National Dance Institute Unveils Jerron Herman As 2025-2026 Helen Stambler Neuberger Artist-in-Residence

National Dance Institute (NDI) has named Jerron Herman as its 2025–2026 Helen Stambler Neuberger Artist-in-Residence. The yearlong residency supports the creative process of a movement-based artist of color and provides rehearsal space, performance opportunities, professional development, and peer dialogue at NDI’s Jacques d’Amboise Center for Learning and the Arts in Harlem.

Herman is an artist, choreographer, and director whose work centers disabled perspectives and draws from his lived experience as a dancer with cerebral palsy. His projects have been presented at Danspace Project and Performance Space New York, with installations at The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, and the Guggenheim. His honors include fellowships from United States Artists, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Jerome Foundation, and the 2020 Disability Futures Fellowship from the Ford Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

“Jerron’s integrity, creativity, and pioneering spirit will elevate and inform so much of our work here at NDI. That’s exactly what the Artist-in-Residence program is intended to do,” said NDI Artistic Director Kay Gayner. “His artistry continues to challenge society’s understanding of who can dance and what dance can and should look like.”

“I have developed a rich relationship at NDI over the years as a beneficiary of their space as a dancer, a friend of the Center, a teaching artist for DREAM, and now an Artist-in-Residence,” Herman said. “When one encounters such a deep and growing response, it is easy to stay in community with NDI, and I’m proud to engage in this new way.”

As part of the residency, Herman will choreograph for dancers in the NDI DREAM Project (Dancers Realize Excellence through Arts and Movement), an inclusive program for children with and without disabilities, in February 2026. This work may be featured at NDI’s Annual Gala and Event of the Year. Herman will also lead workshops for NDI Teaching Artists, contributing to new educational practices that reach more than 6,000 students annually.

The NDI Artist-in-Residence program has previously supported artists including Camille A. Brown & Dancers, Earl Mosley, Leonardo Sandoval, Troy Anthony, Tiffany Rea-Fisher, Mai Lê Hô, and Gregory Richardson.