Lakey Evans-Pe˜na

Lakey Evans-Peña is an educator, director, and creative leader who received her BFA from the University of the Arts and her MFA from Montclair State University. Currently she serves as the Associate Director and curriculum writer for the Ailey Horton Teacher Certification program. Lakey is also on the faculty at The Ailey School and an advisor for the Ailey/Fordham BFA senior class. Lakey has performed with Ailey II, Donald Byrd’s The Harlem Nutcracker and the New York City Opera. She’s danced the works of Alvin Ailey, Lester Horton, Ronald K. Brown, Eleo Pomare, Milton Myers, Jacqulyn Buglisi, and many others. She founded and served as the Executive and Artistic Director of the Williamsburg Movement & Arts Center in Brooklyn from 2009-21 as well as its sister organization, WRArts, in 2013. Over the years, Lakey has contributed to the Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation by restaging Alvin Ailey’s work at the American Dance Festival as well as assisting Ronni Favors in restaging Memoria for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s City Center season. Lakey was Ailey II’s Rehearsal Director from 2021-23 where she facilitated works by Alvin Ailey, William Forsythe, Francesca Harper, Andrea Miller, Robert Battle, Elizabeth Roxas-Dobrish, and Yannick LeBrun. Additionally she contributed to the curriculum building and taught for the launch of the Ailey Arts-in-Education Active Aging residencies. Lakey teaches and lectures nationally and internationally. In 2025, she was a panelist for Detroit’s Wright Museum Women of Ailey: Inspiring Through Dance, Dialogue, and Education, and led the Judith Jamison/Cry Tribute panel discussions for the Whitney Museum’s Edges of Ailey exhibition in NYC. In 2024, she co-presented at the NDEO Conference in Bellevue, WA, in addition to moderating a panel at the Library of Congress in Washington DC, Anna Sokolow and the Reimagined Roots of Antifascist Dance. She is author of Lineage and Legacy of Horton Through The Ailey Lens, Then and Now, examining the ideologies of cultural relevance, equity, and inclusion through the Horton/Ailey lineage, as well as exploring the historical and contextual framework of the Horton technique at The Ailey School. She was an adjudicator for the American College Dance Association’s 2025 South Central Conference and served as the contemporary teacher at the Prix de Lausanne in 2023 and 2024, as well as the 2023 Summer Intensive as a pre-selection judge. She’s been a guest lecturer for NYU Tisch, Marymount Manhattan College, Montclair State University, and Hollins University, teaching academic, performance, and studio coursework. Lakey has shared her pedagogical approaches as a guest at the Canada National Ballet Assemblée Internationale, the Rockette Conservatory, NYU Steinhardt, STEPS, Peridance, and Ballet Hispánico.