Rennie Harris

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Rennie Harris toured with the Fresh Festival 1984, the first national Hip-hop tour in the U.S. In addition, he has performed and worked with artists such as Run DMC, Fat Boys, Kurtis Blow, Salt N Peppa, LL Cool J, Brandy, Madonna, Boyz II Men, Will Smith, The Roots, and Raekwon The Chef (Wutang Klan), to name a few. However, Harris is known for bringing social dances to the concert stage and coining the term "Street Dance Theater." Harris has broken new ground as one of the first Hip-hop choreographers to set works on ballet-based companies such as Ballet Memphis, Colorado Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet, Philadelphia Dance Company (Philadanco), Giordano Dance Chicago, Lula Washington Dance Theatre, Cleo Parker Robinson, Dallas Black Dance Theater, Dayton Contemporary Dance Company (DCDC), Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and more. He is the first street dancer ever to be commissioned to create an evening-length work on Alvin Ailey American Theater and to serve as a resident artist at the Alvin Ailey school for dance.

Harris has received three Bessie Awards (2001) and was recently nominated for three Bessie Awards in 2023 for the remounting of Rome & Jewels. He has received five Black Theater Alvin Ailey Awards, a Herb Alpert Award, and was nominated for a Lawrence Olivier Award (UK). Voted one of the most influential people in the last one hundred years of Philadelphia’s history (City Paper), Harris has been compared to Basquiat, Alvin Ailey and Bob Fosse. Harris has also received Dance Magazine's Living Legend Award (2017) and a Lifetime Achievement Award in choreography (McCullum Theater 2019). In addition, he has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, PEW Fellowship, a USA Artist of the Year Fellowship, a Governors Artist of the Year Award, and he is noted as the first street dancer to receive two honorary doctorate degrees from both Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, and Columbia College in Chicago, Illinois.

In 1986, Harris served as a cultural ambassador for former President Ronald Reagan’s U.S. Embassy Tour and in 2001, he was invited to the White House by the President Clinton Administration to share in the recognition of African American artists making a difference in the world. Harris received a medal in choreography from the Kennedy Center and has performed for such dignitaries as the Queen of England and the Princess of Monaco, and he was chosen as one of four U.S. companies to serve as Hip-hop cultural ambassadors for President Obama's Dance Motion USA, touring throughout Israel, Jordan, and Ramulah.