The Company
Yaroque Dance Theatre is a New York City–based contemporary dance company that melds high concept with high camp, offering work that is as sharp as it is spectacular. The company’s performances splice drag, mime, clowning, and pop culture references into rigorous contemporary technique, creating a movement language that is satirical, visually lush, and unapologetically queer. Audiences can expect bold characters, theatrical composition, and a sense of showbiz spectacle that never takes itself too seriously.
Founded by choreographer and director Shelby Green in 2024, Yaroque was born from a desire to close the gap between “serious” dance and mainstream entertainment. The company builds tightly crafted, ensemble-driven pieces that invite audiences into off-kilter, emotionally charged worlds, using humor and theatricality to open the door to deeper questions about identity, power, and the roles we perform every day.
Yaroque’s aesthetic is shaped by Green’s international training and background across concert dance, commercial work, and nightlife performance, resulting in a company that is both technically exacting and maximalist in spirit. The dancers move with the precision of a repertory company and the abandon of a downtown club, meeting in a space where virtuosity and ridiculousness are given equal permission.
Since its founding, Yaroque has premiered an evening-length production at The Chain Theatre in New York City and developed new repertoire for institutions such as the Royal Conservatoire of Dance in The Hague. Looking ahead, the company is building toward global touring and expanded media work—including music videos and other screen-based collaborations—that bring Yaroque’s singular blend of spectacle and substance to wider audiences.
OUR TEAM
SHELBY GREEN| artistic director
Shelby Green (they/them) is a New York City–based choreographer, director, and dance filmmaker whose work lives at the intersection of high camp and deep feeling. They are the founder and artistic director of Yaroque Dance Theatre, a contemporary company dedicated to building strange, saturated worlds where humor, theatricality, and emotional honesty can coexist without apology.
Blending influences from concert dance, ballet, Gaga, commercial forms, drag, and clowning, Shelby has developed a movement language that is both hyper-performative and disarmingly tender. Their choreography leans into big facial expressions, bold characters, and theatrical composition, using comedy as a Trojan horse to smuggle in questions about identity, vulnerability, and the stories we tell about ourselves.
Shelby’s work spans stage and screen. With Yaroque, they create ensemble-driven performances that foreground queer joy, contradiction, and community, treating theatricality not as decoration but as a tool for survival and connection. In their dance films, Shelby experiments with framing, repetition, and tightly crafted performances to turn the camera into another scene partner, inviting audiences to feel uncomfortably close and unexpectedly seen.
They are the co-founder of the digital dance festival Finding Compassion and the creator of Yaroque Dance Theatre’s first evening-length production, which premiered in March 2025 at The Chain Theatre in New York City. Their projects often bring together dancers, drag artists, actors, and musicians, reflecting Shelby’s belief that the most exciting performance work happens when disciplines blur and hierarchies loosen.
Across live performance, film, and hybrid formats, Shelby is committed to making work that is as entertaining as it is thought-provoking—inviting audiences into surreal, embodied universes where camp becomes a form of care, and intensity and ridiculousness are given equal permission to take up space.
Belleza
rehearsal director
The iconically mononymous, Belleza (she/her), has been dancing Shelby’s choreography since 2020 and has been able to find the accuracy through their movement. They now serve and the meticulous yin to Shelby’s imaginative yang. Originally from San Antonio, Texas, Belleza graduated with a BFA in Dance Performance and a BS in Applied Physiology and Health Management from Southern Methodist University. She now resides in New York City, working as a teaching artist with DMF Youth, and a company member with Ballet Nepantla.
