Jeremy McQueen
Jeremy McQueen
JEREMY McQUEEN is an Emmy® Award-winning director & choreographer, dedicated to storytelling rooted in experience and social engagement. His work aims to create spaces of comfort, solace, and connection through reflection- a sharing of observations of what is going on around him. In 2016, McQueen founded The Black Iris Project, an unapologetically Black ballet collaborative and education vehicle which creates new, relevant classical and contemporary ballet works that celebrate diversity and Black history.
Based in New York City, the project hosts a team of predominantly Black artists delivering cross-disciplinary and original works of art. Championing individuality, the collaborative harnesses the Black community's inherent creative spirit to encourage and inspire youth of color to pursue art, movement and music as an expressive outlet and a means for collective healing, as well as educating audiences about how Black history relates to the modern Black journey.
Born and raised in San Diego, California, McQueen is a graduate of The Ailey School/Fordham University, B.F.A. in dance program and has also trained in the schools of American Ballet Theatre, San Francisco Ballet and Alonzo King's LINES Ballet. A performer turned choreographer, McQueen made his professional debut at the age of 15 performing in regional theater productions in his hometown, and later went on to perform in the Broadway national tours of Wicked and The Color Purple, in addition to the Radio City Christmas Spectacular and numerous Metropolitan Opera productions.
As a 2020 Soros Justice Fellow (Open Society Foundations), McQueen is one of 16 community organizers, journalists, lawyers, policy advocates, and artists, from around the country, selected to advance reform and spur debate on a range of issues facing the U.S. criminal justice system. Jeremy is the first choreographer to receive the prestigious award.
McQueen's choreographic works have appeared at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Carnegie Hall, City Parks Foundation's SummerStage, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, Dancers Responding to AIDS' Fire Island Dance Festival, and has been commissioned to create works for organizations including American Ballet Theatre, Kentucky Performing Arts and The Ailey School, among others.