Company Staff

Enrique Cruz DeJesus
Artistic Director
Enrique Cruz DeJesus began his dance training at the Darvash School of Ballet and Dance Theater of Harlem. His love of dance and his development as an artist gained momentum while he went to Alpha Omega first as a workshop student and then as a company member under the artistic direction of Andy Torres and Co-Founder Ronn Pratt. In 1998 Mr. Cruz DeJesus became the Artistic Director of Alpha Omega.

In addition to his choreography and artistic direction responsibilities at Alpha Omega, Mr. Cruz DeJesus has an active career as a choreographer, dancer, actor and teacher in theater, film, music videos and concert dance. His theater credits include the national tours of Dreamgirls and Jesus Christ Superstar; the original production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Requiem Variations performed at the Opera Omaha Theater; the New York City Shakespeare Festival's Measure for Measure, produced by Tony Award winner George C. Wolfe; the European tour of Evita; the original workshop production of the Tony Award winning musical The Life, in which he was written as himself; Man of La Mancha at Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey; Guys and Dolls performed at the Dallas Theater Center; The Who's Tommy at Cherry County Playhouse in Michigan; South Pacific at Barrington Stage Theater in Massachusetts; Camila and Evita at the Walnut Street Theater, and Ragtime and the King and I at Fulton Opera House in Pennsylvania.

Mr. Cruz DeJesus teaches master classes and workshops locally and nationally including serving as choreographer and teacher at Howard University, George Washington University, North Carolina Central State, Durham University, Florida A&M University and the New York City Arts Connection. His work as teaching artist has been recognized by highly reputable arts organizations including the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council where Mr. Cruz DeJesus was awarded grants in both 2002 AND 2003 for his dance education work with inner city youth. His work has further been acknowledged by the New York State Council on the Arts which selected him as a panelist for evaluating dance company grant applications.

The James Merrit production "From Africa to America" starring Award winning actors Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee was choreographed and staged by Mr. Cruz DeJesus. Moreover, he was assistant director and choreographer for the workshop musical "Collapsing Universe" at Theater for the New City.

Mr. Cruz DeJesus continues to perform in theater and film even while his role as Artistic Director and Choreographer for Alpha Omega expands as the Company grows. His artistic goal is to devote his directing and choreographic styles to enhance concert dance with a liberal sprinkling of popular, contemporary musical and theatrical forms that create dramatic modern dance pieces that are equally accessible and entertaining to sophisticated dance audiences and to audiences totally unfamiliar with the formal concert hall.

dolores.jpg (15716 bytes) Dolores Vanison-Blakely
Executive Director
Dolores Vanison-Blakely, a Juilliard graduate with a B.A. in dance, has had a prodigious career as a professional modern dancer, teacher, choreographer and administrator. The connecting thread of Ms. Vanison-Blakely’s accomplishments is a total devotion to her passion – to fulfill herself through her art while simultaneously creating a sacred space where at-risk youth and young professional artists can flower and develop to their full potential as human beings and as artists. Her work as an artist became a vehicle to give to an ever-expanding circle of young people. The Alpha Omega Theatrical Dance School was the sacred space that Ms. Vanison-Blakely co-founded with Ronn Pratt and Miriam Greaves in 1973, a year after she became a founding member of the Alpha Omega Theatrical Dance Company.

While shaping Alpha Omega’s dance school at 83 East 4^th Street, Ms. Vanison-Blakely also continued her education, obtaining a B.S. in dance from Brooklyn College, an M.S. in Guidance and Counseling from Long Island University and an M.S. in Educational Administration from New York University. The advanced degrees enabled Ms. Vanison-Blakely to replicate the Alpha Omega dance school concept inside the NYC Board of Education when she was invited to create one dance department, then another, in the days preceding the huge arts budget cuts of today.

These dance departments together with the Alpha Omega after-school dance programs were the fertile soil that, to date, has produced three generations of Alpha Omega dancers and choreographers, artists and highly successful adults in all fields of business. Among these graduates are Alpha Omega’s Artistic Director, its Associate Director and members of Alpha Omega’s Board of Directors and Advisory Board. Another testament of Ms. Vanison-Blakely’s commitment and love of her students is the fact that over her thirty year career in the Board of Education she remains in touch with twenty-six of her students.

Prior to Ms. Vanison-Blakely’s career with Alpha Omega Theatrical Dance Company, she performed as a principal dancer with the Eleo Pomare Dance Company, the Louis Johnson Dance Company, and others. She performed in the Pearl Bailey production of "Hello Dolly" on Broadway, and as a dancer in many off-Broadway productions and on TV. She has been an Adjunct Professor at New York University, and aTeaching Fellow at Long Island University. She created choreography for the Lincoln Center Teenage Workshop "African Tales" and has taught at the NYC Performing Arts Workshop and the East Harlem Teenage Workshop where she produced versions of Bye Bye Birdie, West Side Story, Guys and Dolls, Porgy and Bess and South Pacific.

In 1992, Ms. Vanison-Blakely took on the role of part-time Executive Director of Alpha Omega. After retiring from the NYC Board of Education as an Assistant Principal in 1999, she became the full-time Executive Director. In this position she runs its education programs, hire and supervise volunteer and paid staff, work with the Board of Directors, serve on arts panels, supervise fund-raising activities and proposal-writing, manage the organization’s financial and accounting responsibilities as a 501.c.3, and serve as liaison with outside organizations.

Ms. Vanison-Blakely has been thrust into an expanded role since the beginning of the capital campaign for Alpha Omega’s Youth Arts Center at 70 East 4^th Street. It is a challenge she embraced as she has risen to all of the others before it – with full commitment and determination to master the new skills that the challenge requires of her and of the organization.

Ms. Vanison-Blakely is leading the organization she helped to found into a future that gives a sacred, safe space to countless generations of young people to come. The new Youth Arts Center will integrate all the arts, serve as a sanctuary for self-discovery and of a life-long love of learning for today and tomorrow’s at-risk youth. It will help to stabilize and increase capacity for Alpha Omega……. ironically right across the street from the Alpha Omega dance school began in 1973!

donna.jpg (16280 bytes) Donna Clark
Associate Director
Donna Clark is a native New Yorker who became interested in dance by first exploring all forms of the arts including music and drama. She developed as an artist as a member of the Alpha Omega Young Adult Workshop under the direction of Ronn Pratt and later Andy Torres. Simultaneously she studied at the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance on a five-year full scholarship.

Before becoming a principal dancer with Alpha Omega in addition to being the Company’s Assistant Artistic Director and Associate Director, Ms. Clark worked with several modern dance companies. These included Joan Miller’s Dance Players, Michiyo and Dancers, Premiere Dance Theater, Gallman’s Newark Dance Theatre, Eleo Pomare Dance Company and Shirley Rushing Danz, Inc. Ms. Clark holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Education from Baruch College, City University of New York.

Ms. Clark returned to her first love of musical theater with performances in the European productions of Black and Blue and Porgy and Bess; the national tour of The Wiz, and regional productions of Children of Eden, Play On!, and Latin Sol. Recently Ms. Clark made her first foray into choreography with the production of "Café Society", a musical revue based on the many musical greats who passed through the actual café in the late 1930's, which was performed at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center in NYC.