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Joyce Trisler

Choreographer

Joyce Trisler joined the Lester Horton Dance Theatre at the age of 15, where she met and performed with Alvin Ailey. Following her move to New York, she spent five years as a leading dancer with Doris Humphrey’s Juilliard Dance Theatre before performing with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater until 1964. Ms. Trisler staged numerous operas and Broadway shows, including Joseph Papps’ New York Shakespeare Festival productions. In 1974, she formed the Joyce Trisler Danscompany and created numerous acclaimed works, including Dance for Six, Rite of Spring, and Four Temperaments. Shortly after her untimely death in 1979, Alvin Ailey created his tribute ballet Memoria and dedicated it to “the joy, beauty, the creativity and the wild spirit of my friend Joyce Trisler.”