Springboard Danse

SPRINGBOARD 2026 EMERGING CHOREOGRAPHER JULIA WEBER💥

Julia Weber is a Polish-born, New York–based choreographer and performer and a graduate of The Juilliard School. In 2025, she choreographed a new work for New York City Ballet through the New York Choreographic Institute and created a piece for the Traverse City Dance Project. She is a three-time recipient of Juilliard Choreographic Honors (2023, 2024, 2025), a recipient of the Hector Zaraspe Prize for Choreographic Promise, a multiple first-place honoree at the Polish Choreographic Competition (ZAiKS), and has received recognition from the Polish Minister of Culture and National Heritage. Her choreography was also selected for the 24th Annual DUMBO Dance Festival.

We are so excited to welcome Julia to Springboard 2026 as an Emerging Choreographer, and can’t wait to see what she creates with our dancers this summer!

📸 Photo ©Karolina Gmurczyk

SPRINGBOARD 2026 EMERGING CHOREOGRAPHER MATTHEW DESTEFANO💥

Matthew DeStefano is a Brooklyn-based artist and choreographer whose subversive, in-your-face work draws from underground counterculture and political discourse, blurring the line between the obscene and the refined. His intricate, fragmented movement vocabulary is at once formal and fractured, a call for both rebellion and unity. His work has been presented at the Museum of Arts and Design, Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, Ailey Citigroup Theatre, TEMP Art Space, and in the Classic Stage Company’s production of Othello.

We are thrilled to welcome Matthew to Springboard 2026! His bold artistic perspective will push our dancers, and we cannot wait to see what he creates!