Lakey Evans-Pe˜na

Lakey Evans-Peña is an educator, director, and creative leader. She was named associate director of the Ailey Horton Teacher Certification program in June 2023. In this role, she integrates her professional performance, educational and scholarly knowledge, and experience in the creation of the new Ailey Teacher Certification Program: Ailey Horton Technique. 

Evans-Peña received her BFA from the University of the Arts, her MFA from Montclair State University, and was a scholarship recipient at The Ailey School. As an embodied practitioner, Evans-Peña has performed the works of Alvin Ailey, Ronald K. Brown, Eleo Pomare, Hope Clarke, Milton Myers, Jacqulyn Buglisi, Kevin Iega Jeff, and Kathryn Posin. She has toured with Donald Byrd’s The Harlem Nutcracker and with Ailey II under the direction of Sylvia Waters, as well as with the New York City Opera and at New York’s SummerStage. Most recently, Evans-Peña restaged and performed Lester Horton’s The Beloved in Roots & Routes, her self-produced evening length work.  

As an artistic coach and creative leader, she served as assistant to Ronni Favors for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s New York City Center production of Memoria, as well as for the American Dance Festival. In her role as Ailey II’s rehearsal director, she has overseen works by Alvin Ailey, William Forsythe, Francesca Harper, Andrea Miller, Robert Battle, Elizabeth Roxas-Dobrish, and Yannick LeBrun. Evans-Peña teaches and lectures nationally and internationally. She has been the contemporary teacher at the Prix de Lausanne in 2023 and 2024, as well as at the 2023 Summer Intensive as both contemporary teacher and pre-selection judge. She continues to adjudicate for the Ailey/Fordham BFA program, the Certificate Program, and the Summer Intensive, conducting national auditions with Melanie Person as well as serving as a BFA advisor.  

As a pedagogue and movement maker, Evans-Peña centers empowerment through her teaching and creative practices. Her thesis work, Lineage and Legacy of Horton Through The Ailey Lens, Then and Now, examines the ideologies of cultural relevance, equity, and inclusion through the Horton/Ailey lineage, as well as exploring the historical and contextual framework of the Horton technique at The Ailey School. 

Believing strongly in creating equitable spaces to share the power of dance and the performing arts, Evans-Peña founded and served as the executive and artistic director of the Williamsburg Movement & Arts Center in Brooklyn from 2009-21. Identifying a need for quality arts programming in the Brooklyn school sector, and with a robust after school enrollment at the WMAAC home studios, she developed public school, private school, and community partnerships which enabled 3,000 students a year to explore dance through daytime workshops and creative on-site residencies. In 2015, she co-curated, co-produced, and presented a performance series providing rehearsal and performance space for choreographers at different stages of their careers to present their work. Expanding additional opportunities for equitable arts education, Evans-Peña additionally founded WMAAC Residencies (now renamed WRArts), a 501(c)3 organization which continues to offer a rich array of creative arts community programming. She served as president until 2017. 

Evans-Peña has served as an adjunct and visiting professor at NYU Tisch School, Marymount Manhattan College, Montclair State University, and as artist-in-residence at Hollins University, teaching courses in technique and performance, Dance as an Art Form, and Dance Appreciation. Evans-Peña has engaged her pedagogical approaches as a guest at the Canada National Ballet Assemblée Internationale, Rockette Conservatory, STEPS, Peridance, Ballet Hispánico, and as a teaching artist for Ailey Arts In Education & Community Programs.