Director & Staff

Founder & Artistic Director

Lynn Parkerson

Lynn Parkerson began ballet studies as a child with Barbara Bounds in Chapel Hill, NC. She later danced with the Boston and Chicago Ballets, performing many Nutcrackers and Balanchine ballets. In New York City, she was a trainee at the Harkness House for Ballet Arts and on scholarship at the Merce Cunningham School, where she studied technique and learned repertory. Parkerson began to choreograph while living in Munich, Germany. Her work has been presented at many prominent international events and venues, including the Munich Theater Festival, Frankfurt’s Theatre am Turm, the Florence International Festival of Dance, Moers New Jazz Festival, Jazz Festival Baden-Baden and An Appalachian Summer Arts Festival in Boone, NC, among others. In New York City, she presented annual dance programs — notably the popular ballet series To the Pointe — as Director of Dance at Holy Trinity from 1991 to 2001. She was on the faculty at the 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center from 1989 to 1996 and then served as its Assistant Director from 1996 to1999. In recognition of her exceptional leadership contributions to Brooklyn’s cultural community,  Parkerson received the Betty Smith Arts Award as part of the Women’s “Herstory” Induction Ceremony in 2007, and in 2006 she received the Paul Robeson Award for Artistic Excellence and Community Service.

In the fall of 2022 Parkerson was invited to present her  work “Unnatural Surrounding” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). The piece, performed live with poet Jasmine Mans, celebrated the book launch of the 1619 Project by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones. In 2018, Parkerson was invited by the city of Munich to do a 12-week artist residency at the Villa Waldberta, which culminated in a performance of “Kunst oder Unfall” (Art or Accident) at the Schamrock Women’s Poetry Festival, White Box Munich.