2026 Dance Teacher Award Honoree Jacqulyn Buglisi Grounds Generations of Dancers in Graham Technique
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Early in her dance training, then-third-grader Jacqulyn Buglisi told her mother: “I don’t want to do a recital. I want to learn how to dance.” That early drive to find the deeper meaning behind movement has remained a through line in her life. Whether as a principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company, the artistic director of Buglisi Dance Theatre, the choreographer of more than 100 works, or the chair of the Graham Department at The Ailey School for the past 36 years, Buglisi has shown a remarkable reverence for dance’s connection to humanity.
Buglisi is a born-and-bred New Yorker, but her dance training took off in earnest during her family’s temporary relocation to Boston. The young dancer studied at the Boston Conservatory, where she met dance division founder Jan Veen. “He was my first mentor,” Buglisi says. “He taught Mary Wigman repertoire. His classes were wonderful. I couldn’t wait to come back each time.”
When Buglisi was in eighth grade, Veen invited her to join older students in a class taught by Wigman, who was visiting from Germany. “At the end, she asked me what I was going to be doing next, and I told her my family was moving back to New York,” remembers Buglisi. “She said, ‘You must go study with Martha Graham.’ ” With this advice in mind, Buglisi got into the High School of Performing Arts and began studying Graham technique under David Wood, May O’Donnell, and Gertrude Shurr.
After graduating, and following a dance injury, Buglisi decided to attend university in Italy, where her brother had previously studied. Buglisi became involved in Rome’s nascent contemporary dance scene, and by the age of 19, she had opened the first school for contemporary dance in Spoleto (which is still operating). She also became a founding member of Italy’s first contemporary dance company, Teatro Danza Contemporanea di Roma.
In 1973, Buglisi returned to New York City and began dancing for Pearl Lang and Joyce Trisler. She also started teaching Stateside, including at her alma mater, the High School of Performing Arts, and, then, at the Martha Graham School. In 1977, Graham invited her to join her company. “The more that I learned, the more imagery I had to bring into my teaching,” says Buglisi of dancing Graham’s repertoire. “For example, in Night Journey, learning the myths and all those roles—the chorus, the leader, then Jocasta—all of that informed my teaching tremendously.”
In addition to the repertoire she was dancing, Buglisi bolstered her classes with imagery from other artists and poets—a custom she continues to this day. “William Blake, Rilke, and now Joy Harjo and other Indigenous poets. I’ll always bring that into my classes and my work,” says Buglisi. “Martha, as a mentor for me, had a lot of influence in how much curiosity is important to bring into the classroom.”
For Grace Sautter, who studied with Buglisi while in the Ailey/Fordham BFA program, this ritual is a big part of what makes her classes so special. “She often ended class with a poem or quote to send us off into our day,” says Sautter. “The attention to an artist’s humanity is something I have taken with me into my own practice. Her classes connect the dancer to the world at large.”
Sautter is now a member of Buglisi Dance Theatre, the company Buglisi co-founded in 1993 along with fellow former Martha Graham company principals Terese Capucilli, Christine Dakin, and her then-husband, Donlin Foreman. Sautter is one of many current and former BDT dancers who were Buglisi’s students first. Another is rehearsal director/régisseur Helen French, who is now also executive director of St. Petersburg Arts Alliance. French studied with Buglisi at The Juilliard School, where Buglisi was on faculty for 14 years. “There’s something magnetic about the way that Jacque speaks about how the Graham work should come from your soul,” says French. “She’s so invested as a teacher in sharing that.”
Looking ahead, Buglisi’s dance card is as full as ever: She’s working on this year’s iteration of Table of Silence Project 9/11, her call for peace performed annually on September 11 by nearly 170 white-clad dancers on the plaza at Lincoln Center. (A documentary about it is in the works.) Buglisi is also creating a new ballet called The Wing and the Shell commissioned by the environmental conservation nonprofit vildwerk, set to a narration of her poem about a hummingbird and a turtle who fall in love. And, of course, she’s continuing to teach Graham technique, both for intensives at the Graham School and at Ailey.
“I never forget what Martha said to me: ‘Miss Ruth’s [Ruth St. Denis] tongue was on me, and my tongue is on you.’ The responsibility of that legacy forever means so much to me,” says Buglisi. “Why should people do Martha Graham technique? Because it is a way of arriving at your fullest potential.” And now, Graham’s legacy continues to take root and grow in the hundreds of students that Buglisi has worked with over the years. “Jacque teaches Graham, but she isn’t just teaching a technique,” says French. “She teaches you how to be a better human.”
