Raja Feather Kelly, Lewis Center for the Arts

2023-25 Princeton Arts Fellow

Photo credit: Thomas Dunn

About

Raja Feather Kelly is a choreographer, director, and the artistic director of the feath3r theory–a Brooklyn-based dance-theater-media company that he founded in 2009. Over the past decade he has created 16 evening-length works with the feath3r theory to critical acclaim, most recently UGLY part 3: BLUE (Chelsea Factory), Bunny, Bunny (Potiker Theatre San Diego), and Scenes For an Ending in collaboration with musician Emily Wells (commissioned by Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company).

Kelly choreographed the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical A Strange Loop (Lyceum Theatre, premiered off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizon). He was hailed by The New York Times as the choreographer who “can make your play move” for his extensive work. His off-Broadway credits include Macbeth In Stride (American Repertory Theater), We're Gonna Die in his directorial debut (Second Stage Theater), On Sugarland (New York Theater Workshop), SUFFS (The Public Theater), and Lempicka (La Jolla Playhouse). Frequent collaborators include Lileana Blain-Cruz, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Sarah Benson, Rachel Chavkin, and Michael R. Jackson. His other theater credits include choreography for Skittles Commercial: The Musical (Town Hall), The Chronicles of Cardigan and Khente (Soho Rep), Everyday Afroplay (JACK), GURLS (Princeton University, Yale Repertory Theatre), Electric Lucifer (The Kitchen), The House That Will Not Stand (New York Theatre Workshop), Fireflies (Atlantic Theatre Company), If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka (Playwrights Horizons), The Good Swimmer (BAM), Faust (Opera Omaha), and The Listeners / (Oslo Opera).

He has received dozens of awards, fellowships and honors including a Mellon Foundation grant (2021), an Obie Award and Outer Critics Circle Award honor for choreography for A Strange Loop (2020), an inaugural Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship (2019-2021), a Randjelović/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist at New York Live Arts (2019–2020), a National Dance Project Production Grant (2019–2021), a New York Dance Performance “Bessie” Award (2009), a Creative Capital Award (2019), three Princess Grace Awards (2017-2019), a National Dance Project Production Grant (2019), a Breakout Award from the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation (SCDF) (2018), Dance Magazine's inaugural Harkness Promise Award (2018), a Creator-in-Residence at Kickstarter (2018), and a Choreography Fellowship at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU (2017), a Bessie Schonberg Fellowship at The Yard (2017), the Solange MacArthur Award for New Choreography (2016), an ImPulsTanz Festival DanceWEB Scholarship, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Choreography Fellowship (2016). He has been nominated for two Lucille Lortel Awards (2019, 2020), a Chita Rivera Award for Outstanding Choreography, and he was a finalist for the 2019 SDCF Joe A. Callaway Award for outstanding choreography of A Strange Loop (Playwrights Horizons and winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Drama; 2021 winner of the Tony Award for Best Musical and Best Book of a Musical) and Fairview (Soho Rep, Berkeley Rep, Theater for a New Audience and winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama). He was featured on the cover of the February 2020 issue of Dance Magazine.

Kelly has performed with Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group, David Dorfman Dance, Kyle Abraham|Abraham.In.Motion, and zoe | juniper. He has also managed a number of dance companies including Race Dance, Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion, zoe | juniper, and Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group.