Photo: Billy Siegenfeld teaching Jump Rhythm Technique at Pro Danza Italia in Castiglioncello, Italy, summer 2005
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Jump Rhythm Technique is taught locally in Chicago [see Classes] and also at:
Nortwestern University [go to NU]
(Billy Siegenfeld)
(Brandi Coleman)
University of Wisconsin Stevens Point [go to UWSP]
(Jeannie Hill)
Randolph-Macon Woman's College [go to RMWC]
(Kelly Malone Dudley)
The Jump Rhythm Technique is a "rhythm-first" approach to movement learning. The emphasis is on high-energy, full-bodied rhythm-making -- transforming the moving body, accompanied by the scat-singing voice, into an exuberantly percussive, energy-charged drum instrument. Powered by this earthy combination of rhythm and feeling, the classes in Jump Rhythm focus on using jazz-based rhythms to dance "from the inside." Learning in this way is different from the kind experienced in ballet-based techniques. Jump Rhythm focuses less on refining the shape or the "look" of one's dancing and more on learning to articulate and propel outward the rhythmic and emotional energies coursing within the human body. Further, the technique guides the student to work holistically. The alignment work in Jump Rhythm Technique is based on a movement re-training approach called ideokinesis, which promotes healthful musculo-skeletal functioning. The result is that students discover that dancing Jump Rhythm is directly related to dancing injury-free.
The Jump Rhythm Technique is a uniquely universal approach to movement training. Its vocabulary and grammar can be explored by academically trained dancers as well as movement lovers of every type -- those who do body-percussion, swing dancing, break dancing, musical theatre performing, and African dancing and other strongly rhythmic forms of world and folk dance. That is, Jump Rhythm is for all people who love to move and vocalize through their bodies to the propulsively rhythmic sounds of beat-driven music. It is for these reasons that Dance Teacher placed Billy Siegenfeld, the artistic director of Jump Rhythm Jazz Project and the creator of this technique, on its "Twentieth Century Timeline of Choreographers and Innovators in Jazz," and why Dancer magazine called the Jump Rhythm Technique "the first genuine jazz technique in forty years."
All technique and repertory classes are taught to the swinging rhythms of jazz and the blues, and to the percussive rhythms of Latin jazz, blues-based funk, and hip-hop. Inspired by this soulful music, the Jump Rhythm Technique both honors and expands upon the tradition of the jazz-driven singing and dancing featured in the work of rhythm greats like Bill Robinson, Fred Astaire, John Bubbles, Fayard and Harold Nicholas, Jeni LeGon, Michael Kidd, Carol Haney, Gwen Verdon, Bob Fosse, and Gregory Hines.