INTERMEDIATE CONTEMPORARY JAZZ WITH STACEY PRINTZ

Stacey Printz’s contemporary jazz technique mixes physically charged, fresh modern dance elements of jazz and hip-hop allowing students the opportunity to bridge the gap between dance genres. It is a place where students with diverse training backgrounds can mingle and broaden their dance aesthetic. Her classes explore a blended style of dance focusing on musicality, syncopation, detailed gesture, floor work and athleticism. She is known for her upbeat attitude and inviting classroom energy and encourages dancers to enjoy and celebrate their dance practice and development.

In describing her aesthetic, San Francisco critics have said, “Printz’s movement vocabulary in itself is a very interesting fusion of styles—modern, hip hop and contemporary jazz. Hip hop and jazz are not easy genres to incorporate into rigorous artistic work…Printz is able to combine the three by focusing on the technical challenges of modern dance, the lyrical expression of jazz and the staccato attack of hip hop. Having a foot in several worlds has given Printz access to a creative freedom that informs the choreography for her own company (and classes) and is strongly seen in her own dancing.”

STACEY PRINTZ is the Artistic Director/Choreographer of Printz Dance Project (PDP). Her company has performed in San Francisco for 19 years, and toured across the nation and internationally in Russia, Lithuania, Ireland, The Virgin Islands and Mexico. Printz was nominated for an Isadora Duncan Dance Award (Izzie) for her 2011 work Hover Space, with her most recent work GLASSlands premiering at Z Space Theatre last May, and was then presented at YBCA. Printz’s choreography credits in theater/multi-genre, performing arts pieces include: As You Like It at Cal Shakes, Aaron Davidman’s Wrestling Jerusalem, Sarah Shourd’s The Box, Washington D.C.’s Woolly Mammoth Theater production of The Arsonists, and YBCA Director of Program and Pedagogy, Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s internationally recognized works, Scourge, The Break/s, the Bessie nominated Red, Black & Green: a blues, and /peh-LO-tah/, which recently toured to Kennedy Center and BAM. In addition she has choreographed many regional musical theater productions (including West Side Story, A Chorus Line, Grease and more).

Printz has taught her hybrid contemporary-jazz technique across the United States, including places such as New York (Broadway Dance, NYU, Peridance), Los Angeles, Memphis, Arizona, Colorado, Utah and Internationally (including Italy, Switzerland, Denmark, Austria, Ireland, Russia, Belgium and more). In the Bay Area, Printz teaches for A.C.T.’s MFA program, at Alonzo King’s LINES Dance Center where she has been on faculty for 17 years, and RoCo Dance MV. Printz graduated cum laude from UC Irvine with degrees in sociology and dance. printzdance.org

Photo: LINES Dance Center | Lois Greenfield