Meet the Team
Our Artistic and Advisory Team includes former principal dancers and ballet masters (Dance Theatre of Harlem, American Ballet Theatre); award-winning lighting, film-production, and costume designers; Broadway gypsies; gallery artists; a New York entertainment lawyer; theater producers, B’nai Brith and synagogue leaders; Arts Leadership and Entrepreneurship experts; and two digital media company CEOs.
Harnessing our diverse networks will help us engage with a wide swath of local, regional, arts, social justice, and educational communities.
Dr. Suki John
Project Director & Choreographer
Dr. Suki John is the Texas Jewish Arts Association Director of Dance, and a Professor in the School for Classical & Contemporary Dance at Texas Christian University. Suki has worked internationally as a dance artist and scholar -- teaching, choreographing, and writing about the intersections between dance, history and culture. She has performed with the London Festival Ballet (under the direction of Rudolf Nureyev), The Joffrey Upstarts, Jennifer Muller, Sara Sugihara, Rachel Lampert, Living Art International, Dance Company Narciso Medina, The Horse’s Mouth, People’s Theater of Yugoslavia, and Route 66 Dance Company, which she co-founded with Ninotchka Bennahum. Suki has choreographed for Ballet Nacional de Cuba, Danza Contemporánea de Cuba, Snug Harbor/Staten Island Center for the Arts, Narciso Medina, Danza Espiral, Ritmo Flamenco, Culture Project, Connecticut Repertory Theater, Adelphi University, Cuba’s Superior Institute of the Arts, NYU, TCU and the University of New Mexico. A widely published author, her book Contemporary Dance in Cuba: técnica cubana as Revolutionary Movement is a personal and scholarly account.
Suki originally choreographed Sh’ma in the former Yugoslavia. Not long afterwards, the horrific tragedy of the Bosnian war impelled Suki to tell her mother’s story again in New York City, as new “Never Agains” reverberated across the globe. Based on her family’s experience in the Holocaust, Suki has staged Sh’ma in Europe and New York, and shown excerpts at the New York Festival of Jewish Culture, YIVO, B’Nai Jeshrun, Fort Monmouth Army Base, and the Dallas Museum of Biblical Arts. The current presentation of Sh'ma is at the heart of The Sh’ma Project for Holocaust and Human Rights Art and Education, with an emphasis on reaching out to young viewers.
