Site best viewed in Netscape, Mozilla, and Safari Browsers.
JUMP RHYTHM JAZZ PROJECT is a company of rhythmically exuberant dancers that celebrates the timeless core of all jazz performance -- dancing and singing in swinging, high-energy bursts of body rhythms to the beat-driven sounds of syncopated music. Since its founding by artistic director Billy Siegenfeld in 1990, the company has thrilled audiences and students nationally and internationally with its rich blend of percussive musicality and emotion-charged dance theatre.
JRJP's "rhythm-first" affirmation of life and art is based on the Jump Rhythm Technique whose unique pedagogy helps transform dancing bodies and singing voices into vibrantly clear percussion instruments. Referring to this approach, the magazine Dancer credited Siegenfeld with "inventing the first genuine jazz technique in forty years," and the magazine Dance Teacher placed him on its Twentieth Century Timeline of Choreographers and Innovators for "develop[ing] the Jump Rhythm Technique and found[ing] Jump Rhythm Jazz Project."
Based in Chicago since 1993, JRJP has continued to grow as a non-profit arts organization whose programs are supported by Illinois Arts Council, Chicago Community Trust, Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation, Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, Hulda and Maurice B. Rothschild Foundation, and National Performance Network. Jump Rhythm remains grateful to these grantors as well as to presenters like Dance Center of Columbia College, Ruth Page Dance Series, Dance Chicago, Chicago Human Rhythm Project and Jazz Dance World Congress that have featured JRJP's unique approach to rhythm dancing in its annual festivals. Senior company members teach Jump Rhythm year-round in Chicago and also at Northwestern University, where Siegenfeld is a Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence; at University of Wisconsin Stevens Point, where Associate Artistic Director Jeannie Hill is on faculty; and at Randolph-Macon Women's College where Kelly Malone Dudley teaches. In addition, every summer the company leads week-long workshops in Chicago and Boston of the Jump Rhythm Jazz and Tap Intensive where students experience the diverse course offerings of the Jump Rhythm Technique.