Guest Artists and Residencies

Guest artist performances and multifaceted residencies play a key role in dance and movement studies education. The Flora Glenn Candler Series, and the Donna and Marvin Schwartz Artist-in-Residence programs support the presentation of iconic dance companies and innovative artists. These artists enhance how we engage in vital societal topics.

Jeanine Durning, Guest Artist Fall 2026

Jeanine Durning is an Alpert Award winning choreographer and performer whose work has been described by The New Yorker as having both "the potential for philosophical revelation and theatrical disaster." For over 25 years, she has investigated the mobilizing and mutable force of bodies through experiments in choreography, performance, and practice-based research.

Durning's work interrogates the dancing body's potential to shift perception of self, other, and the spaces we collectively inhabit — blurring artistic disciplines to reveal how our need for connection aligns, or misaligns, with our desires. Her ongoing practice, nonstopping, has anchored her teaching and choreographic praxis since 2010. Her critically acclaimed solo inging toured the US, Europe, and Canada from 2010–2020, and in 2023 she published a book centered around nonstopping with support from MANCC and The Mellon Foundation.

Durning has collaborated with David Dorfman Dance, and with mentor Deborah Hay since 2005 — serving as performer, choreographic assistant, and consultant for Motion Bank, and as Rehearsal Director for Stockholm-based Cullberg from 2020–2023. She continues to share her practice worldwide through teaching, mentoring, and creating new work.

Learn more about Jeanine Durning.

Madelyn Sher, Emory Arts Fellow 2025-2026

The Emory Arts Fellowship, supported through a generous gift from Sarah Arison 07B, provides Emory students and the Atlanta arts community the opportunity to experience and learn from visiting arts who spend one academic year on Emory's compus. During the 2025-26 academic year, Emory Dance will host artist Madelyn Sher, exposing students to her uniquely inventive work that explores the bond between language, imagination, and movement

Her year-long fellowship includes several opportunities to engage with her in conversation and view her work on both students and working artists. She participated in a Rosemary Magee Creativity Conversation in October 2025, choreographed a work for the Fall 2025 Emory Dance Company concert, and will present a new evening-length work in April 2026.

Learn more about Madelyn on her website, and view a sample of her past work below.

• Misty Copeland
• Doug Varone and Dancers
• Annalee Traylor
• Bebe Miller
• Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company
• Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet
• Dafi Altabeb
• Danté Brown
• David Dorfman Dance
• David Neumann/Advanced beginner group
• Doug Varone and Dancers
• Emily Johnson
• Jennifer Nugent and Paul Matteson
• José Limón Dance Company
• Kendra Portier
• Kyle Abraham/Abraham.in.Motion
• Monica Bill Barnes
• Trisha Brown Dance Company
• Toronto Dance Theater
• Urban Bush Women
• Xan Burley and Alex Springer