The Lewis Center for the Arts’ Program in Dance at Princeton University announces Rennie Harris, Matthew Neenan, and Yue Yin as Caroline Hearst Choreographers-in-Residence for the 2024-2025 academic year: As guest artists, all three are creating new works or teaching repertory works that will be performed at the Princeton Dance Festival in November.

Launched in 2017, the Caroline Hearst Choreographers-in-Residence Program fosters the Program in Dance’s connections with the dance field. It provides selected professional choreographers with resources and a rich environment to develop their work and offers opportunities for students, faculty, and staff to engage with diverse creative practices. The artists share their work and processes with the Princeton community through workshops, conversations, residencies, open rehearsals, and performances.

Harris toured with the Fresh Festival 1984, the first national hip-hop tour in the U.S. In addition, he has performed and worked with artists such as Run DMC, Fat Boys, Kurtis Blow, Salt N Peppa, LL Cool J, Brandy, Madonna, Boys to Men, Will Smith, The Roots, and Raekwon The Chef (Wutang Klan), among others. However, Harris is most known for bringing social dances to the concert stage and coining the term “Street Dance Theater.” Harris has broken new ground as one of the first hip-hop choreographers to set works on ballet-based companies such as Ballet Memphis, Colorado Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet, Philadelphia Dance Company (Philadanco), Giordano Dance Chicago, Lula Washington Dance Theatre, Cleo Parker Robinson, Dallas Black Dance Theater, Dayton Contemporary Dance Company (DCDC), Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and others. He is the first street dancer to be commissioned to create an evening-length work on Alvin Ailey American Theater and to serve as a resident artist at the Alvin Ailey school for dance.

Neenan began his dance training at the Boston Ballet School and with noted teachers Jacqueline Cronsberg and Nan Keating. He later attended LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts and the School of American Ballet in New York City. Neenan performed with Pennsylvania Ballet (now Philadelphia Ballet) from 1994-2007 where he danced numerous principal roles in the Balanchine and contemporary repertoire. He was also the Ballet’s resident choreographer from 2007 to 2020, where he created 20 ballets. In 2006, Neenan co-founded BalletX with Christine Cox. He has created world premieres for the New York City Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, The Washington Ballet, Ballet West, Nashville Ballet, BodyTraffic, U.S.C. Kaufman School of Dance, and The Juilliard School, among several other companies and institutions.

Yin is a choreographer, founder, and artistic director of YY Dance Company, and the creator of the trademarked FoCo Technique. She began her training in Chinese classical and folk dance in China at the Shanghai Dance Academy and completed her M.F.A. in dance at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2008. In 2018, Yin founded her nonprofit, contemporary dance company dedicated to the teaching, production and performance of her original choreographic work. Her signature FoCo Technique fuses elements of Chinese classical dance, folk forms, ballet, and contemporary vocabulary. She has been commissioned by Gibney Company, Martha Graham Dance Company, Oregon Ballet Theater, BalletMet, Boston Ballet, Philadelphia Ballet, Limon Dance Company, Alberta Ballet, Balletto Teatro di Torino, Peridance Contemporary Dance Company, The Juilliard School, U.S.C. Kaufman School of Dance, Tisch School of the Arts, Rutgers University, Point Park University, and West Michigan University, among others.