Full Evening Performance
Features recent and repertory works performed by the entire company.
Guest Artist Appearances
Include solos, duets or group works from the repertory. Whether performed to pre-recorded or live music, these pieces can complement variety shows or shared concert programs.
| Jump Rhythm® Technique
Jump Rhythm® focuses on the concept of full-bodied rhythm-making, whose goal is to fuse the dancing body and scat-singing voice into a rhythm-accurate percussion instrument. The technique bases all work on two overarching principles: all rhythmic clarity comes from making clear shifts of body-weight; and all shifts of body-weight are most clearly achieved using the grounding concept of Standing Down Straight®. Now taught worldwide as well as in the United States, Jump Rhythm's vocal-rhythmic approach to movement learning can be considered essential preparation for performing any genre of dance or stage movement done to beat-driven music with both musical precision and emotional clarity. Because Standing Down Straight also promotes moving with efficiency (using the least amount of energy to achieve one's goal), with grace, and without causing injury to the body, now matter how high-exertion the activity, the technique can also be used by workers like musicians, athletes, and public speakers to improve their own performances.
Jump Rhythm Tap Technique
Jump Rhythm Tap applies the principles of Jump Rhythm® to tap dancing. It combines the drumbeaters of the feet with those of the hands, head, and voice to create sparkling swing and/or percussive funk through the whole body.
Jump Rhythm Jazz Repertory
JUMP RHYTHM Rep re-creates from JUMP RHYTHM's touring repertory selected dances that fuse dynamically rich full-bodied rhythm-making with powerfully expressed dramatic intention.
Rhythmic Analysis as a Source of Improvisation and Composition
Using full-bodied rhythm-making as a springboard to movement exploration, Rhythmic Analysis focuses on embodying as well as analyzing the elements of music: pulse; rhythm; note values (quarter note, eighth notes, etc.); accents and their dynamic markings (staccato and sforzando); accenting on the beat or off the beat; and the two major "feels" of metric music, swinging, triple-rhythm-based music and percussive, duple-rhythm-based music. With these tools, students launch into creating their own phrases of vocally generated movement, both a cappella and to selections from musical genres featuring strongly beat-driven sounds.
Standing Down Straight®: A Gravity-Directed, Movement-Efficient Approach to Mind-Body Awareness
Guided by Jump Rhythm's unique approach to aligning the body, Standing Down Straight®, as well as by the postural and motional principles pioneered by Mabel Todd in The Thinking Body, Movement Awareness explores how to move efficiently, injury-free, and with power when dancing, engaging in peak-performance activities like athletics, and doing the tasks of everyday life.
American Rhythm Dancing and the African American Performance Aesthetic
Surveying the tradition of African-American-based, vernacular-bodied, rhythm-driven-dancing in America and beyond, this class views, discusses, and does movement improvisations in response to the rhythmically propulsive dancing and singing found in those feature-length films, dance documentaries, and music videos that celebrate American Rhythm Dancing.
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