Billy Siegenfeld is a former jazz and rock drummer and present-day vocal-rhythmic actor-dancer-singer. He’s also: the founder, artistic director, choreographer, and musical arranger of the theatre company Jump Rhythm® (www.jumprhythm.org); an Emmy®-Award recipient for his performances in and vocal-rhythmic choreography for the documentary Jump Rhythm Jazz Project: Getting There; 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-creative concepts:

• STANDING DOWN STRAIGHT®, or SDS, is an anatomically fact-based, injury-preventive, “less is more” approach to both stage performance and daily living. By basing all movements and vocalizations on gravity-directed relaxation, SDS guides people to do any task with less physical strain, more emotional gain, and a body-mind connectedness to the earth, oneself, and the people we live, work, and/or play with.
• JUMP RHYTHM® is a vocally accompanied jazz-, funk-, and hip-hop-rhythm-driven approach to singing and dancing. Inspired by the African-originated approach to body-voice rhythm-making called ngoma (“drumming and rhythmic song-dancing”), Jump Rhythm uses gravity-directed relaxation to fuse body and voice into a single, time-accurate, emotion-driven percussion instrument.

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 Source of “Less Is More” Stage Performance.
• PARTNERED SWING DANCING: Using Gravity-Directed Relaxation as Source of Rhythmically Swinging Theatre-Movement.           
• JUMP RHYTHM® TECHNIQUE: Fusing Body and Voice into a Jazz-Syncopating Instrument of Emotion-Driven Body-Percussion.

His creative work focuses on building theatre out of primal human behaviors: giving expression to the energies we feel inside the body rather than the shapes we make on the outside it. This process turns fusions of rhythm-driven motion, song, and speech into stories that laugh, cry, and rant about our species’ most dominant condition: wanting to get more than enough instead of accepting that enough is enough – especially when we replace man-man ideas like standing up straight and no pain no gain with nature-friendly ideas like gravity-directed relaxation and The Golden Rule. 

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.  Expanding on the idea, his most recent work is titled FORTITUDE and GENTLENESS: A play about a rehearsal for a play about how two people, who have known each other for years as actors, begin to know each other as people. In 2023, Fortitude or and Gentleness premiered at the O’Donnell Theater in New York. In the summer of 2024, a revised version of it premiered in Tampere Finland, Paris France, and Portland Oregon. Beginning in 2025, it tours in the states and Europe.

Some of his previously published essays plus an unpublished manuscript:   

• “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).
• "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 that democracy works best when we practice it on ourselves.” (Manuscript available; inquire at billysiegenfeld@gmail.com.)

He is now completing a book with the title:

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 (thesis subject: swinging jazz music and the singing and dancing performed to it) from New York University’s Gallatin Division. When living in New York City, he danced in Don Redlich’s company; taught theatre-movement at 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 pushes the body beyond its natural limits, he studied a rehabilitative approach to human movement called “ideokinesis.” It emphasizes working within the body's natural range of motion by using gravity-directed relaxation to help the body operate in an energy-efficient, injury-preventive way. It is based on the ideas of posture and motion innovated by Mabel Ellsworth Todd. In her iconic anatomy text The Thinking Body, she addresses the difference between what the nature-made, evolution-designed human body wants to do versus what the over-grasping, hypertension-driven human mind thinks it should do. Todd's point of view directly spurred the development of the holistic-educational-creative concept that he named “Standing Down Straight®.”

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