Gritty Cherries is a stepping-stone to promote a network of choreographers, dancers and artists of all disciplines including fashion, music, film, photography, painting and sculpture. We give individual artists a voice amongst the collaborative creative communities we build.

Gritty Cherries has worked with emerging and established choreographers from De La Guarda, MOMIX, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Bill T. Jones Company and Ailey II. Gritty Cherries has spent the last five years developing a collaborative network of over 200 artists and 100 volunteers.

In the last 16 years Gritty Cherries has expanded its mission of collaboration to include partnering with other non-profit and charitable companies, thus broadening their reach beyond the arts. The Gritty Cherries 2004 event Leather and Feather not only entertained more than 400 guests with dance, fashion and music but also raised money for the MAC AIDS Fund.

In 2005, Gritty Cherries produced another multi-media (aerial dance, film, dance, music and fashion) event, SCUBA, which highlighted Rocking the Boat, an educational boat-building program for teens in the Bronx. With this partnership, Gritty Cherries launched its Production Workshop Program, teaching dance, visual art, music and collaborative production strategies to 30 teens from Rocking the Boat in 3 workshops.

Gritty Cherries was co-founded by Karen Niceley and Laila Sales in 2001 after performing together in Dance Theatre Workshop’s Fresh Tracks and Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors.