“Human connection and the beauty of our vulnerability drive my artistic practice. Through my teaching, performance, choreography, and daily interactions I strive to inspire openness, creativity, and collaboration.”  —Madeline Jazz Harvey

Featured choreographer Madeline Jazz Harvey’s connection to dance started early and runs deep. “According to my older sisters, it was reggae artist Eek-A-Mouse who first inspired me to dance– in utero– when he pulled my then pregnant mother onstage at a concert they had begged her to attend. My mother says I was 2 years old when, after watching a video of The Nutcracker, I first proclaimed to her that I wanted to become a choreographer. I began taking ballet lessons at age 5 and was instantly drawn to the generosity of dance. [Dance is] the marriage of body, mind, and spirit; [it joins] the physical, intellectual, and emotional.”

The articulate and engaging Harvey is originally from Charlotte, North Carolina, but makes her home in Fort Collins, Colorado, where she is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Colorado State University. She and her husband enjoy their evenings together cooking dinner and listening to music. They are joined by toy poodle Momo and boxer Appa, and are excited to be expanding their family with a baby girl due in April.

Due to the repetitive nature of the sound score Harvey chose for her Wine & Works-in-Progress Feedback Session piece, she has felt “challenged to strive [to keep] the movement and choreographic design [continually] engaging.” Of the choreography, she says, “My pregnancy has greatly influenced my desire to investigate themes of fragility, bravery, curiosity and relationship.” Harvey is driven to choreograph by the creative process: “the time spent exploring, communicating, and playing in the studio, and being able to share ideas with audience members.”

You could be among the lucky audience members to experience Harvey’s work during Wine & Works-in-Progress Feedback Session at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts’ Conservatory Theater at the Robert and Judi Newman Center for Theatre Education on March 8, 2019.

Jane E. Werle: As an infant Jane E. Werle, unable to protest, was removed from Colorado by her well-meaning parents. In 2004 she was able to rectify this error when she relocated from Massachusetts to Boulder for graduate school. One M.F.A. and a husband later, Jane works to further the arts in the Front Range as a writer/editor and dance enthusiast (no-shame, first-on-the-floor amateur– despite some training– dancer). Jane is also a longtime nanny and a visual artist, taking one of these very seriously and the other as a growth experience. Every child she’s cared for has experienced some form of the SDP: Spontaneous Dance Party.