If there's one skill Denise Jefferson has learned in her years as a professional dancer and the director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance School, it's how to be graceful.
"She is ... one of the most elegant people I know," President Lawrence Bacow said in an e-mail to the Daily. A Chicago native, Jefferson is one of the nation's top students and teachers of modern dance.
"Denise Jefferson has helped to educate some of the world's best contemporary dancers as the long time head of the Alvin Ailey School," Bacow said. "She is widely admired as a gifted teacher, dancer, and choreographer."
Jefferson received a bachelor's degree in French from Wheaton College and a master's degree in French from NYU. After graduating, she became a professional dancer with The Pearl Lang Dance Company. She soon joined the ranks of the Ailey School of Dance and became the school's director in 1984, a position she held since then.
In addition to her position at the Ailey School, Jefferson has been a leader in the field of dance throughout her life. She has worked with the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. She was vice-chairperson of the International Association for Blacks in Dance and president of the Emergency Fund for Student Dancers.
Jefferson is also on the Board of Directors for two companies - the Monte/Brown Dance Company and Career Transitions for Dancers, a company which works "to empower current and former professional dancers, as well as their younger counterparts, with the knowledge and skills necessary to clearly define their career possibilities after dance, and to provide the resources to help make these possibilities a reality," according to the mission statement on its Web site.
Jefferson is a trustee of Wheaton College, and she has worked for the dance departments at New York University, University of Illinois, Sarah Lawrence College and a variety of others. She is on the advisory board of the University of Oklahoma's dance department.
Jefferson will receive an honorary doctorate of fine arts from Tufts.
