George Faison Bio
Born in Washington D.C., George Faison attended Dunbar High school and at the same time studied dance with the Jones-Haywood Capitol Ballet and Carolyn Tate of Howard University. After high school, Faison entered Howard University with the intention of preparing for a career in dentistry but left after seeing a performance by the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater Company. He remembers that dramatic, life-changing moment: “I had never seen anything like that in my life, the energy, the bearing. I thought, ‘that’s what I want to be.’”
Faison burst into the public scene in 1966 when he was chosen as Lauren Bacall’s dance partner in a television special. A year later George Fasion came full circle from his initial inspiration when he joined the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, dancing with the ensemble that so deeply inspired him years before. In 1969 Faison left Ailey to start his own Dance Company, The George Faison Universal Dance Experience. For most of the early seventies Faison and his company performed around the world, receiving rave reviews. Now a celebrity in the modern dance world, Faison created his best known work, Suite Otis set to music by Otis Redding. He also created pieces with a historical and political bent, among them works inspired by the memory of Malcolm X.
George Faison made his choreographic debut on Broadway in 1972 with Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope. In 1974, Fasion was hired to choreograph the Broadway musical, The Wiz, an all black retelling of The Wizard of Oz, becoming the first African American to win a Tony Award for choreography. The Wiz has the distinction of being the most successful African American production in the history of the American Theater. Throughout the 70’s and 80’s, Faison staged musical concerts for Stevie Wonder, Natalie Cole, Betty Carter, Roberta Flack, Aretha Franklin, Stephanie Mills, Melba Moore, Dionne Warwick, Gladys Knight and the Pips, and Earth, Wind & Fire. In addition to staging concerts for the most popular artists of the time, Faison remained active in theater, choreographing more than 30 musicals including 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Porgy and Bess, and Sing, Mahalia, Sing.
In 1989, George Faison staged the television special Cosby Salutes Ailey for the 30th anniversary of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. He won an Emmy Award for his choreography of the HBO special The Josephine Baker Story in 1991 and directed and choreographed “King” for President Clinton’s 1997 inauguration.
In 1997, Faison founded the American Performing Arts Collaborative (APAC), a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing multicultural performing arts productions and artists. George Faison along with Dr. Maya Angelou, Nickolas Ashford, Roberta Flack and Phylicia Rashad are APAC’S board members. George currently spends his time running the Faison Firehouse Theater, an abandoned firehouse he bought and renovated into a thrilling theater and arts institution in the heart of Harlem, and working with his youth empowerment program, The Respect Project. “George Faison sees his arts center as a vehicle to promote collaborations with other arts organizations by using dance, music and theater to inspire, educate and give youth self-respect and self-esteem as tools for their future.”
Faison shows no signs of slowing down, it’s only natural to keep on working. By creating work and empowering others through the arts, Faison continues to live his dreams: "We have one thing in common, O.K. we're gonna be purple and green and this and that and we're gonna change on each other as each day goes by, but we have to remember that when we are alone and in our separate worlds, each and everyone of us still have dreams, and everybody would like to say, 'Oh, that's a white dream' or 'That's a black dream,' or this or that or the other, but we all look at TV, we all do practically the same things so very definitely we all dream. So how can we, therefore, deny our dreams? So, I just go about living mine."
