Dianne McIntyre, an alum of ADF, is the 2008 recipient of the Balasaraswati/Joy Anne Dewey Beinecke Endowed Chair for Distinguished Teaching. She celebrates 52 years as a dance-maker and founder of her first company of dancers and musicians, Sounds in Motion. The company toured throughout the U.S. and abroad and the Harlem-based Sounds in Motion studio was for many years a central hub of creative activity with classes, studio performances, rehearsals, and a gathering place for the “culture crowd” to explode with ideas. She has choreographed for her own and other dance companies, several Broadway and off-Broadway shows, three operas, 35 regional theater productions, a London West End musical, feature films, and television productions, and, so far, created 5 original full-length dance dramas. McIntyre has had choreography and teaching residencies in numerous universities and continues associations with the American Dance Festival, Bates Dance Festival, and Jacob’s Pillow where she is the co-director with Risa Steinberg of the Hicks Choreography Fellowship Program.
Highlighted concert works include Life’s Force and Take-Off from a Forced Landing, based on her mother's stories as an aviator, and Their Eyes Were Watching God, based on the Zora Neale Hurston novel. In 1991 after extensive research, she recreated dance pioneer Helen Tamiris’ epic 1937 work How Long, Brethren? Screen work includes Beloved, Langston Hughes: The Dream Keeper, and Miss Evers’ Boys (Emmy award nomination).
Inspired to create work derived from real-life narratives, McIntyre has conceptualized and directed her own “dance-driven dramas” that have appeared in both dance and theater venues. Notable works are Open the Door, Virginia! from 1950s civil rights activism and I Could Stop on a Dime and Get Ten Cents Change: A Ballroom Drama based on her father's life stories.
Awards include a 2022 Dance Magazine Award Honoree, a 2023 Martha Hill Lifetime Achievement Award, 2020 United States Artists Doris Duke Fellowship, 2019 Dance/USA Honor Award, 2016 Doris Duke Artist Award, two New England Foundation for the Arts/National Dance Project awards, John S. Guggenheim Fellowship, three "Bessie" awards, two AUDELCO's, one Helen Hayes award, National Black Theatre Teer Pioneer Award, Def Dance Jam Community Award, and Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts Degrees from SUNY Purchase and Cleveland State University.
McIntyre has worked in collaboration with master music innovators Olu Dara, Lester Bowie, Max Roach, Sharon Freeman, Butch Morris, Amina Claudine Myers, Cecil Taylor, Don Pullen, Kysia Bostic, Onaje Allan Gumbs, Abbey Lincoln, Hannibal Lokumbe, Ahmed Abdullah, and many others. Along with her mentors, her fellow dancers, and collaborative composers, McIntyre acknowledges the influence of directors and playwrights with whom she has worked, such as Bartlett Sher, Marion McClinton, Regina Taylor, Des McAnuff, Jonathan Demme, Douglas Turner Ward, August Wilson, OyamO, Ntozake Shange, Avery Brooks, Rita Dove, Joe Sargent, Rick Davis, Woodie King, Jr., Irene Lewis, Oz Scott, and Ricardo Khan.
As a dance alum of The Ohio State University, her mentors include Elaine Gibbs Redmond, Gus Solomons jr, Louise Roberts, Vera Blaine, Helen Alkire, and Richard Davis. Her newest dance/music/poetry work, In the Same Tongue, has been on tour since October 2023.