Billy Siegenfeld is a former rock and jazz drummer; a rhythm-charged actor-mover-singer; the founder, director, playwright, movement-maker, and music-arranger of the theatre company Jump Rhythm®; a Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence in Northwestern’s theatre department; and an author of essays and two books-in-progress, Democracy’s Energy and How to Make Gravity Our New Best Friend. His teaching state-side and abroad is guided by an idea he calls Standing Down Straight® or SDS. SDS’s nature-made, gravity-grounding, anatomically fact-based approach to moving and vocalizing, whether onstage or in daily life, explores using the body and voice to produce speech-song-motion out of the endorphin-giving, bouncingly rhythmic behavior we did when kids, tended to stop doing when adolescents, and can do again when adults. His most recent theatre piece is a two-hander he wrote and performs in with Jordan Batta titled Enough IS Enough a.k.a. Fortitude AND Gentleness – a play about a rehearsal for a play on the old theme: how awful and wonderful life is. He received a B.A. in literature from Brown University and an M.A with a thesis on African-American-originated swinging jazz from New York University. He received an Emmy® Award for the percussive, scat-sung theatre-movement he made for the documentary Jump Rhythm Jazz Project: Getting There as well as his performance in it. He acted, danced, and sang in off-off-Broadway shows and in the Broadway production of Singin’ in the Rain. He is the director of the currently touring, multiple-award-winning play by Robert Bailey, In Some Dark Valley. www.jumprhythm.org
Education
- MA Jazz Music and Dance, New York University
- BA Literature, Brown University
Recent Publications
Billy Siegenfeld is a writer on various subjects, including vernacular-bodied, jazz-rhythm-based performance; teaching to “the person inside the student”; and “Standing Down Straight®,” a gravity-directed, relaxation-based, injury-preventive approach to both performing arts training and everyday behavior.
His most recent article, “Performing Energy: American Rhythm Dancing and ‘The Great Articulation of the Inarticulate’,” appears in an anthology of jazz writings, Jazz Dance: A History of the Roots and Branches. His book-manuscript is titled How To Make Gravity Our New Best Friend by Standing Down Straight®.
Recent Awards, Honors, and Commissions
- Best of the Hollywood Fringe Award for the performance of the play In Some Dark Valley: The Testimony of Reverend Brand, written and performed by Robert Bailey and directed by Billy Siegenfeld, at the Madnani Theatre, Lost Angeles, CA, 2024.
- Commission by Millennium Performing Arts, London, England: director, choreographer, and vocal-rhythmic musical arranger of Variations on “I’ve Got Your Number,” premiered at Bathway Theatre, London, England.
- Commission by Chicago Tap Theatre: director and co-choreographer of Tidings of Tap, premiered at North Shore Center for the Performing Arts.
- “Best New Production 2016”: Chicago Tap Theatre, for direction of Time Steps, conferred by Dance Magazine.
- Commission by Chicago Tap Theatre: director of Time Steps, premiered at Stage 773, Chicago IL.
- Artistic Achievement Award, conferred by Chicago National Association of Dance Masters, 2016. Commission by Jump Collective Finland: choreographer and vocal-rhythmic musical arranger of god of dirt, and Too Close for Comfort, premiered at the Narri Theater, Helsinki, Finland.
- Tapestry Award, conferred by Dance Inn, Lexington MA.
- Inspiration Award, conferred by Chicago Tap Theatre.
- Stone Camryn Lecturer on the History of Dance, designation conferred by the Newberry Library, Chicago.
- Choreographer of the Year, awarded by Dance Chicago and Cliff Dwellers Arts Foundation.
- Commission by European Union and the City of Turku, funding the site-specific re-creation of Sorrows of Unison Dancing, premiered at Brinkhall Manor, Kaskerta, Finland.
- Outstanding Choreographer: Body of Work, conferred by Dance Chicago.
- Editors’ Video Award, for the production of Why Gershwin?, conferred by Dance Teacher.
- Emmy® Award, Outstanding Achievement for Individual Excellence On Camera: Performer, Jump Rhythm Jazz Project: Getting There.
- Ruth Page Award: Outstanding Contributions to the Field, conferred by the Ruth Page Award Committee, Fulbright Senior Scholar, designation conferred in conjunction with a two-week residency at Turku University of Applied Sciences, Turku, Finland by the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, the Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Department of State, and the Council of International Exchange of Scholars, 2005.
- Jazz Dance World Congress Award: Outstanding Contributions to the Field, conferred by the Jazz Dance World Congress.
- National Performance Network Creation Award, in support of a touring production of Sorrows of Unison Dancing.
- Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence, Northwestern University, 2002. Commission by Limón Dance Foundation, funding the creation of If Winter, premiered by the José Limón Dance Company at Mexican Heritage Center, San José CA.
- Twentieth Century Timeline of Choreographers and Innovators, recognition conferred by Dance Teacher, 2000. Commission by American Theater Company: choreographer of The Mineola Twins, American Theater Company, Chicago IL.
- Dancer recognition: “Billy Siegenfeld has used the components of the classic performances of jazz dancing as the basis of his Jump Rhythm Jazz Technique, successfully inventing the first genuine jazz dance technique in forty ” This recognition appeared in the February issue of the magazine, 1998.
- Ruth Page Award for Outstanding Choreography, for Romance in Swingtime, No Way Out, and Sola Nella Mia Bocca.
- Commission by Next Theatre: choreographer of Love’s Labor’s Lost, Next Theatre, Evanston IL, 1997. Commission by De Theater school, Amsterdam, Holland: choreographer and vocal-rhythmic musical arranger of Ellington Dancing, Opleiding Theater, Amsterdam, Holland,
- Jazz Dance World Congress Gold Leo Award for Outstanding Choreography, conferred by the Jazz Dance World Congress for Getting There.
- Sage Cowles Land Grant Chair in Dance, conferred by the University of Minnesota.
Recent Grants
In partnership with Jump Rhythm Jazz Project, he has received grants from the Illinois Arts Council, the Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation, the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, and the Richard Driehaus Foundation.
Courses
- Jump Rhythm® Technique
- Jump Rhythm® Tap
- Standing Down Straight® for Actors
- Partnered Swing Dancing: Using Gravity-Directed Relaxation to Create Rhythmically Energized, Natural-Bodied, Give-and-Take Movement Collaborations
- Choreographing Music: Rhythmic and Dynamic Approaches to Creating Movement for the Stage
- American Rhythm Singing-Dancing and the African-American Performance Aesthetic