Letting loose

When college students go out they freely express themselves on the dance floor all night long. Put students in a dance studio with a professor, and they sometimes try to intellectualize their movements and lose the passion they have in the clubs.

"We want them to find that abandon," said Jeannie Hill, associate artistic director of the Jump Rhythm Jazz Project.

Hill and JRJP rehearsal director Brandi Coleman are spending the week helping 10 dance students do just that by verbalizing rhythms like scat singers, slapping their bodies like percussion instruments and, in the JRJP tradition, taking an Afrocentric approach to dance, one that honors being grounded in the Earth as respectfully as ballet honors the ethereal.

Hill and Coleman are in residence this week at Southeast Missouri State University. Hill and Coleman also conducted a master class in the company's technique Wednesday night at Dance Extensions In Jackson.

Next week, New York City dancer Sean Curran will be in residence. He will teach classes for the Southeast Dance Ensemble and will choreograph a new modern dance. A rehearsal open to the public will be presented from 6 to 9 p.m. Wednesday and from 6 to 9 p.m. Jan. 18 in the Dance Studio in the Cultural Arts Center at the River Campus.

Brandi Coleman, rehearsal director of the Jump Rhythm Jazz Project, explained various techniques and movements with students Monday at the River Campus dance studio. (Aaron Eisenhauer)

A Missouri Arts Council grant is funding both residencies in preparation for the university's Dance-Apalooza concert Feb. 28 through March 2.

The Jump Rhythm Jazz Project is a Chicago-based organization founded by former drummer Billy Siegenfeld. Hill met him in New York City in 1989 when both were studying tap and discovered their affinity for the style of dancing popularized by Fred Astaire. Hill has toured with Manhattan Tap and is a member of a comedy country band called The Chalks.

Besides her work with JRJP, Coleman also is an adjunct lecturer with the Northwestern University Dance Program.

Southeast dance instructor Lees Hummel has been dancing and learning right alongside her students this week.

This week at the River Campus students began jazz dancing at 10 a.m. and finished tap dancing at 4:30 p.m.

Jeannie Hill, one of the associate artistic directors of the Jump Rhythm Jazz Project, gives instructions to students during a choreographic residency Monday.

"It's grueling," Marissa Crozier, a senior dance major from O'Fallon, Mo., said after the first day. The JRJP approach is also different from anything she's ever done before, Crozier said. "It's the incorporation of the whole body."

They stress to the students the necessity to feel grounded and to attune themselves to the rhythms in their bodies' movements, to moving from the inside. The students' first movements on the first day are tentative. "It can't all be downbeats in life, people," Coleman teases the students. "The spice of life is syncopation."

Instead of using academic terms to teach a step the teachers might shout, "Boom bah dee ga do dah dah Dah," connecting each syllable with a particular movement.

Jazz dancing is like playing jazz, Hill said, encouraging the students not to be afraid of making mistakes. "If you play the note and you believe in the note it's fine. We're jazz musicians with our bodies."

Early in the class Hill holds her hands at an acute angle and says her "wild meter" is hardly registering. By the end of the day the students are slapping, clapping and tapping with abandon and Hill's wild meter is moving up.

Curran, 46, began his career with a dance company doing highly political work before landing a role in the original production of "STOMP." "It really nourished the other show biz guy inside of me and taught me how to listen to music and the making of music in a different way," he said in a phone interview from New York City.

He started his own company in 1997, about the same time he was asked to choreograph Irish dances for the James Joyce play "The Dead." That led to commissions choreographing operas.

In a residency such as the one coming up at Southeast, Curran said his role is "to get the kids excited and connect with their passion for the art form."

Curran will audition the dancers who will be in the new modern dance. "I want someone who has a mind at work, who will be a good collaborator," he said.

"Someone who is really in their body, who dances from a deep places and has a unique, fresh brand of virtuosity."

Curran said he is not tall, particularly flexible or muscular but had something else he looks for in dancers. "There is soul, spirit and poetry that can come through when you're really dancing," he said.