Jessica Kimlat Fogel

Professor of Dance
jkfogel@umich.edu
734-647-2289
Office: 3529 Dance

Jessica Fogel joined the U-M dance department in 1985. Her choreography has been produced nationally and internationally since 1974. Fogel spent a decade in New York City where she was artistic director of Jessica Fogel and Dancers from 1978-1982. In New York, she also danced with Dances/Janet Soares, Phoebe Neville Dance Company, Hannah Kahn, Dalienne Majors and Dancers and Andrew DeGroat and Dancers. She is the artistic director of Ann Arbor Dance Works, formed in 1985.

Fogel's multi-layered dances feature unique collaborations, merging movement, text, music and digital projections. Over the past three years, she has collaborated with an interdisciplinary team of scholars and artists producing a performance and video work entitled Mapping the River, and hosted a symposium to facilitate dialogue about the role of the arts in environmental education and stewardship. A revived interest has been the creation of large-scale site dances, the latest of which celebrated 100 years of dance at the University of Michigan, traveling between three buildings on campus. Her long essay about this history was included in the anniversary booklet. Recent commissions include site works in Kyoto, Japan and in the U-M Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum. Several of these works have been presented on public television. She has presented papers about her choreographic research at a CORD conference on Dance and Human Rights in Montreal and at an international symposium at the University of Surrey.

Fogel's dances have been produced by Dance Theater Workshop, Riverside Dance Festival, Lincoln Center Touring Programs, The Yard, Harbinger Dance Company, Park Avenue Dance Company, Ann Arbor Summer Festival and the Toledo Museum of Art, among others. She has received grants from the NEA, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, ArtServe Michigan, the Cultural Council Foundation of New York and several sources at U-M. Awards include the Michigan Choreographers Festival Award, a Lifetime of Achievement in the Arts Award from the JCC of Metropolitan Detroit and an Award of Excellence from the National Fine Arts Video Competition.

Professor Fogel received a BA in Dance from Barnard College and a MA in Dance Education from Columbia University.

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