Life. Is. Moving.

 Whether performing for fellow professionals in big cities and foreign countries, or for neighbors and Iowa school children, I am gripped and inspired by a basic yet significant fact – that we all come together, on purpose, to play a role in performance as communication and exchange.

JENNIFER KAYLE is Director of Graduate Studies for the MFA Program at the University of Iowa, and holds a BA from Middlebury College, and MFA from Smith College. Her choreography is deeply informed by improvisational research, and by collaborative process as a form of collective knowledge production. Kayle's dancing has been referred to as having "muscular presence" (Dance Source Houston), while her work has been reviewed as "provocative, tight, with wit and stage craft...serious chops" (Vox Fringe, MN), "distinct...affecting scenes" (Hampshire Gazette, MA), "memorable...shockingly poignant," (City Revealed), “pushing boundaries in dance, digital media and music,” (The Gazette). In recent years, Kayle's professional works have combined both personal and political lenses in works that wonder about social change, often with optimism and pessimism in a clash of wills. Kayle’s work has been chosen for festivals, for regional and national GALA concerts, and for grants including an NEA/CBE project to investigate improvisational methods for choreography. Kayle has presented work regularly in New York City and Chicago, in Los Angeles and other major cities, and across borders in Russia, Mexico, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. Improvisation is at the root of Jennifer's artistic practice. She traces her dance improvisation heritage to Judith Dunn/Bill Dixon who developed a unique improvisology for dancers and musicians at Bennington College. Together with The Architects, she is founder of MICI: Movement Intensive in Compositional Improvisation, a professional laboratory dedicated to performance improvisation, and to expanding the range of compositional possibilities. Recent interdisciplinary research examines ensemble improvisation through the lens of "collective action,” bridging theory and practice in the training of improvisers, and publishing her first scholarly article, co-authored with philosopher Ali Hasan, “Unplanned Coordination: Ensemble Improvisation as Collective Action,” for the Journal of Social Ontology. In 2017, Kayle graduated from the 800-hour Feldenkrais Professional Training Program at the New York Institute under David Zemach-Bersin, and now teaches Awareness Through Movement to diverse populations.