Overview
Dr. Iyun Ashani Harrison is a choreographer, scholar, educator, and Executive Director of Ballet Ashani (The Iyun Ashani Harrison Foundation). This contemporary ballet company is based in Durham, North Carolina. Born in Saint Andrew, Jamaica, Harrison’s early training spans acting, classical ballet, modern technique, and Jamaican folk traditions. These experiences shaped his interdisciplinary artistic voice. He earned a BFA from The Juilliard School, an MFA from Hollins University, and an EdD in Educational Leadership & Organizational Innovation from Marymount University.
Harrison’s creative research develops narrative-driven ballets that engage literature, identity, and cultural history. Notably, projects like Giovanni’s Room and his Banned Books Ballets use choreography to prompt dialogue on censorship, authorship, and access. Through Ballet Ashani, he expands ballet’s reach by integrating interdisciplinary design, technology, and cultural inquiry to broaden narrative diversity and elevate underrepresented perspectives, thereby impacting both the art form and its audiences.
Harrison’s scholarship impacts ballet by examining inclusive leadership and advancing equity within the art form. He co-edited and co-authored Antiracism in Ballet Teaching (Routledge, 2023), which influenced pedagogy and policy through research on racial bias, teaching methods, and leadership. His dissertation, Inclusive Leadership in U.S. Ballet: A Comparative Organizational Ethnography of Pacific Northwest Ballet & Collage Dance Collective, provides an empirical model for transformative leadership practices that informs institutional change in ballet organizations.
Harrison performed with the Dance Theatre of Harlem under Arthur Mitchell. There, he danced works by George Balanchine, Glen Tetley, Michael Smuin, and Billy Wilson. His experience includes Ballet Hispánico, Ailey II, and the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica. He has also appeared as a guest artist with Buglisi Dance Theatre, Connecticut Ballet, Flint Institute of Music, Collage Dance Collective, Seattle Dance Project, and St. Louis Black Repertory Theater. He has performed works by Alvin Ailey, Talley Beatty, Donald Byrd, George Faison, Jiří Kylián, José Limón, Edwaard Liang, Lar Lubovitch, and Paul Taylor. His media appearances include PBS’s Setting the Stage, NBC’s 20th Hispanic Heritage Awards, PBS’s Who’s Dancin’ Now? – Arts Education in Your Community, and The South Bank Show (UK).
He founded Ashani Dances (2011–2018), serving as Executive Director and Resident Choreographer. The Seattle Times praised the company’s “sophisticated musicality and effective use of theatrical space.” In 2021, Harrison relocated and re-envisioned the organization, which was reborn as Ballet Ashani (The Iyun Ashani Harrison Foundation), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit advancing ballet through the leadership of artists of color and women.
His choreography has been commissioned by organizations such as the American Dance Festival, the Boost Dance Festival, the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, and Collage Dance Collective. Other commissions include Cornish College of the Arts, Goucher College, Henderson State University, Jamaica School of Dance, Pomona College, Peabody Conservatory, The Ailey School, The Juilliard School, University of Florida, the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill, and Webster University. In addition, he serves as a national adjudicator for dance competitions.
Harrison has held academic appointments at Cornish College of the Arts, Goucher College, Pomona College, and Webster University. He has taught at Pacific Northwest Ballet School, Peabody Conservatory, The Ailey School, and Maryland Youth Ballet. He is currently an Associate Professor of the Practice of Dance and African and African American Studies at Duke University.
His work has been supported by grants from Duke University’s Trinity College of Arts & Sciences and the Duke Endowment Arts Fund. Additional support comes from the Hirsch Research Initiation Grant and Pomona College’s Presidential Grant. He was an Atlantic Coast Conference Academic Leadership Network Fellow and received fellowships from NYU Tisch School of the Arts as well as The Juilliard School’s PEPS and Community Service. His choreography, Paganini Variations, was selected for the American College Dance Association Mid-Atlantic Regional Gala. Union received recognition for “exceptional artistic merit” at the Boost Dance Festival and was presented at ACDA Regional and National Galas, including the Kennedy Center.
Harrison’s work is recognized for its formal clarity and musical sophistication. His ballets expand the cultural and narrative scope of the art form. They also contribute to national conversations on equity, authorship, and representation.
