Billy Siegenfeld is a former jazz and rock drummer; a vocal-rhythmic actor-dancer-singer; the founder, artistic director, choreographer, musical arranger, and Emmy®-Award recipient of the theatre company Jump Rhythm® (www.jumprhythm.org); an author of essays, plays, and a book-in-progress titled How To Make Gravity Our New Best Friend; and a Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence in the Department of Theatre at Northwestern University.

The courses he teaches both at Northwestern and in national and international residencies are guided by two holistic-educational concepts

• STANDING DOWN STRAIGHT®, or SDS, is an anatomically fact-based, injury-preventive, “less is more” approach to both performing arts training and daily living. By basing all movements and vocalizations on gravity-directed relaxation, SDS guides people to do any task, whether performative or everyday, with less physical strain, more emotional gain, and a body-mind connectedness to the earth, to ourself, and to the people with whom we live, work, and/or play.
• JUMP RHYTHM® is a rhythm-driven, vocally accompanied approach to acting, dancing, and singing. Its focus is on giving rhythmic expression to the physical and emotional energies we feel on the inside of the body more than on positioning the unenergized shapes we make on the outside of the body – on articulating feelings more than on articulating looks. Jump Rhythm’s practice merges three ideas: 1) the African-originated approach to full-bodied rhythm-making called ngoma: “drumming and rhythmic song-dancing”; 2) SDS’s relaxation-based approach to performance; and 3) an egalitarian, mutually give-and-take approach to creative collaborations.

Among the courses he teaches using these two concepts are:

• STANDING DOWN STRAIGHT FOR ACTORS: Moving and Vocalizing from the Natural Body Using Gravity-Directed Relaxation as a Springboard to Both Powerful and Energy-Efficient Stage Performance.
• PARTNERED SWING DANCING:  Using Gravity-Directed Relaxation as a Source of Rhythmically Energized, Natural-Bodied, Give-and-Take Movement Collaborations.
• JUMP RHYTHM®: Transforming Both Voice and Body into Rhythmically Energized, Percussively Syncopated Musical Instruments.

His creative work focuses on building theatre out of primal human behaviors. The emphasis is on  articulating the physical and emotional energies we feel at our most relaxed and unself-conscious rather than on the looks we display at our most self-conscious and public. This process turns fusions of rhythm-driven motion, song, and speech into stories that laugh and cry about our species’ most dominant condition: tampering with Mother Nature to get more than enough and then realizing – once we begin to replace patriarchy-driven social constructs with egalitarianism-driven human behaviors – that what we already have in ourselves is enough.

Springing from this idea is his 2019 play with music and dance, What Do You Want To Be When You Give Up? It premiered that year at the Mark O’Donnell Theater in New York City.

His most recent play with music and dance is titled Fortitude and Gentleness: about a rehearsal for a play in which two actors who have worked together as performers for years inch toward building trust in each other as people. In 2023, Fortitude and or Gentleness again premiered at the O’Donnell Theater in New York. In the summer of 2024, a revised and expanded version of it premiered in Tampere, Finland and Paris, France and Portland Oregon. It will be touring cities in California in 2025. 

Some of his previously published essays include:

• “Performing Energy: American Rhythm Dancing and ‘The Great Articulation of the Inarticulate’ ” (2014);
• “The Art of Misbehaving: Youth, American Rhythm Dancing, and the Need to Not Be Good” (2012);
• “Standing Down Straight: Jump Rhythm’s Communally Engaged-In, Rhythm-Driven Approach to Performing Arts Education" (2009);
•  “Opening the Door: Teaching to the Person Inside the Student” (2002);
• “If Jazz Dance, Then Jazz Music” (1992).

A manuscript-in-progress is titled “Democracy’s Energy: how the African-American creation called swinging the beat beats back despair, says no pedestal works better than the ground we stand on, and teaches democracy works best when we practice it on ourself.”

He is now completing a book. Its full title is: 

HOW TO MAKE GRAVITY
(earth’s always-available, cost-free, non-polluting source of get-up-and-go)
OUR NEW BEST FRIEND
by
STANDING DOWN (NOT UP!) STRAIGHT®

Billy received a bachelor's degree in literature from Brown University and a master's degree in jazz music and dance from New York University’s Gallatin Division. His thesis was titled “Hunting the Rhythmic Snark: The Search for Swing in Jazz Performance.” When living in New York City, he performed in dancer-choreographer Don Redlich’s company; directed the dance program of Hunter College; performed as an actor-dancer-singer in both off-off-Broadway shows and the Broadway production of Singin’ in the Rain; and studied Meisner-based acting with Tim Philips and natural-voice singing with Joan Kobin.

After becoming injured from years of dance training that emphasized pushing the body beyond its natural limits, he studied a rehabilitative approach to human movement called “ideokinesis.” It emphasizes working within the body's evolutionarily designed natural range of motion by using gravity-directed relaxation to heal the body and, in a seeming paradox, power it. It is based on the ideas of posture and motion innovated by Mabel Ellsworth Todd. In The Thinking Body, Todd both analyzes and affirms what our cousins the animals are experts at: letting the body do what it wants to do rather than what we, at our most over-reaching and over-controlling, think it should do. Todd’s point of view inspired his development of the holistic-pedagogical principle, Standing Down Straight®.

 He also works for the environment. As an OpenlandsTreeKeeper, he works with a group of volunteers to ensure the eco-health and preservation of the Clark Street Beach Bird Sanctuary and other green sites in Evanston, Illinois.

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