Mark Morris, praised as “the most successful and influential choreographer alive, and indisputably the most musical” (The New York Times), was born in Seattle, Washington, where he studied with Verla Flowers and Perry Brunson. In the early years of his career, he performed with Lar Lubovitch, Hannah Kahn, Laura Dean, Eliot Feld, and the Koleda Balkan Dance Ensemble. He formed the Mark Morris Dance Group (MMDG) in 1980 and has since created over 150 works for the company. From 1988 to 1991, he was Director of Dance at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, Belgium’s national opera house. In 1990, he founded the White Oak Dance Project with Mikhail Baryshnikov. Morris is also an acclaimed ballet choreographer, with twenty-two works commissioned by ballet companies worldwide. Noted for his musicality, Morris has been described as “undeviating in his devotion to music” (The New Yorker). He was named a Fellow of the MacArthur Foundation in 1991 and has received eleven honorary doctorates to date. He has taught at the University of Washington, Princeton University, and Tanglewood Music Center. Morris opened the Mark Morris Dance Center in Brooklyn, New York, in 2001 to provide a home for his company, subsidized rental space for local artists, community education programs for children and seniors, and a school offering dance classes to students of all ages and levels of experience with and without disabilities.

Peter Sellars is an opera, theater and festival director who has gained international renown for his groundbreaking and transformative interpretations of classics, advocacy of 20th century and contemporary music, and collaborative projects with an extraordinary range of creative artists. His works explore issues that connect the contemporary and the timeless, with an understanding of art’s power as a means of social action and moral expression. His many notable productions include his creations with composer John Adams, including Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer, and, most recently, The Girls of the Golden West.

Sellars has led several major arts festivals, including the 1990 and 1993 Los Angeles Festivals and the 2002 Adelaide Arts Festival. In 2006 he was Artistic Director of New Crowned Hope, a festival in Vienna, Austria for which he invited artists from diverse cultural backgrounds to create new work in the fields of music, theater, dance, film, the visual arts and architecture. He is a distinguished professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures and the director of the Boethius Initiative at UCLA, a resident curator of the Telluride Film Festival, and was a mentor for the Rolex Arts Initiative. His many awards include a MacArthur Fellowship, the Erasmus Prize for contributions to European culture, the Gish Prize, the Polar Music Prize, and the designation of “Artist of the Year” by Musical America. Sellars is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.