Interview: Broadway's Dionne Figgins on Mentorship, Legacy, and Teaching Kids to Dance at Ballet Tech

This June, Ballet Tech’s acclaimed student troupe returns to the Joyce Theater for Kids Dance 2025, an annual celebration of movement, imagination, and possibility.

For Artistic Director Dionne Figgins—a Broadway dancer herself with credits ranging from Memphis to A Wonderful World—it’s more than just a showcase. It’s a statement about what dance can mean for young people, both onstage and off.

In this conversation, she reflects on her own path from Washington, D.C. to the professional stage, the mentors who shaped her, and the responsibility she now carries to pass it all on.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

How did you get started as a dancer?
Well, if you ask my mom that question, she would say that I was particularly clumsy and precocious, which is not necessarily a good combo. 

But she saw that I loved to dance loved to move, loved to be creative. I went to the Jones-Hayward School of Ballet when I was six. That’s where I received my formal training and I was with Miss Jones until I was 16. I grew up dancing at the Kennedy Center, and every year we would have a Kwanzaa celebration there and I would dance in that program, which eventually led me to other programming at the Kennedy Center. When I turned 18, I auditioned for a show that Debbie Allen was doing, Brothers of the Night. I became her understudy in the piece. I ended up going to Goucher College for a very short period of time before joining Dance Theater of Harlem in 2000. 

It sounds like you had a lot of people along the way that were looking after you and encouraging you. Is that the sort of thing that you’re now bringing to Ballet Tech with the students you work with?
Absolutely. It’s the reason why I’m here.

There was a whole community and village that was invested in my growth and development as an artist. This is a craft that has to be passed back down. They understood that if we want to continue to have dance and we want to continue to have it at the highest levels, then there has to be a lot of mentorship and investment from the people who already have the tradition. I’m super invested in ensuring that we continue this dance legacy and not just so that we can have dance, but that we can have professionals that can be in the room and they can be fully realized people. 

We think of dance and the dancer’s body as an instrument, and we sometimes forget that there’s an entire person that has their own wants and desires and needs inside of it. They’re not just there to facilitate a choreographer’s vision, but they to have a vision for their own life and their own art.

When you took on the role of Artistic Director, did you bring with you a new vision for Ballet Tech, or did you feel you were there to continue with the vision that was already in place?
I think that right now we’re in a new vision for dance in general. A part of that is the need for dancers to learn how to advocate for themselves in the space. How to work inside of a system that is very structured and still maintain your identity. There’s a lot of conversations about the culture of dance, which is separate from what I like to call the artistry of the science of dance.  

There’s still this student-teacher dynamic in the studios, and it’s a little bit different than I think other work environments. I liken it to sports.  Somebody is the coach and they’re the authority in the space and they’re going to be telling you what to do. And that works when you’re a student. But what has happened in dance is that that system never dissipates, and people aren’t allowed to really grow up. There has to be a space for that because when I was growing up, there wasn’t. 

You’ve been on the stage more than a handful of times, including Broadway, so you bring these students real lived experiences. I’m sure that they look at you as as somebody who’s very inspirational.
There’s a lot of value that dance has brought to my life that I want the students to have, regardless of whether they dance or not. I want the students to also learn about all the other ways in which they can be involved in the theater, because it’s not just about the performance dance that happens on stage. It’s about the stage manager and the lighting designer and the set designer and the dance administrators that make sure that we have people coming to the shows. It’s an ecosystem. 

I love these kids, and I love dance, and I enjoy being in rooms with professionals who know how to be generous in the studio. Teaching and and cultivating another generation of those artists is very important to me. 

What’s next for you and Ballet Tech?
We have our Joyce season coming up. Our middle school students are performing at the Joyce in their yearly concert, Kids Dance. I’m so, so grateful for this program because it’s so in alignment with my own values and position as a dancer and what I’d like to see.