David Taylor

DAVID TAYLOR has been professionally involved in the Colorado dance community for the past thirty-nine years. During the course of a twelve-year dance career, he began choreographing in 1976, and since then has created over 100 original works. In 1979, he founded the David Taylor Dance Theatre, which is now proudly celebrating its 30th Anniversary as one of the Rocky Mountain region’s most acclaimed, well recognized, and respected dance organizations.

Mr. Taylor received three National Endowment for the Arts grant awards along with the City and County of Denver’s first Individual Artist Fellowship award for dance, and in March of 1997, he and his company were proud recipients of the State of Colorado’s Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. He has been commissioned to create ballets for Opera Colorado, the Colorado Symphony, the Denver Chamber Orchestra, the Up Close and Musical Ensemble, the National Repertory Orchestra, the Colorado Wind Ensemble, and for the Dayton Ballet in Ohio, and has set his acclaimed “A Children’s Rainforest Odyssey” on the Aspen/Santa Fe Ballet Company and the Lone Star Ballet of Amarillo, Texas. His original and innovative productions of “The Nutcracker” and “Rainforest” have garnered national critical recognition and continue to be booked extensively across the United States. Mr. Taylor has additionally served as a Board member for the Mayor’s Commission on Cultural Affairs, as the Vice President for the Colorado Dance Alliance, as a peer panel member for the Colorado Council on the Arts, and in 2008, he received the Carson-Brierly Dance Library’s prestigious “Living Legends of Dance” Award.

Currently, Mr. Taylor serves as the Artistic Director Emeritus of the David Taylor Dance Theatre, an adjunct faculty member of the Dance Department at Colorado State University in Fort Collins and a master class teacher in ballet technique, pas de deux and dance history for numerous dance organizations throughout the state. His extensive background also includes a longtime involvement with metaphysical studies, sacred dance and ritual and besides conducting sacred dance lectures and workshops for many statewide organizations, in the summer of 2009 he founded the state’s first professional sacred dance group, the Zikr Sacred Dance Ensemble, which will present its debut performance this fall in St. Paul, Minnesota. (DT)

Teaches:  Ballet, Variations, Pas de deux