Copyright © Billy Siegenfeld 2001-2010
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JUMP RHYTHM JAZZ PROJECT is an Emmy award-winning dance company of rhythm-driven performers and teachers.
Founded by Billy Siegenfeld in New York City in 1990, Jump Rhythm celebrates the timeless core of jazz performance - dancing and singing in high-energy bursts of rhythm to the beat-driven sounds of swinging jazz, blues-and-funk-based rock, and world music. JUMP RHYTHM performs its rich blend of percussive musicality and exuberant, story-based dance theatre in annual festivals in Chicago and on tour nationally and internationally. JUMP RHYTHM company members teach classes in Jump Rhythm TechniqueTM in local school programs and adult community classes throughout Chicagoland, and as part of the dance curriculums of Northwestern University, University of Wisconsin Stevens Point, Randolph-Macon College, and the Arts Academy of Turku University of Applied Sciences in Finland. This innovative system of vocal-rhythmic dance education transforms the moving body, accompanied by the scat-singing voice, into a rhythm-accurate, emotion-charged percussion instrument. As well, the technique's holistic approach to body alignment, called "standing down straight," promotes healthy musculo-skeletal functioning. The company also conducts week-long intensive workshops in Jump Rhythm Technique every year at Northwestern and at summer festivals in the United States and abroad. Referring to this approach, the magazine Dancer credited JRJP artistic director Billy Siegenfeld with "inventing the first genuine jazz technique in forty years," and the magazine Dance Teacher placed Siegenfeld on its Twentieth Century Timeline of Choreographers and Innovators for "develop [ing] the Jump Rhythm Jazz Technique and found[ing] Jump Rhythm Jazz Project."