RIOULT Dance NY Announces Executive Director Jane R. Penn

RIOULT Dance NY has announced the appointment of Jane R. Penn as the company's Executive Director. Her appointment coincides with the opening of the RIOULT Dance Center in Astoria, Queens an 11,000 square foot facility housing the professional dance company and serving the broader arts community.

"On behalf of the Board, it is with great pleasure that we announce Jane Penn as the Executive Director for RIOULT Dance NY," said Hope Greenfield, chair of the Board of Directors of RIOULT. "As a former dancer and a longtime member of the dance community, she brings a vast amount of understanding to her role. We are so delighted to have her driving the development of our new dance center and partnering with us to shape the future of RIOULT."

"I am so thrilled to welcome Jane into the RIOULT organization at a pivotal moment in our history," said artistic director Pascal Rioult. "It is an ambitious undertaking in this day and age, and I am glad to have found an ambitious and accomplished partner with whom to build the future."

Jane Penn began her early years training as a dancer at The School of American Ballet and later at the Joffrey Ballet School. After an injury sidelined her career on stage, she transferred her passion into arts management. Penn has worked in the not-for-profit sector for more than 25 years. It all began when she interned at the Limón Dance Company. During her time at Limón, she helped develop the company's first-ever, arts-in-education program L.I.N.K.s, in partnership with The Surdna Foundation. Later in collaboration with the Limón Institute helped to develop and brand Limón4Kids. In 2003, she was enlisted by The Foundation Center to provide consulting services in its First Steps/Next Steps program for 'under-resourced' organizations and parlayed that into a successful consulting practice. Ms. Penn also held an eight-year tenure at The Studio Museum in Harlem working under the leadership of Director and Chief Curator Thelma Golden. While at Studio Museum, she spearheaded a seven-year partnership with Target thanks to the launch of Target Free Sundays, which helped drive attendance and build bridges to multiple communities in Upper Manhattan. Continuing her work strengthening arts organizations through community building, she helped design two initiatives, JoycePass and PayWhatYouDecide, while serving as Director of Development at The Joyce Theater. A champion for artists and New York City's arts communities, Ms. Penn has spent a career promoting best practices and alternative ways of addressing the field's most pressing issues, including access, affordability and equity.

"The newly-built Dance Center is at the heart of what I love as an arts professional, providing working artists with the resources they need to create and building a space for bold voices, new ideas and a strong sense of community," said Ms. Penn. "We are so fortunate to call Astoria home. There is a vibrancy and authenticity in the neighborhood that begs for a creative enterprise such as ours."