Nicole Duffy

Nicole Duffy is a dance artist and educator from San Juan, Puerto Rico. She is currently rehearsal director for the Ballet Hispanico Pa’lante Junior Ensemble and Advisor to the Professional Division at the Ballet Hispanico School. She is also a board member and repetiteur for The Gerald Arpino Foundation, staging the ballets of Robert Joffrey and Gerald Arpino, most recently for ABT Studio Company, Ballet Hispanico, and Barnard College. 

Ms. Duffy danced with the Joffrey Ballet both in New York and in Chicago, touring and performing on some of the world’s foremost stages. During her time with the Joffrey, she danced leading roles in ballets by Robert Joffrey, Gerald Arpino, Frederick Ashton, George Balanchine, John Cranko, Agnes DeMille, Kurt Jooss, José Limon, Vicente Nebrada, and Ruth Page, among many others. As a guest artist, she danced the principal roles in Giselle, Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Coppélia.

In the contemporary realm, she worked with Alonzo King, Anne Reinking, David Parsons, Laura Dean, Margo Sappington, and Peter Pucci, and others on new creations. She was also an original cast member of the Joffrey Ballet’s groundbreaking production of Billboards, to music by Prince. 

Ms. Duffy trained with Ana Garcia and Maria Carrera at Ballets de San Juan, where she danced the 19th-c. classics, Balanchine repertory, contemporary ballets by Ramon Molina, and worked with guest artists and repetiteurs Fernando Bujones, Frederic Franklin, Melissa Hayden, and Ivan Nagy. She furthered her training at SAB, the Ailey School, and the Joffrey Ballet School.

Ms. Duffy has guest taught for Complexions Contemporary Ballet, Companhia de Danza Deborah Colker (Brazil), at STEPS on Broadway in NYC, and conducted annual workshops in Florence, Italy. She has adjudicated for Entreatos International Brazil, Universal Ballet Competition, and Regional Dance America, and is a member of the Latinx Dance Educators Alliance and the Columbia University Dance Studies Seminar. She holds a BA in Art History from Columbia University and an MA from New York University, is an adjunct lecturer at Barnard College. Ms. Duffy was also the assistant curator for the New York Public Library for the Performing Art’s exhibition The Joffrey + Ballet in the US.