Dyane Harvey

Dyane Harvey-Salaam, born November 16, 1951, in Schenectady, New York, is an American dancer, choreographer, educator, and performing artist whose career spans Broadway, concert dance, film, television, and academia. Her Broadway appearances between 1975 and 1978 included roles in The Wiz and Timbuktu!, and her work in The Wiz extended to the original film adaptation. Additional theatrical credits include Ti Jean and His Brothers, The Great Mac Daddy, The Juju Man, and a Paris production of Your Arms Too Short to Box With God.

Harvey-Salaam's early training reflected a strong commitment to studio work over conventional academic study, a path that led her to an extended scholarship at Paul Sanasardo's Modern Dance Artists. She continued her education at the Clark Center for the Performing Arts, studying under Thelma Hill, James Truitte, and Rod Rodgers, and also trained with Eleo Pomare at his studio and at the inaugural Ailey School at the Firehouse on Fifty-Ninth Street.

Over the course of her performing career, Harvey-Salaam has appeared as a principal soloist with numerous concert dance companies, among them the Eleo Pomare Dance Company, Joan Miller's Dance Players, Chuck Davis Dance Company, Walter Nicks Dance Company, Otis Sallid's New Art Ensemble, George Faison's Universal Dance Experience, Dance Brazil, and the Repertory Dance Theatre of Trinidad and Tobago. She is a founding member of The Forces of Nature Dance Theatre Company, where she has worked as both performer and assistant to artistic director Abdel R. Salaam. The company synthesizes African and Afro-diasporic traditions with Ballet, Modern dance, and Hip-hop dance, centering its work in spirituality, ritual, and community.

Harvey-Salaam maintained a significant collaborative relationship with playwright and poet Ntozake Shange. She was an original cast member of Shange's choreopoem Spell No. 7 and of Boogie Woogie Landscapes, and she participated in the production A Photograph: Lovers-in-Motion alongside dancer and choreographer Mickey Davidson. Harvey-Salaam also performed at the book launch for Shange's bilingual poetry collection Wild Beauty and served as movement director and choreographer for a Shange production at the Black Theatre Festival in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Shange's posthumously published book Dance We Do: A Poet Explores Black Dance includes an interview with Harvey-Salaam and cites her among the dancers who influenced Shange's work. Harvey-Salaam further contributed scholarship on their collaboration through her essay "Making Movement as an Act of Listening, Riding with the Muse," published in a College Language Association Journal special edition dedicated to Shange's legacy.

Her television credits include the CBS special Ailey Celebrates Ellington and the PBS documentary Free To Dance. In 2023, she performed as a guest artist in Sydnie L. Mosley's Purple: A Ritual in 9 Spells at Lincoln Center.

As a choreographer, Harvey-Salaam received AUDELCO Awards for Oya the Dance Drama and Great Men of Gospel. Her choreography for Debra Ann Byrd's Becoming Othello: A Black Girl's Journey earned both the United Solo Award and the Broadway Berkshire Award. Additional honors include the A.I.R. Living Legends Award from Miami Dade Community College and the Distinguished Woman Award from both the Harlem Arts Alliance and the Harlem Chamber of Commerce, as well as the Woman of Distinction Award, the Walk A Mile In Her Shoes Award from the Hempstead African-American Museum, the Dance for Life Award from Better Family Life, the Monarch Merit Award, the Black Theatre Award, and the Goddesses and Gurus Award.

In the area of performance recognition, Harvey-Salaam won a 2017 BESSIE Award for her work in Dance Africa's and Abdel R. Salaam's Outstanding Production of the Year. She received a 2019 BESSIE nomination for her role in the revival of Eleo Pomare's HEX and a 2024 BESSIE nomination for her performance in Purple: A Ritual in Nine Spells at the Clark Theater at Lincoln Center. Also in 2024, she was awarded the BESSIE for Lifetime Achievement in Dance. Her career has been documented by the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts through an Oral History Project interview and a feature in The Dance Historian Is In video series.

Harvey-Salaam is a member of the faculty at Princeton University and Hofstra University, where she teaches and develops courses in dance and movement studies. She is a certified Pilates instructor and serves on the board of the American Dance Guild.