Tiffany Rae-Fisher ’03

Tiffany Rae-Fisher ’03 is Artistic Director of Emerge125.

Emerge125 is a Mellon Foundation gran-funded dance performance company headquartered out of Harlem and the Adirondacks, currently in residence at The Flea Theater. She is also the dance curator for Bryant Park Picnic Performances; the Executive Director of the Adirondack Diversity Initiative; and is the co-founder of Inception to Exhibition, a non-profit that facilitates low-cost, high-quality space rentals for use by artists from a variety of disciplines.


Read more about Rae-Fisher in Dance Magazine’s Dancer Spotlight


 

Over the course of her career, Rea-Fisher has been commissioned by the Dallas Black Dance Theater, the NYC Department of Transportation, Utah Repertory Dance Theater, and The National Gallery of Art in D.C. Her works have been seen on stage at the Joyce, the Apollo, New York City Center, Joe’s Pub, Aaron Davis Hall, Bryant Park, Red Bull Stadium, Works & Process at the Guggenheim, the Children’s Museum of Manhattan, Chelsea Factory, and New York Live Arts.

She has worked extensively with fashion designers to present their works, including for events and films with Louis Vuitton and Paola Hernández. Among Rea-Fisher’s more recent accomplishments is the premiere of her 2022 Dance Theatre of Harlem commission, Sounds of Hazel, celebrating the life of the classical pianist, singer, Hollywood star, and trailblazing activist Hazel Scott.

Rea-Fisher has become a go-to choreographer for major theater directors, including Carl Cofield (Best Director, N.A.A.C.P) and Saheem Ali (New York Theatre Workshop, Public Theater).

As the resident choreographer with the Classical Theatre of Harlem (CTH), she has contributed to their productions of Macbeth, The Three Musketeers, A Christmas Carol in Harlem, Antigone, The Bacchae, and Seize the King.


In 2024, Rae-Fisher was choreographer of Memnon, a CTH production at the Getty Museum’s Villa / Outdoor Classical Theater, which starred Andrea Patterson ’05.


Following her 2022 choreographic contributions to the company’s Twelfth Night, for which The New York Times suggested she should have been nominated for a Tony Award, Rea-Fisher’s choreography was most recently seen at The Public Theater’s 2023 Delacorte production of The Tempest as part of their Public Works program.

Rea-Fisher is a COHI member of the International Association of Blacks in Dance, an Advisory Board member of Dance/NYC, a Bessie Award Selection Committee member, and a proud member of Women of Color in the Arts. Rea-Fisher was the first dance curator for the interdisciplinary arts organization The Tank, where she now sits on their Board of Trustees, and served for many years as the Director of the Lake Placid School of Dance. She is a 7-time consecutive AUDELCO award nominee, a 2022 Toulmin Fellow, an National Dance Project Award winner, a Creatives Rebuild New York Awardee, a John Brown Spirit Award recipient, and was awarded a citation from the City of New York for her cultural contributions.

Rea-Fisher is much sought out as a lecturer, speaker, and policy contributor on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the arts. She subscribes to the servant leadership model and uses disruption through inclusion to influence the culture of her work with her company, in dance education, and all of her many satellite projects.


Excerpted from emerge125.org