Blakeley White-McGuire

Blakeley White-McGuire was born and raised in South Louisiana and currently lives in New York City as a creative artist, dancer, choreographer, répétiteur, educator and writer. Her performance and creative repertory spans genres from historical modern dance to contemporary dance theater including site-specific improvisation and dance on camera.

Blakeley has received choreographic commissions from The Museum of Arts and Design in New York City, Dancing Human Rights (Oxford University, U.K.), Downtown Dance Festival, Danza en Arte Pietrasanta, Italy, New Ballet Ensemble, Jacob’s Pillow’s INSIDE/ OUT Festival, Dance Films Association, Baton Rouge Ballet Theater, Movement Migration, Axelrod Contemporary Ballet, Women in Dance Leadership, Ballet Metropolitano de Medellín, Colombia, the Martha Graham Dance Company, American Dance Festival and The Ailey School.

She received international critical acclaim as Principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company for her performances of iconic roles of 20th-century modern dance, including Lamentation and Errand Into the Maze, receiving the prestigious Positano Premia La Danza Award for Contemporary Dance among others. She has been described as a dancer of “powerful technique, dramatic instinct and an appealing modern spunk ” – The New York Times. Simultaneously and throughout her career, Blakeley has danced in new 21st-century works by contemporary artists including in Jacquelyn Buglisi’s Table of Silence, Martha Clarke, Sean Curran, Nacho Duato, Daniel Ezralow, Larry Kegwin, Richard Move, Bulareyaung Pagarlava, Robert Wilson and Anne Bogart SITI/ Company. She was appointed Artist-In-Residence at Loyola University Chicago Fall 2021.

Blakeley holds her MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College and is an official stager of Martha Graham’s masterworks. Her passion for collaboration through thoughtful and respectful cultural exchange with communities throughout New York City and abroad has supported her work as facilitator of professional development for the Department of Education. Blakeley serves as a faculty member of The Ailey School, Hunter College City of New York and is the author of The Martha Graham Dance Company: House of the Pelvic Truth which was released by Bloomsbury Publishing UK in 2022. Her current projects include the children’s play, Los Sapos Valientes (Brave New Frogs) about cleaning up our water sources and caring for all creatures great and small, and C.A.V.E.S.: Entre el cuerpo y la naturaleza which explore liminality between art, sexuality, human bodies and connection as part of Nature through movement, sound, music, dance and visual art.