If it takes two to tango, then Brooklyn-based choreographer Jerron Herman’s personal identities serve as perfect dance partners. “There’s a connection between Blackness and disability in my work and in my art,” he said in a Zoom conversation. “It supports more literacy around that deep connection that is there between the disenfranchisement of Black people and often disabled people.”
His story starts in California, where his parents exposed him and his brother to the arts while they were growing up in the Bay Area. Both bursted with creative energy. Herman initially fostered his artistic side through writing before pursuing the dramatic arts. He swapped coasts to attend the NYU Tisch School of Arts with plans on becoming a playwright. But plans change.
When Herman was 20, he apprenticed at the New Victory Theater near Times Square. That is where his dance career started. At the time, his role focused on compiling curriculum materials for teaching artists; nothing at all to do with dance, but one thing led to another and Herman ended up joining the Heidi Latsky Dance company, a troupe famous for pairing performers with and without disabilities. While he ultimately spent eight years there as a principal dancer, he initially remained a student.
“I would literally go to rehearsals and start to really cultivate a dancing career in between microeconomics and ancient philosophy,” said Herman. “I [was] running down Fifth Avenue from class in my business [casual] and into my dancer warmups every Monday, Wednesday, Friday.”
Living with cerebral palsy became a significant element in his performances, all while he was scoring fellowships from the likes of the Ford and Mellon Foundations and displaying work at cultural institutions like the Met and the Whitney.
“I can’t hide it, so how do you start to include it in a way that also makes the movement innovative and different and exciting for you, the performer? Using cerebral palsy as a quality of my movement, and really bringing it into that conversation, so that my spasticity isn’t something that’s impeding me from my arabesques or from my any move that I’m doing, but [instead as] a part of the technique and why I have a controlled line or have an interesting shape,” said Herman. “That’s what I started to really embrace.”
Last month, the National Dance Institute (NDI) announced Herman as the 2025–2026 Helen Stambler Neuberger artist-in-residence. He already boasted history with that institute as a teaching artist for its Dancers Realize Excellence through Arts and Movement (DREAM) Project, which brings children living with and without disabilities together on stage. Herman will continue working on such efforts as NDI’s artist-in-residence next month.
“Jerron has been an integral part of the NDI community for many years,” said NDI artistic director Kay Gayner. “His artistry continues to challenge society’s understanding of who can dance and what dance can and should look like. His ability to create liberating, expansive artistic experiences will have a profound impact on our young dancers, and we look forward to what they will create together.”