Will Rawls

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Will Rawls is a choreographer and writer who interweaves dance and language to investigate the poetics of blackness, ambiguity, and abstraction. His work has been presented at High Line Art, New York (2018); Danspace Project, New York (2012 and 2018); Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Oregon (2017); The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2017); MoMA PS1, New York (2016); ImPulsTanz, Vienna, Austria (2016), Prix Jardin d’Europe (2016); Performa 15, New York (2015); and The Chocolate Factory, New York (2013). In 2016, he collaborated with Ishmael Houston-Jones to co-curate Danspace Project’s Platform 2016: Lost and Found, which focused on the intergenerational impact of the AIDS epidemic on dancers, women, and people of color. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship (2017), a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency (2017), and a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant (2015). His writing has been published by Artforum, Triple Canopy, les presses du réel, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Hammer Museum. Rawls teaches and lectures internationally at universities and festivals. During his fellowship year, he will be researching the writings of painter Jean-Michel Basquiat.

“Will Rawls named among recipients for the 27th Herb Alpert Award in the Arts” | Herb Alpert Award foundation, May 18, 2021