A New Season Takes Shape
From Executive Director Dory Sibley
Dear Friends of the Accademia dell’Arte,
As we look back on an incredibly full and successful spring and summer at the Accademia, I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to our students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community for making this season so vibrant and memorable. Now, as we turn toward the 2026–27 academic year, there is a wonderful sense of possibility at the Villa. We’re welcoming new faces, developing new programs, and launching an Events Series that will bring even more creativity, collaboration, and artistic exchange into our community.
This fall, I’m especially excited about our new Fall Dance Program, a pilot initiative developed in collaboration with
Rutgers University. In fact, our fall students are arriving at the Villa this week! One of its new courses, Sonic Body: Sound, Movement, & Choreographic Inquiry, embodies so much of what we strive for at the Accademia. By challenging traditional hierarchies between music and dance, the course invites students to approach sound and movement as a shared creative process. Working alongside live musicians from the region and experimental dance artists, students will have the opportunity to take risks, cross disciplinary boundaries, and discover new ways of making work together.
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That spirit of exchange continues in the spring, when we’ll welcome an extraordinary group of guest artists, including internationally renowned hip-hop artist Matthew Harding from the UK and acclaimed stage and film artist Alida Bevk from Slovenia. Encounters with artists like these expose students to different perspectives, methodologies, and traditions, and remind us that some of the most transformative artistic experiences happen when we step beyond what is familiar.
We’re already looking toward summer 2027 as well, with a robust series of faculty-led programs taking shape for May and June and the return of our popular Summer Intensives, which we’ll be announcing this October.
In just a few weeks, I'll join Bob Banday Shryock, Head Faculty member and our VP of Communications & Recruiting, for our annual fall recruiting tour, crisscrossing the United States to visit colleges and universities. These visits always give me the opportunity to speak with students who are excited by the possibility of studying abroad, but who may also be wondering whether they are ready to take that leap.
To those students, I want to say: Don’t hold back.
Studying abroad, and especially choosing an experience built around artistic exploration, asks you to step into the unknown. That is part of its value. If you come to the Accademia, embrace the opportunity fully. The artists, teachers, collaborators, and creative traditions you will encounter here can be difficult to access anywhere else, and what you bring to those encounters matters just as much.
And if something is holding you back, a practical concern, uncertainty, or simply a question, please reach out before deciding that this experience isn’t possible for you. We are here to help.
The year ahead is shaping up to be one of our most ambitious yet, but what excites me most isn’t simply how much we are doing. It is what can happen when artists from different places, disciplines, and traditions come together with curiosity and the courage to take a creative risk. That remains at the heart of the Accademia.
Thank you for continuing to be part of this community. I can’t wait to see what we create together in the year ahead.
Warmly,
Dory Sibley
Executive Director
