Dr. Aaron Rosen is Professor of Religious Thought at Rocky Mountain College and Visiting Professor at King’s College London. He taught previously at Yale, Oxford, and Columbia, and received his PhD from Cambridge. He has curated various exhibitions, and written widely for scholarly and popular publications, including The Observer, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, Apollo, and Times Higher Education and provides commentary for BBC Radio 4 and other outlets. He is the author of Art and Religion in the 21st Century, named one of the best books of the year by The Times, and Imagining Jewish Art. He is the editor of Encounters: The Art of Interfaith Dialogue; Religion and Art in the Heart of Modern Manhattan; and Visualising a Sacred City: London, Art and Religion. He is also the author of two children’s books, including A Journey through Art, translated into seven languages.

Riley is a dance artist based in South Portland, Maine.  With 26 years of ballet and contemporary dance experience in his body, Riley’s work is deeply rooted in the experience of observing states of consciousness through physicality and motion. Beginning with dance as a base of knowledge, he creates artwork using choreographic improvisation, video and digital media, sculpture, music, and live installations. In Maine, Riley has been in residence and shown work at SPACE Gallery, Bates Dance Festival, Hewnoaks Artist Colony, Sistered, the Ellis Beauregard Foundation, and is the founder of Portland Dance Month (2018-2019). He is currently being commissioned by Portland Ovations’ New Year, New Work initiative to premiere a new performance in collaboration with choreographer Heather Stewart in 2022.

Riley studied dance at the Thomas School of Dance, Walnut Hill School, and The Juilliard School, before moving abroad to dance with the Bern Ballet (Switzerland), Netherlands Dance Theater 2 (The Hague), and The Forsythe Company (Frankfurt/Dresden). Since 2010, Riley has danced with internationally acclaimed choreographer William Forsythe, and continues to tour the world extensively to perform at such venues as the Sydney Opera House, Brooklyn Academy of Music, ICA Boston, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, and Philadelphia Museum of Art, among many others.  In 2015, Riley was invited to tour with iconic dancer Sylvie Guillem on her Life in Progress farewell tour before moving home to Maine in 2016.  Riley is the recipient of a Princess Grace Award and the Leonide Massine/Positano Prize, and has received grants from the Maine Arts Commission and New England Foundation for the Arts.

In addition to performing and creating, Riley is frequently invited to teach improvisation and embodied dance thinking around the world in a variety of professional and educational settings.  He has collaborated in interdisciplinary dance/neuroscience research and public speaking events, including co-authoring a case-study for Frontiers in Human Neuroscience on entrainment in William Forsythe’s Duo.  Riley co-authored a children’s book for Tate Publishing entitled Where’s Your Creativity? with his cousin Dr. Aaron Rosen, has music featured on Blutt, the latest album of composer/cellist Patrick Belaga for PAN Records in Berlin, and worked as a landscape gardener in Kennebunk with Snug Harbor Farm during the pandemic of 2020.  As an artist living with Bipolar disorder, Riley is particularly interested in the relationship between art making and mental health.