train
joel hall dancers
with the
trainee program
Photo: Marc Monaghan
The Joel Hall Dancers & Center (JHDC) “awakens the dancer in everyone’s soul” by highlighting and spotlighting the Black and Brown and LGBTQIA+ experience through dance. Our Trainee Program achieves this goal by developing Chicago’s dance talent in a welcoming environment that celebrates multiculturalism.
Over the course of 10 months, we immerse our trainees in weekly Ballet, Modern, and Jazz classes that strengthen their technique, endurance, and overall awareness of a career in dance. We also provide them with rehearsal and performance opportunities that allow them to put what they learn into practice, and professional networking opportunities to learn from professionals within the Chicago arts community.
The program is designed to be a 10-month experience. However, based on interest and inquiries, students may be invited to join midway through the program.
The Trainee Program is a part-time program. It has been designed as a bridge opportunity for dancers fresh out of high school and considering more advanced training, recent college graduates, and working performing artists who wish to improve their technique through regular training.
JHDC endeavors to balance flexibility with rigorous instruction and a commitment to a professional arts organization. Building a relationship within a dance company–its artists, staff, and community–is essential to building a healthy career in the arts. The Trainee Program supports this while giving trainees space for outside study and/or employment.
JHDC commits to maintaining a training program that reflects its mission, vision, and values to “awaken the dancer in everyone’s soul.” Through this program, we aim to meet the needs of Chicago’s performing arts community, individual artists, and the long-term health of one of Chicago’s historic and most progressive cultural organizations.
Monthly Tuition: $550 per month. Work-study (financial aid) and limited scholarship opportunities are available.
awaken the dancer
in your soul
Urban Jazz
At a time when “urban” emerged as a racialized synonym for Black, Joel Hall and Joseph Ehrenberg co-founded a dynamic arts organization to encourage “urban community groups to produce plays, musicals, dance concerts, readings, and other theatrical performances.” In 1974, Joel Hall Dancers & Center declared our commitment to cultivating the performing arts within Black and Brown communities. This era witnessed Frankie Knuckles’ experiments with Club music at the Warehouse (sometimes collaborating with his friend Joel Hall), and inspired Joel Hall to blend his life experiences as a gay Black man with concert dance.
Urban Jazz, our signature style that Dance Magazine has hailed as “Jazz dance at its best,” grew out of the gay Black community’s Ballroom culture, the music of the Warehouse (or, House Music), the reclamation of African roots, and standard Western dance training. Where Jazz blends Ballet, Modern, and Contemporary idioms, Urban Jazz adds the “flava” of gay nightlife and the experiences of the Black community. With House music as the setting for formal concert dance, Joel Hall broke with tradition and helped pave the way for future choreographers to bring Hip Hop and Footwork onto professional stages.