The Ailey School

David Finkelstein began playing the piano at the age of eleven. He has been a dance musician since 1982. He has played at every major studio and dance program in New York. He has accompanied Anna Sokolow, Carolyn Adams, Jennifer Muller, and many other teachers. Mr. Finkelstein frequently accompanies auditions at The Ailey School and has played for company class for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the Jose Limon Dance Company, and the Trocedero Ballet. As a teacher, David has offered classes in Music for Dancers and Improvisation Technique for dancers, actors and musicians. He has been on the faculty of City College, Marymount Manhattan College, and Movement Research, where he was Artist in Residence. He teaches Music for Dancers at The Ailey School and is the Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation archives video editor. Mr. Finkelstein is also the Artistic Director of Lake Ivan Performance Group, an experimental theater and video group which has presented more than thirty of his original works since 1982, at venues such as Symphony Space, BACA, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Dance Space, Theater for the New City, and many others. David's video work has been featured in numerous film festivals and has won awards at thirteen of them. His work has been funded by New York State Council on the Arts, The Fund for Creative Communities; Meet the Composer, The Field, Movement Research, The Brooklyn Arts Fund, and other sources. In 2022, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Film/Video.