Billy Siegenfeld, M.A., Dance. Joined the faculty in 1993. Professor Billy Siegenfeld is the artistic director, principal choreographer, and ensemble performing member of Jump Rhythm Jazz Project. He is the 2006 recipient of Chicago's most prestigious dance honor, the Ruth Page Award, which cited him for “his vibrant dance artistry, development of a unique dance vocabulary, and the exciting choreography created in that dance technique.” In 2005, the United States Fulbright Commission made him a Fulbright Senior Scholar in Finland where he introduced the theory and practice of Jump Rhythm Technique to the Arts Academy of Turku University. Members of JRJP now offer coursework in the approach at the Arts Academy on an annual basis. Also in 2005 he received the Jazz Dance World Congress Award for making “major contributions to the art of jazz dance.” Other honors include the National Performance Network Creation Award in 2003, which led to the production of Sorrows of Unison Dancing, the 1997 Ruth Page Dance Achievement Award for Outstanding Choreography, citing Romance in Swingtime and No Way Out, and the 1994 Jazz Dance World Congress Gold Leo Award for Outstanding Choreography, citing Getting There. Billy is also a Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence at Northwestern University where he teaches Jump Rhythm Technique, Rhythmic Approaches to Choreography, and American Rhythm Dancing and the African American Performance Aesthetic, which surveys the contributions made to jazz-rhythm-based choreography and dancing in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His own choreography has been performed by Jose Limon Dance Company, Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago, Joffrey II Dancers, Decidedly Jazz Danceworks of Canada, and JazzCool of the Netherlands. Before joining Northwestern, he divided his time between directing the Dance Program of Hunter College in New York City, choreographing and dancing for the concert stage, performing in musical theatre -- including featured roles in the Broadway production of Singin' in the Rain -- and performing and teaching for nine years with the Don Redlich Dance Company. A writer and lecturer on jazz dance and music, his articles discussing the essential role swing plays in jazz dancing as well as those proposing a pedagogy based on teaching to "the person inside the student" have been published in Dance Teacher and Dance Magazine. “Standing Down Straight,” his essay on the rhythm-first and ideokinetically based injury-free concepts driving Jump Rhythm Technique, can be accessed at www.jrjp.org. He graduated with a B.A. in literature from Brown University and an M.A. in dance from New York University.