About Gus Solomons, Jr.
Gus Solomons, Jr. – dancer, writer, choreographer, and actor – writes about dance for DanceInsider.com, Gay City News, and Dance Magazine, among others. He has an Architecture degree from M.I.T.
Solomons danced in companies of Pearl Lang, Donald McKayle, Martha Graham, and Merce Cunningham, among many others. He created the title role in Donald Byrd’s The Harlem Nutcracker (1996-99). From 1972 to 1994, Solomons directed his concert troupe The Solomons Company/Dance.
In 1998, Solomons founded PARADIGM, a concert dance troupe for dancers over fifty, with fellow veteran performers Carmen deLavallade and Dudley Williams. The repertory company, which now includes Valda Setterfield, Michael Blake, and Karen Brown, tours and commissions new dances by emerging and established choreographers. In 2009, Solomons and Carmen deLavallade were honored by University of Missouri – St. Louis with a Dean’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts.
In 2000, Solomons won a Bessie (New York Dance and Performance Award) for Sustained Achievement in Choreography; in 2001, he was awarded the first annual Robert A. Muh Award from M.I.T. as a distinguished artist alumnus; in 2004, he was given the Balasaraswati/Joy Ann Dewey Beineke Chair for Distinguished Teaching at ADF.
In 2005, he became a Full Arts Professor at NYU/Tisch School of the Arts; he was appointed as a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar for 2006-2007, lecturing at various universities across the country.
He bicycles everywhere.