Jennine Willett - Third Rail Projects

_____ Zach Morris _ Tom Pearson _ Jennine Willett

"lush, buoyant, full-bodied movement" – Darrah Carr, The Dance Insider

Jennine Willett

Jennine Willett is a choreographer, dancer, and the Co-Artistic Director of Third Rail Projects. She creates unexpected movement phrases and rhythmic manipulations that speak to the explosive impulses within us, and her works reflect a sense of humanity ranging from the poignant to the pathetic, the wry to the downright silly. Drawing from subjects that are close to home, Jennine creates dances that communicate relatable experiences. Exploring human dynamics, her pieces often single out the individual within social constructs, highlighting acceptance, isolation, and solitude within an urban landscape.Through experimentation and improvisation, Jennine capitalizes on the individuality of her dancers, allowing a distinctive movement vocabulary to emerge and shape each piece.

Jennine's choreography has been presented in the U.S. at Dance Theater Workshop, the Merce Cunningham Studio, the Annual D.U.M.B.O. Dance Festival, the Blue Muse Dance Project at Theatre of the Riverside Church, Swarthmore College, Wooster College, Dance Theatre Workshop, La Mama, E.T.C., and Dance New Amsterdam. In Poland, she has presented solo concerts as well as commissioned work at various international dance festivals.

Jennine earned her M.F.A. in Performance and Choreography from Florida State University in 1996 and then danced for three years in Eastern Europe, performing and teaching master classes and workshops throughout Poland, Germany, Russia, and the United States as well as serving as a contributing editor to Dance Europe Magazine. In 2000, she was awarded a European Contemporary Dance Scholarship to participate in the danceWeb program in Vienna.

As an educator, she served as an Associate in Performance at Swarthmore College, Guest Artist at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville Texas, and has taught classes at the Limon Institute in New York. Over the last ten years she has been studying athletic training and applying this knowledge to conditioning and injury-prevention for dancers.

Jennine’s most recent collaborations with husband Paul Millman resulted in the production of two children, Owen (2006) and Andie (2009). Her work is shifting to include notions of art together with motherhood.

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