He has been on the faculties of Purchase College Conservatory of Dance, The Boston Conservatory, the Joffrey School, and the school of the Paul Taylor Dance Company.

Cortez is Founding Director of Dancers Responding to AIDS (DRA), a fundraising program of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.

Mr. Cortez is a proud recipient of a 2004 Northern Ohio Live Award of Achievement, and was named one of Cleveland’s Most Interesting People 2005 by Cleveland Magazine. .

Through nomination and the generous support of The Cleveland Foundation, Cortez attended the Executive Program for Non-Profit Leaders, a joint program of the Stanford Graduate School of Business Center for Social Innovation and National Arts Strategies. He has served on numerous panels, most recently as an advisor for the National Endowment for the Arts.

He was invited to join Feld Ballets/NY, and in 1987 joined the Paul Taylor Dance Company. He was featured in two PBS/WNET Dance in America specials, and his own choreography is showcased in the Taylor Company's critically acclaimed smash hit “Funny Papers.”

He performed with Mikhail Baryshnikov's White Oak Dance Project in their 1998 national tour.

A popular freelance choreographer, Cortez has created dances for: American Ballet Theatre (the Studio Company), the Williamstown Theater Festival and the Sands Hotel in Atlantic City.

From 2002-2008 he was Artistic Director of Verb Ballets in Cleveland, Ohio.

Photos: Top: Dance Magazine Calendar 1998, “August”; Above (ccw) Sydney Ignacio in Cortez’s “Wolfgang Strategies,”; with Paul Taylor and Joanne Woodward at The Kennedy Center Honors (PT won for Dance, 1992) , “Bang” choreographed for Verb Ballets, 2007; with Pres. Bill Clinton at Broadway Salutes the Spirit of Harlem, a benefit for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, 2001.