Linda Kent

Linda Kent earned her B.S. degree from The Juilliard School. She was Principal Dancer with both the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the Paul Taylor Dance Company performing internationally for over 22 years.

Ms. Kent has restaged Mr. Taylor’s works for dance companies around the world including the Joffrey Ballet, the Bat Dor Company, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, London Contemporary Dance Theatre, La Scala Opera Ballet, Purchase College and The Juilliard School. She has also restaged works by Alvin Ailey and David Parsons.

Television appearances include several Ailey Specials and five Taylor programs for “Dance in America.” Ms Kent appears in the recent film Ailey, currently showing on American Masters on PBS.

Ms. Kent has taught at the Taylor School since its inception in 1983 as well as Jacobs Pillow Dance Festival, University of Illinois, Wake Forest and New York State Summer School of the Arts and Steps. In 1992, Ms. Kent was the first modern dancer invited to teach at the Bolshoi Ballet School in Moscow. From 2001 through its 100th Anniversary season in 2013, she was Director of Dance at Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. For P-M’s New Works Festival Ms Kent commissioned original work by Robert Battle, Kyle Abraham, Camille A. Brown, Jessica Lang and Peter Chu among others.

Ms. Kent joined the dance faculty at Juilliard in 1984. In addition, she has taught and choreographed for the Juilliard Summer Dance Program, which she helped found in 1995. She retired from Juilliard in June 2021 as Dance Faculty Emerita. Ms. Kent began teaching at Steps in 2019.