Jennifer McQuiston Lott

Jennifer McQuiston Lott enjoys a varied career as a dancer, choreographer, teacher, director and curator. She is an Associate Professor at the University of Southern California Kaufman School of Dance. Company credits include Gibney Dance Company, Groundworks Dancetheater, Armitage Gone! Dance, Inlet Dance Theatre, Collective Body Dance Lab, Eglevsky Ballet, and others. Her choreographic works and short dance films have premiered in New York at Baryshnikov Arts Center, National Sawdust, Celebrate Brooklyn!, Chen Dance Center’s Newsteps, the Thang Dao Dance Festival; also at The Dead/Live Festival (Boston), The Cleveland Public Theatre, New Haven’s Educational Center for the Arts, The Southern Theater in Minneapolis, and Festival Miden (Germany). She has created works for Cleveland’s Ingenuity Festival, Gibney Dance Center, the Laguna Dance Festival, Baldwin Wallace University’s Bach Festival, Rockford Dance Company, and has choreographed music videos for groups Son Lux and My Brightest Diamond. She assisted choreographer Jodie Gates with the creation of new works for Tulsa Ballet and Kansas City Ballet, and staged Ms. Gates’ ballets at Sacramento Ballet and Princeton University.

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In 2012, Lott & Brent Whitney launched the Traverse City Dance Project, a seasonal company for professional dance artists in Traverse City, MI. Now celebrating its 12th season, the TCDP has performed works by Jodie Gates, Gerald Arpino, Karole Armitage, Mauro de Candia and John Utans, and commissioned 15 new ballets, many accompanied by original, live music. Lott now serves as the Resident Choreographer and curates the TCDP's Choreography Lab, which pairs emerging to mid-career choreographers and music artists to create new works. 

 

Lott's collaborators include theater companies, recording artists, chamber ensembles animators and filmmakers. She was a featured performer in the official Son Lux videos Undone (dir. David Terry Fine, chor. Tyler Gilstrap) and You Don’t Know Me (dir. Nathan Johnson/The Made Shop, featuring Orphan Black star Tatiana Maslany). Lott earned her BFA in Ballet Performance from Indiana University, and her MFA in Dance from the University of California, Irvine, where she was awarded a teaching fellowship and numerous scholarships. She is certified in GYROTONIC® and GYROKINESIS® and is an ABT® Certified Teacher in Primary through Level 3 of the ABT® National Training Curriculum. She has served on the faculty of Interlochen Summer Arts Camp, and taught master classes and workshops nationally and internationally. She is a licensed teacher of Countertechnique, an innovative and athletic contemporary dance technique developed by Dutch choreographer Anouk van Dijk. www.lottdance.com, www.tcdanceproject.org.