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Elizabeth Roxas-Dobrish

Elizabeth Roxas-Dobrish started dancing at the age of five and became the youngest member of Ballet Philippines. She came to the United States as a teenager and studied at The Ailey School and then danced with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, Joyce Trisler, and other companies before joining Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 1984. She was the first Filipina principal dancer with the company. The New York Times described her as “a cool, still, lyrical center of the Ailey Storm”. She was featured in a 1997 issue of Dance Magazine’s cover article and named by Avenue magazine as one of the 500 most influential Asian-Americans. After leaving Ailey in 1997, Roxas-Dobrish continued to appear as a guest for the Ailey company through the years, and she is a faculty member at The Ailey School. She has also taught at Harvard University, Sarah Lawrence College, and other institutions. She received the Ma-Yi Theater Company Award honoring her contributions to the Arts. She has choreographed for regional theaters, as well as for Off Broadway shows in New York, and she has been commissioned to create works internationally and in the United States. She has created dances on film for the 2020 Soho International Film Festival and premiered a dance film for the Philippines’ Fifth Wall Fest in 2021. Roxas-Dobrish is married to Robert Z. Dobrish, a prominent matrimonial attorney in Manhattan.