Eric Marcus is the founder and host of the award-winning Making Gay History podcast, which mines his decades-old audio archive of rare interviews — conducted for his oral history book of the same name about the LGBTQ civil rights movement — to create intimate, personal portraits of both known and long-forgotten champions, heroes, and witnesses to history.  Eric’s other books include Is It A Choice?, Why Suicide?, and Breaking the Surface, the #1 New York Times bestselling autobiography of Olympic diving champion Greg Louganis.

Eric is also founder and chair of the Stonewall 50 Consortium, an organization of more than 200 organizations and institutions planning programming, exhibitions, and educational materials tied to the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising.

Panelists: Tory Dobrin and Raffaele Morra

Tory Dobrin has been the Director of Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo (LBT) since 1992. He joined the company as a dancer in 1980 and performed with the company until 1990 when he became Associate Director. He trained at the Stanley Holden Dance Center in Los Angeles, the Houston Ballet Academy, and Harkness Dance Center in New York. He has also danced with the Dallas Ballet, the Radio City Music Hall Ballet, the New Jersey Ballet, and American Dance Machine. He was born in Los Angeles and lives in New York City.

Raffaele Morra is LBT’s Ballet Master, teaching artist, and a dancer.  He began his studies in classical ballet in his hometown of Fossano Italy in 1986, becoming a member of the “Compagnia di Danza del Teatro Nuovo” in 1994, and joining LBT in 2001. With LBT, he has danced a variety of leading male and female roles, including Odette, Prince Siegried, Von Rothbart and Benno in “Swan Lake;” Giselle, Myrtha, and Prince Albrecht in “Giselle;” and has choreographed works including “Majisimas,” a parody of the ballet “Majisimo” by Cuban Choregrapher Jorge Garcia. As Ballet Master since 2015, he is responsible for teaching the repertoire to new dancers, re-staging ballets from the vast library, running rehearsals, and teaching master classes. He has set ballets for LBT including “La Naiade and le Pecheur” (Pugni, Perrot) and “Napoli Pas de six” (Helsted/Paulli, Bournonville). He has taught master classes and workshops extensively for the Trocks on tour.