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JUMP RHYTHM JAZZ PROJECT (JRJP) is an Emmy award-winning company of emotion-charged, rhythmically explosive dancer-singer-actors based in Chicago that celebrates the timeless core of all jazz performance -- dancing and singing in high-energy bursts of swinging body rhythms to the beat-driven sounds of syncopated music. Since its founding in New York City by Billy Siegenfeld in 1990, the company has thrilled audiences and students nationally and internationally with its rich blend of percussive musicality and story-driven dance theatre.
JRJP's affirmation of life through rhythm-based dancing and singing is shared through workshops in Jump Rhythm Technique. The pedagogy of this unique approach to movement learning helps transform dancing bodies and singing voices into rhythmically articulate, emotion-charged percussion instruments. Referring to this approach, the magazine Dancer credited JRJP artistic director 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 Jazz 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, the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, and National Performance Network. Jump Rhythm remains grateful to these grantors as well as to presenters like Ruth Page Dance Series, Dance Chicago, Dance Center of Columbia College, Jazz Dance World Congress, Chicago Human Rhythm Project, and Dance Chicago, that have also featured JRJP in its annual festivals.
JRJP company members teach the practice and theory of Jump Rhythm Technique year-round: at Northwestern University, where Billy Siegenfeld, Brandi Coleman, and Glenn Leslie instruct; at University of Wisconsin Stevens Point, where Associate Artistic Director Jeannie Hill is on faculty; at Randolph-Macon Women's College where Kelly Malone Dudley teaches; at Dance Center Evanston, where Glenn Leslie gives weekly classes; at Nettelhorst School, where Jordan Kahl works with elementary-school-aged children; and in residencies at public and private schools throughout Chicagoland. In addition, every summer the company leads week-long workshops in alternate years in Chicago and Boston of the Jump Rhythm Jazz and Tap Intensive, where students experience daily classes in Jump Rhythm techniques and repertory as well as Billy Siegenfeld’s film-based survey course, “American Rhythm Dancing and the African American Performance Aesthetic.” For more information, please visit us at www.jrjp.org.
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