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Sekou Laidlow, Adrian Rosas, Karen Vuong, Elizabeth Fayette, and Jeffery Duffy.
Photos by David Noles (Laidlow), Dorn Brothers Productions (Fayette), and Todd Rosenberg (Duffy)
Sekou Laidlow (Group 41)
Coming off my Broadway debut in Airline Highway and playing Homer in Suzan Lori Parks's Father Comes Home From the Wars, I now have a recurring role as Walter Camp, a journalist at The Village Voice, in the VH1 TV series The Breaks that starts in January. I'm in the romantic comedy Better Off Single, which came out in October 2016. Finally, I am crazy excited to be working with the Campaign for Black Male Achievement in the sixth annual Rumble Young Man, Rumble (November 30–December 2), at the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, Ky. It's a gathering of intergenerational leaders to train and inspire black male youth toward excellence.
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Elizabeth Fayette (Pre-College '06; MM '13, Artist Diploma '15, violin)
Since graduating from both Juilliard and Ensemble ACJW (now Ensemble Connect), I moved to Atlanta to join the Vega Quartet as first violinist. We're the quartet in residence at Emory University, one unique aspect of which is that we collaborate with academic professors to bring chamber music into the classroom by finding the overlap between a given topic and our field. That ranges from discussing Beethoven's deafness and its effect on his late compositions with a medical anthropology class to having our brain activity as we play mapped by budding neuroscientists. We also maintain a full concert schedule—from Mexico to Alaska this year—and administer our own youth chamber music program. I'm so happy in my new life and look forward to learning about my new city—but first I need to learn how to drive!
Jeffery Duffy (BFA '15, dance)
This is my second season with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. Having the backing and training that I've had to be able to work with such artists intelligently as cohorts and not with a student mindset is really fabulous. And because at Juilliard, you have a plethora of different artists that you're surrounded by, I noticed when we were working with Second City, I could roll into that situation with a lot of confidence because I knew what to expect from actors—I knew their language, and I could implement that in my work. What I learned at Juilliard and the people that I met there prepared me to collaborate without any fear.
Chelsea Ainsworth (BFA '10, dance) and Adrian Rosas (MM '10, voice)
We've started an arts organization and rental company on St. Marks Place called Arts on Site with Chelsea's husband, visual artist Kyle Netzeband. There's newly refurbished studio space and lots of low-cost dance, movement, and other classes for the community. We're also starting a residency program upstate, in a town called Kerhonkson. Find out more at artsonsite.org.
Karen Vuong (Artist Diploma '13, opera studies)
This summer I did Micaëla in Oper Frankfurt's Carmen, which required a lot of physical activity. Thank God for all of the movement classes we had at Juilliard! I also did Mimi in La bohème; and Gretel in Hansel and Gretel, which is horrifying, but good and scary; Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni, and a slew of other things.
