Brian McCormick is an arts activist, writer, and educator, and Producing Director of Nicholas Leichter Dance. He is the long-time contributing editor for Gay City News, where as arts editor from 2005-2007, he earned the paper a New York Press Association award for arts coverage. McCormick is a Part-time Assistant Professor at The New School in the Media Studies MA program, where he teaches Electronic Media and Live Performance, as well as courses in media concepts, media design, and social media design and management . Since 2003 he has taught for the 2011 and 2012 National Arts & Humanities Youth Program Awards finalist TRaC—the Teen Reviewers and Critics program of Arts Connection/High 5 Tickets to the Arts. He has worked as a teaching artist with a variety of youth arts educational programs, including Scholastic Arts, The Rubin Museum (Arts Lab),  and Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Queens, and in 2012 started up the After School Critical Response team at Baryshnikov Arts Center. In Fall of 2013, he will work with TRaC at SONY Wonderlab developing a teen arts TV show.

Brian has been a panelist, moderator, guest curator, or adjudicator for Theater Communications Group, New York Foundation for the Arts, Joyce Theater Foundation,  Brooklyn Arts Council, The Field, Hunter College, Kinetic Cinema, LMCC, The Ailey Certificate School, 651 Arts, Movement Research, The A.W.A.R.D. Show, CMJ Music Marathon, Queer Art Impact, as well as BETA and Mixed Messages at The New School. He has done press, marketing, and/or audience engagement work for the American Dance Festival, Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project, Dancing in the Streets, and Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX), and  reporting work for Dance Theater Workshop and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

As a writer, Brian has contributed to The New York Times, The Advocate, Movement Research Journal, Dance Magazine, Dance Studio Life, and BAMbill. From 2010-2012 he was a guest curator on technology resources for the National Performing Arts Convention. He served on the New York Dance and Performance Awards (Bessies) committee from 2002-2012.

Brian received a Mayor’s Volunteer Service Award (1989) and was nominated for a President’s Volunteer Action Award (1990) for coordinating a writing workshop with homeless youth at Street Work Project, a Victim Services program of the City of New York. He continues to agitate young people to demand and create better education. @bmacmedia

master profile pic