Lauded as “a onetime tap prodigy who’s grown into a history-mining experimentalist” (The New Yorker), Orlando Hernández is a performer, choreographer, theater-maker, musician, and writer who came up in the tap dance community in New York. He now presents a variety of stories and performances that mix tap dance, live music, and theater.
Hernández has presented his work at venues including New York Live Arts, On the Boards, Joe’s Pub, the Judson Church, and Jacob’s Pillow, and has received grants and residencies from Guggenheim Works & Process, the New England Foundation for the Arts, Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, Yaddo, the CUNY Dance Initiative, the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, and Snug Harbor. He was a Fresh Tracks Artist at New York Live Arts, an Artist-in-Residence at the Center for Performance Research, and is a 2025-2028 Jerome Fellow in Dance.
As a member of the New York-based tap dance and live music company Music From the Sole, Hernández has performed at The Joyce Theater, Jacob’s Pillow, Works & Process at the Guggenheim, Fall For Dance at New York City Center, Vail Dance Festival, and Guild Hall. He is also a member of the Boston-based tap dance company Subject:Matter, directed by Ian Berg, and dances with Michela Marino Lerman’s Love Movement.
Hernández holds a B.A. in English from Yale University. He has published poems, translations, and essays in Fence, New American Writing, Nexos Magazine Online, and The Brooklyn Rail. His play La Broa’ (Broad Street), inspired by oral histories of Latino communities in Rhode Island, was produced at Trinity Repertory Company in 2024, in a run The Boston Globe called “heartwarming and magical.” He has acted in theater productions at Trinity Repertory Company, Spectrum Theater Ensemble, and the Dorset Theatre Festival, and served as an actor, choreographer, and adapter for Trinity Rep and Rhode Island Latino Arts’ bilingual collaboration Teatro en el Verano.
Orlando grew up in Hoboken, NJ, the proud son of a Puerto Rican father from Moca and a Jewish mother from Rhode Island. He lives in Washington Heights with his wife Octavia Chavez-Richmond.
You can check out his CV here.
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