About The Center

The Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University (CBA) is an international research institute for scholars and artists of ballet and its related arts and sciences. It exists to inspire new ideas and new dances, expanding the way we think about the art form’s history, practice, and performance in the 21st century.

Our Administration Our Story

Fellowships

Learn More

The CBA Fellowship Program awards residencies to artists and scholars across disciplines to work on projects that expand the way we think about the history, practice, and performance of dance. Applicants are not required to be experts in ballet or dance, but must have an interest in engaging with the art forms.  The fellowship provides space, stipend, and the time to pursue rigorous work. Fellows also gain new colleagues and a broad community of artists and scholars, two communities that do not often meet.

Resident Fellowship

Music Theorist Kara Yoo Leaman (CBA '20) at work in her CBA office. Photo by Joe Carrotta.

CBA-Chelsea Factory Fellowship

Photo by João Menegussi

CBA-Juilliard Fellowship

Photo by Hilary Schwab

Rockefeller Fellowship

Credit: ©Kazim: Courtesy of NYU Photo Bureau

CBA-National Sawdust Toulmin Fellowship

Ausia Jones by Guy Henry and Sasha Onyshchenko

Artistic Partnership Initiative

Caili Quan (CBA '19). Photo by Karolina Wojtasik.

Director’s Fellowship

Alumni Benefits

Laure Guilbert (CBA '19). Photo by Joe Carrotta.

Events

View all Events

CBA offers several opportunities for public engagement with the work and ideas about dance emerging from CBA and New York University. Click “View All Events” to learn more about these offerings, browse upcoming events, and watch content from past programs.

What is a Classic? Critical Theory and Embodied Practice

September 28, 2026 6:00pm

Helen Frankenthaler, Making Music, 2000. Etching, aquatint, and mezzotint, artist proof I, 15 1/4 x 26 in. Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, New York. © 2026 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / Tyler Graphics Ltd., Mount Kisco, New York

Lyrical Abstraction: Composer Kenneth Fuchs and the Art of Helen Frankenthaler

September 16, 2026 6:00pm

Helen Frankenthaler, Making Music, 2000. Etching, aquatint, and mezzotint, artist proof I, 15 1/4 x 26 in. Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, New York. © 2026 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / Tyler Graphics Ltd., Mount Kisco, New York

Afrofusion Dance Workshop

March 14, 2026 10:30am

A.I.M by Kyle Abraham | Movement Workshop

April 9, 2026 6:00pm

Photo by Meredith Dincolo and Tara Zahra

Moving Histories: Creating Biography Through Dance

April 20, 2026 5:30pm

Photo by Meredith Dincolo and Tara Zahra

Lourdes Lopez Rehearses Balanchine

April 27, 2026 6:00pm

Photo by Meredith Dincolo and Tara Zahra

Acting Lab for Dancers

March 6, 2026 12:30pm

Photo by Meredith Dincolo and Tara Zahra

Dance in the Films of Frederick Wiseman

January 26, 2026 5:00pm EST

Photo by Meredith Dincolo and Tara Zahra

The Life of a Body: Crafting Biographies and Memoirs through Movement

December 8, 2025 5:30pm EST

Photo by Meredith Dincolo and Tara Zahra

The Metamorphoses in New York: Creative Appropriations and the Study of Ovid

November 6, 2025 6:00pm

Photo Credit: Jerron Herman by Adrian McCourt, and Mara Mills by Rinn Blair

Founder & Director

 Jennifer Homans

“If we could create a place – a major research center – where some of the great minds of our time could come together to focus on dance and its related arts, something new and interesting might happen.”

 Read more

Photo Credit: Jerron Herman by Adrian McCourt, and Mara Mills by Rinn Blair

Ballet

Ballet means simply ‘to dance.’ It is a form of poetic gesture.

Physically, ballet is a system of training based on a linear and geometrically proportioned organization of the human body. Ballet is intellectually expansive; it has profound connections to philosophy and mathematics, to manners and religion, to painting and fashion, and to the practices of war and the ambitions of sport. At its origins, ballet was a western art form with roots in the Renaissance. Throughout its history, it articulated a vision of society and civic culture, which was at first courtly and aristocratic and in the 20th century became public and democratic. Today, ballet is practiced world-wide and has incorporated and influenced a wide range of dance traditions and styles.

Like classical training in theater or music, ballet is a skill and a gateway: a necessary grounding for the most radical directions in art. What kinds of dances artists make with it is an open and unrestricted question.