Jan Van Dyke papers

Jan Van Dyke (1941- ) is a dancer, choreographer, and teacher who was active in the dance community in Washington, D.C. in the years after her graduation from The George Washington University with an M.A. in dance education in 1967. That year, she founded the Georgetown Workshop dance studio with John Gamble. In 1970, she left Washington, D.C. for New York, where she studied with Merce Cunningham and at the Martha Graham and Alwin Nikolais schools. In 1972, she returned to Washington, D.C. and established her own dance studio, Dance Place, in Adams Morgan, which became the leader in modern dance training and performance in D.C. Van Dyke toured extensively throughout the United States with her dance company, Jan Van Dyke and Dancers, and as a solo artist. In 1980, she was honored by the Metropolitan Dance Association at their First Annual Dance Awards for her work and commitment to dance in the D.C. area. Later that year Van Dyke and four dancers from her company once again left DC for New York. She returned periodically to perform as a visiting artist and to help choreograph a production of the National Ballet.

Van Dyke and her dancers moved to San Francisco in 1982, where she was part of the faculty at the Footwork Studio. After three years in San Francisco, Van Dyke disbanded Jan Van Dyke and Dancers and moved to London for a teaching position at the Laban Centre for Movement and Dance. In the late 1980s, Van Dyke enrolled in the University of North Carolina in Greensboro and was awarded an in Ed.D. in Curriculum and Educational Foundations in 1989.

Over the span of her career, Jan Van Dyke has taught and performed throughout the United States and in various European countries, including Italy and Portugal. She is now an assistant professor in the dance department at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, where she teaches courses in technique, choreography, repertory and dance administration. In 1993, she published Modern Dance in a Postmodern World: An Analysis of Federal Arts Funding and Its Impact on the Field of Modern Dance. Van Dyke and John Gamble have reunited and formed John Gamble/Jan Van Dyke Dance Company. She is also involved with the organization of the annual North Carolina Dance Festival. Her work has received grants from the DC Council for the Arts and Humanities, the California Council for the Arts, and the National Endowments for the Arts.