Copyright © Billy Siegenfeld 2001-2004
Photo: Jeff Newcomer
Site best viewed in Mozilla, Safari and Netscape browsers.
BILLY SIEGENFELD is the artistic director and principal choreographer of Jump Rhythm Jazz Project as well as one of its principal performers.
He has also created dances for the Jose Limon Dance Company, Decidedly Jazz Danceworks (Canada), Gus Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago, Joffrey II Dancers, JazzCool (Netherlands), Ballet Pacifica, Tennessee Dance Theatre, and the companies of many universities. He is the recipient of the 1997 Ruth Page Dance Achievement Award for Outstanding Choreography, the 1994 Jazz DanceWorld Congress Gold Leo Award for Outstanding Choreography, three grants from the NEA, and, in partnership with JRJP, funding from the Illinois Arts Council, the Elizabeth Cheney Foundation and the Hulda B and Maurice L. Rothschild Foundation. He is the recipient of the National Performance Network Creation Award, which supported the making and touring of his piece, "Sorrows of Unison Dancing."
Siegenfeld is also a Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teacher Excellence at Northwestern University. At Northwestern., in the city of Chicago and on tour with JRJP, Siegenfeld teaches his original Jump Rhythm Jazz Technique, a "rhythm-first" approach to movement learning that helps transform performers' bodies into musically articulate, energy-driven percussion instruments. Referring to this approach, Dancer credits Siegenfeld with "inventing the first genuine jazz technique in forty years," and, in the year 2000, Dance Teacher placed him on its Twentieth Century Timeline of Major Innovators and Choreographers in the art of jazz dance. He has served as an adjudicator for the American College Dance Festival Association and has taught master classes and workshops in the Jump Rhythm Jazz Technique at dance festivals across the United States and abroad.
Before joining Northwestern, he divided his time among directing the Dance Program of Hunter College in New York City, choreographing and dancing for the concert stage, performing in musical theatre, including featured roles in the Broadway production of Singin' in the Rain, and performing and teaching for nine years with the Don Redlich Dance Company. A writer on jazz dance and music, his articles discussing the foundational role swing plays in jazz dancing as well as those proposing a pedagogy based on the natural motions of American rhythm dancing and the musicianship of classic jazz have been published in Dance Teacher and Dance Magazine. He graduated with a B.A. in literature from Brown University and an M.A. in dance from New York University.