Biography
Jennifer Salk is currently most interested in site-specific work, and collaborating with other artists. She is exploring perspective – how meaning and perception are altered depending on proximity, spatial limitations, and time. Her newest work is investigating the idea of making and destroying – avoiding preciousness in art making – researching the concept of art being destroyed and the impact that has on history.
Jennifer is an associate professor and the chair of the Department of Dance at the University of Washington. She received her MFA from Ohio State University and her BFA from the University of Utah. She teaches contemporary technique, choreography, experiential dance history, teaching methods, and The Creative Process. She also teaches graduate seminars in teaching methods, and composition. She spent seven years in NYC touring and dancing with various choreographers including David Dorfman and Chris Burnside, and was also the artistic director of her own company. Jennifer was an assistant professor in the dance department at the University of South Florida prior to coming to the UW in 2002.
Jennifer has taught master classes and choreographed for companies and schools around the country, as well as in Istanbul, Turkey and Asuncion, Paraguay. She is recognized for her lively and highly physical technique classes as well as her unique way of teaching choreographic methods to new choreographers. She is on faculty at the Staibdance Summer Dance Intensive in Sorrento, Italy. She has performed with Mark Haim in Paris at the ArtDanThe Festival and at ADF, and at the Joyce Theater in NYC. She is a frequent guest at the National High School Dance Festival and has presented at the International Association for Dance Medicine and Science and National Dance Education Organization conferences several times. She has taught at American Dance Festival and Florida Dance Festival. Her DVD, Experiential Anatomy in Dance Technique: Eight Skeletal Explorations just went into second printing. Jennifer is the recipient of the Fulbright Specialist Roster Grant, and the Distinguished Teaching Award at UW in 2006 and the Donald R. Petersen Endowed Fellowship and Professorship. She is currently the Floyd and Delores Jones Endowed Chair in the Arts.