arts. He is a distinguished emeritus professor of dance at the University of New Mexico and, since 2004, has been visiting professor/guest artist at The College at Brockport, where he is also undergraduate program director. His book, Reminiscences of a Dancing Man, was published by the National Dance Association in 2005.