Copyright © Billy Siegenfeld 2001-2004
Site best viewed in Netscape, Mozilla, and Safari Browsers.
JUMP RHYTHM JAZZ PROJECT is a company of rhythmically explosive, emotion-driven dancers that performs and teaches nationally and internationally.
JRJP was founded in 1990 in New York City by Billy Siegenfeld. In its first years, the company focused on the following projects: touring Romance in Swingtime, the chamber jazz musical featuring Billy Siegenfeld and his longtime associate Jeannie Hill; presenting the duo in jazz-tap teaching workshops; and sponsoring Siegenfeld in choreographic residencies with both professional and university companies. While touring Romance, dancers, educators and critics became aware of Siegenfeld and Hill's fresh take on the tradition of American rhythm dancing (Dance Magazine cited them as "a delightful latter-day Fred and Ginger"), and credited Siegenfeld with generating a style of dance built upon the rhythmic and dynamic foundations of swinging jazz music. This style is formalized and taught in Chicago and on tour as the Jump Rhythm Jazz Technique. In the fall of 1997, following years of choreographing on commission or on pick-up companies, Siegenfeld decided to organize JRJP into an ensemble of eight dancers to train in the technique and rehearse repertory and new works on a regular basis.
Now based in Chicago, JRJP continues to grow as a company whose concerts, workshops and classes both honor and expand upon the art of classic jazz performance - dancing and singing in joyous, high-energy bursts of body rhythms to the syncopated sounds of swinging jazz music, the blues, Latin jazz and blues-tinged funk. In recognition of its unique approach to jazz dancing, presenters in Chicagoland like Dance Center of Columbia College, Dance Chicago, the Ruth Page Dance Series and Chicago Human Rhythm Project have featured JRJP annually in its dance festivals. In addition, the company performs its celebrated educational outreach show, Jump Rhythm Jazz!, to public and private school children both in Chicagoland and on tour.Ê All of the members of JRJP, trained in the Jump Rhythm Jazz Technique's universal educational point of view, individually serve as resident guest teachers and choreographers in Chicago's high schools and private studios, and in choreographic residencies at universities across the country and abroad.