Mario Alberto Zambrano

Mario Alberto Zambrano began his professional career at the age of seventeen with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago under the direction of Lou Conte. He performed half a dozen works by Twyla Tharp and was an original cast member in the creation of 'I Remember Clifford.' He joined Nederlands Dans Theater II after his time in Chicago and worked intimately in the creative processes with Jírí Kylian, Hans Van Manen, Paul Lightfoot and Sol Leon, Johan Inger, and Shusaku Takemuchi. In the year he was invited to join NDT I, he was also invited by Ohad Naharin to join Batsheva Dance Company in Tel Aviv, Israel, an invitation he accepted, becoming an original cast member in productions 'Minus 16' and Naharin's Virus. He then went on to work with Ballett Frankfurt dir. William Forsythe as a guest artist over the course of five years, and was also invited by Mikhail Baryshnikov to perform at an intimate Gala at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City. During his performing career, he received the honors of Presidential Scholar in the Arts 1994, Level One Awardee at YoungArts 1994, Princess Grace Fellowship 1995, and Best Male Dancer in BalletTanz Magazine 1999.

Choreographically, Mr. Zambrano premiered his first ballet 'Link' on Hubbard Street Dance Chicago when nineteen years old, then continued to choreograph works on companies and universities across the world: Nederlands Dans Theater II, 'Chaper 9'; Dominic Walsh Dance Theater, 'Bio.lin' and 'Quartet Letters'; The Joffrey Ballet School, 'Ives' End,': Eugene Lang University, '27 for 17'; and Harvard University, What Moves You? with Franseca Harper and Jill Johnson. In 2001, he wrote and directed his first short dance film titled 'Sola' and premiered it in Soho, NYC as part of the Dance on Camera Festival presented by Dance Films Association.

With a passion for literature and editorial mentorship, Mr. Zambrano was Fiction Editor and Editor-in-Chief of the award-winning literary journal 12th Street Journal published at New School, where he also completed his undergraduate degree in Liberal Arts. After being awarded an Iowa Arts Fellowship, he attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop for an MFA and completed his debut novel Loteria, which was published by HarperCollins in 2013. Loteria was chosen by Village Voice, Vogue, School Library Journal, and Booklist as a Best Book of 2013 and selected by Barnes and Noble for their Great New Voices series. It has been translated into five languages and is currently optioned for television by the Mark Gordon Production Company in Los Angeles. His shorter fiction /non-fiction has been published in The Brooklyn Rail, Gulf Coast, Guernica: Arts and Literature, 'How To Be A Man,' Narrative 4, edited by Colum McCann, and Ploughshares. Mr. Zambrano has been awarded residencies at MacDowell Colony, Vermont Arts Center, Yaddo, and Hawthornden Castle in Scotland. In 2016, he was awarded a Literary Fellowship from The National Endowment of the Arts; in 2020, he received the Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction for his opening chapter 'Some of You,' which is part of a new manuscript currently titled Los Gallos.

As educator, Mr. Zambarno creates a learning environment both rigorous and focused on creative thinking matched with technical discipline. He's taught classical and contemporary ballet, improvisation, choreographic composition, creative writing, dance on film, contemporary jazz, repertoire, and Gaga (Ohad Naharin's movement language).

Mr. Zambarno served as a Lecturer in Theater, Dance & Media at Harvard University for three years, where he was curator of the Dance on Camera Exhibit at The Bok Center. He currently serves as a Program Director for Orsolina 28,  an international center for creative development in Moncalvo, Italy, and became Associate Director of Dance at The Juilliard School in New York City. He inaugurated The LIT Series—a Library of Interdisciplinary Thinking: master classes taught by professional artists, available and free to the public on IGtv—in June 2020.