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25 to Watch

These Are Our "25 to Watch" Picks for 2019

Photo credits, clockwise from bottom left: Peter Mueller, Courtesy Cincinnati Ballet; Jayme Thornton; Jochen Viehoff, Courtesy Stephanie Troyak; Karolina Kuras, Courtesy National Ballet of Canada; Natasha Razina, Courtesy State Academic Mariinsky Theatre; Kim Kenney, Courtesy Atlanta Ballet; Jim Lafferty; Arian Molina Soca, Courtesy Pennsylvania Ballet; Altin Kaftira, Courtesy Dutch National Ballet; Scott Shaw, Courtesy Shamar Wayne Watt

What's next for the dance world? Our annual list of the dancers, choreographers and companies that are on the verge of skyrocketing has a pretty excellent track record of answering that question.

Here they are: the 25 up-and-coming artists we believe represent the future of our field.

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25 to Watch

The Inside Scoop on How We Pick Our "25 to Watch"

Erica Lall and Leal Zielińska, two of our 2018 "25 to Watch." Photo by Nathan Sayers

By now, you're probably as obsessed with the artists on our 2018 "25 to Watch" list as we are. But how do we decide who makes it? One answer is: carefully. Another: It's a long, long process.

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25 to Watch

25 to Watch 2018

Each year, Dance Magazine recognizes early-career dancers, choreographers and companies who are on the cusp of breaking out in our "25 to Watch" feature. Click through the list below to meet the rising stars who made our list, and find out why we're excited to see more from them in the coming year.

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25 to Watch

25 to Watch 2018: Alice Klock

Klock in William Forsythe's Quintett. Photo by Todd Rosenberg, Courtesy Hubbard Street Dance Chicago

Densely dimensional, unpredictable, strangely graceful and wild, Alice Klock's dances are like elegant ribbons caught in hopelessly tangled knots. In 2018, she'll choreograph more works than she did the year before, extending a trajectory that's continued throughout her still-brief career.

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25 to Watch

25 to Watch 2018: Jeroboam Bozeman

Bozeman (left) in Rennie Harris' Exodus. Photo by Paul Kolnik, Courtesy Ailey

It's the contrasts that set Jeroboam Bozeman apart. In a New York minute, his movements may jump from sharp and distinct to gracefully fluid. Bozeman defies labels; you're not sure if you're watching a ballet dancer, a modern dancer or (one of his favorite styles) a West African dancer.

Equally impressive is his offstage persistence: He auditioned for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater five times before he was offered a place in Ailey II. A year later, in 2013, he finally joined the main company.

He describes dancing as "liberating," a quality evident when he's onstage—he's so present that you wish you were up there with him. "The more honest I am in my dancing," he says, "the more relatable it will be to people."


Find out who else made Dance Magazine's "25 to Watch" list this year.

25 to Watch

25 to Watch 2018: Kolton Krouse

Photo by Hollywood Dance Shoot, Courtesy Krouse

There's a delicious bit of mischief in everything Kolton Krouse does. He'll toss off some impossibly difficult sequence—a quintuple pirouette into a prolonged développé into an aerial, say—and end with an impish smile that's the stage equivalent of saying, "How good was that? And how much fun did I have doing it?"

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25 to Watch

25 to Watch 2018: Jacob Jonas

Jonas at The Getty Museum. Photo by Matthew Brush, Courtesy Jonas

How many 25-year-old company founders can say they have a resumé of collaborations with everyone from The Kennedy Center to Pilobolus to The Getty Museum? Not many, save Jacob Jonas, artistic director of Jacob Jonas The Company and founder of the #CamerasandDancers Instameet series.

His Los Angeles–based contemporary dance company boasts sleek, virtuosic dancers and fresh, inventive choreography—but it's his ingenious brand-building know-how that has garnered him 80,000 Instagram followers and a reputation across the national dance community.

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25 to Watch

25 to Watch 2018: Kate Ladenheim

Photo by Chelsea Robin Lee, Courtesy Ladenheim

Kate Ladenheim's dances share many attributes with their maker, namely their vibrancy, urgency, awkwardness and frequent brilliance. Her representations of hackers, botnets and DDoS attacks in her dance HackPolitick (which references the internet collective Anonymous) as performed by her Brooklyn company, The People Movers, won her the honor of being quite possibly the first contemporary choreographer to be written about in Forbes. She recently produced and collaboratively choreographed Transmission, a play that premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe that deployed cutting-edge augmented-reality mobile-phone apps, podcasts and live performances.

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25 to Watch

25 to Watch 2018: Yeman Brown

Yeman Brown in Reggie Wilson's Citizen. Photo by Aitor Mendilibar, Courtesy Brown

It's no wonder Yeman Brown was nominated for a 2017 Outstanding Performer Bessie for his performance in Reggie Wilson's Citizen. Amidst the marathon of broken-up solos, Brown flies through the lightning-fast choreography. His movement is both gestural and athletic—not to mention deeply poetic—and is driven by a particular force which exudes a matter-of-fact command of the stage.

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25 to Watch

25 to Watch 2018: Maine Kawashima

Kawashima in rehearsal. Photo courtesy Tulsa Ballet

In a crowded company class at Tulsa Ballet, Maine Kawashima stands out, and not just because of her tiny size. (She's 4'11".) The 22-year-old corps de ballet member is fiercely focused, repeating combinations over and over again with tireless determination. Once class is over, she keeps going, whipping out fouettés.

"She is a technical wizard," says artistic director Marcello Angelini. "But she's also a sensitive and versatile dancer."

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25 to Watch

25 to Watch 2018: Marcelino Sambé

Sambé in David Dawson's The Human Seasons. Photo by Tristram Kenton, Courtesy ROH

Marcelino Sambé has been an ebullient presence at The Royal Ballet since he joined the company in 2012. A prizewinner at Moscow International Ballet Competition and Youth America Grand Prix, the Portuguese dancer earned a scholarship to the Royal Ballet School's Upper School and shone from the start in virtuosic variations, with technique that was unfailingly bright and airy.

His short stature could have limited him. But last season, Sambé (who is also an enthusiastic choreographer) broke through to the next level, as was shown by the expressive, harrowing role Crystal Pite created on him in Flight Pattern—that of a migrant gripped by despair.

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25 to Watch

25 to Watch 2018: Mackenzie Richter

Richter and artists of Houston Ballet in The Nutcracker. Photo by Amitava Sarkar, Courtesy Houston Ballet

Houston Ballet demi-soloist Mackenzie Richter is fond of saying "Adagio is not my thing," but after her performance int he third "Kingdom of the Shades" solo in Stanton Welch's La Bayadère, she needs to reconsider that statement. Control, suspension and floating grace to carry off the most difficult adagio work are most certainly her thing now, along with her allégro, jumping and turning abilities.

Long and leggy, the powerhouse ballerina got plucked out of HBII early to apprentice, and was then promoted to the corps mid-season in 2016 and to demi-soloist in September 2017. "I am working on being a little less academic," says Richter. "Being perfect doesn't mean that you are interesting to watch."

Find out who else made Dance Magazine's "25 to Watch" list this year.

25 to Watch

25 to Watch 2018: Daina Ashbee

Photo by Patrice Mathieu, Courtesy Ashbee

Creating dance as a medium for eliminating taboos has been cathartic for radical, riveting Montreal-based dancer and choreographer Daina Ashbee. Her highly physical, personal work dealing with topics such as female sexuality, anorexia, trauma, loss, the menstrual cycle and Indigenous women has garnered accolades: At the prestigious 2016 Prix de la Danse Montreéal, she received both Le Prix Découverte de la Danse (emerging artist award) and the Prix du CALQ for Best Choreographic Work (for When the ice melts, will we drink the water?).

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25 to Watch

25 to Watch 2018: Sam Pinkleton

Pinkleton (right) rehearsing Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812. Photo by Evgenia Eliseeva, Courtesy ICM Partners

In 2017, Sam Pinkleton's choreography appeared on three Broadway stages simultaneously: in Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, Amélie and the play Significant Other. But until recently, he didn't even feel comfortable calling himself a choreographer.

Pinkleton, 30, studied directing at New York University, where his relentless enthusiasm and "willingness to jump off of high things" led people to ask him to make movement for their projects. Since then, he's been creating "absurd, totally ridiculous, un-self-conscious movement," working with people with a broad spectrum of abilities and backgrounds, both young and old.

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25 to Watch

25 to Watch 2018: MK Abadoo

Abadoo in her Octavia's Brood: Riding the Ox Home. Photo by C. Stanley Photography, Courtesy Abadoo

MK Abadoo is an unapologetic activist. The dances she creates speak her truth to power. Her choreography offers a socially conscious take on torn-from-the-headlines issues of racial, social and gender equity.

Drawn to community-based work, Abadoo fuses postmodernist aesthetics with fleet-footed and full-bodied West African forms—she spent a Fulbright year in Ghana—and the nonchalant swagger of funk. Her 2015 work Octavia's Brood: Riding the Ox Home is inspired by science-fiction writer Octavia Butler's work and vignettes from the Underground Railroad, toggling between an Afro-futurist view of the U.S. and the searing history of Harriet Tubman. When Abadoo and her dancers stop short, caught by swaths of brown fabric tugging them ceaselessly back, they're trapped in an extension of their skin as Akua Allrich croons "My skin is black." Abadoo's message: The struggle against racism remains real, visceral and unvarnished, and she's ready to confront the issue head-on.

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