john levis, a native philadelphian, is a composer-pianist and synthesist who has had connections to the philadelphia dance community since 1971. it was after his graduation from the philadelphia musical academy (now university of the arts) in 1980 that he became involved with dance full time.
over the last 27 years john has worked at a number of philadelphia area schools including temple university, the rock school of dance education, philadanco, and the university of the arts (where he is music coordinator for the school of dance). he has composed a number of scores for dance. he has composed ballets for milton myers, roni koresh and manfred fischbeck, among others.
in 1995 he was commissioned to compose and perform the musical score for two videos (later released on dvd) on the technique of Lester horton. This was done with ana marie forsythe and marjorie perces with dancers from the alvin ailey american dance theater. it was produced by dance spotlight and distributed by kultur video.
john just finished his tenth year at jacob's pillow as music director for milton myer's contemporary traditions program. at the pillow john has worked as accompanist and composer with such artists as milton myers, donald mckayle, doug varone, terese capucilli, ruth andrien, pam pribisco, jawole willa jo zollar, francesca harper, robert moses, robert battle and lisa viola.
