Dr. Lisa Fusillo

Lisa Fusillo began her professional ballet training at the Washington School of Ballet and later trained in New York, London, Russia and Denmark. She holds the Professional Teaching Diploma from the Royal Ballet School (London) and certifications from the American Ballet Theatreâ National Training Curriculum, the New York City Ballet Education Department and Progressing Ballet TechniqueTM. Throughout her career, Dr. Fusillo has presented choreography, scholarly research and taught in Europe, the U.S. and Asia. Her choreography has been presented in Belgium, France, Germany, England, the Netherlands, Cyprus, Thailand, Taiwan, Spain and at dance festivals including the International Ballet Competition (Jackson, MS), the Barcelona Dance Festival in Spain and the 2024 Prague International Dance Festival. Her scholarly research focuses on Léonide Massine and the Ballet Russe as well as dance in American musical theatre and various topics in American dance with several published articles on these topics.

 

Dr. Fusillo has been a Fulbright Scholar (in Taiwan) and was Ballet Mistress for Cloud Gate Dance Theatre in Taipei. She is a four-time recipient National Endowment for the Arts grants, was awarded a Willson Center Research Fellowship and won an M.G. Michael Research Award. Dr. Fusillo is also the founder/director of Dance Repertory Project at UGA and taught at Oxford University with the UGA at Oxford Program. At UGA, she has created dance study away programs to Costa Rica and Cortona, Italy; organized a Ballet Tour of Russia and created a domestic field study program – Dance in New York City. Dr. Fusillo was named UGA Foundation Professor in the Arts, Phi Kappa Phi Artist (2020-2022), TWU Distinguished Alumni (2022) and just recently was awarded the 2026-2027 Ballets Russes Special Collections and Archive Research Fellowship.