Jeff Bliss
Professional choreographer and teaching artist Jeff Bliss has been developing community-based arts experiences for children, professional artists, older adults, and schoolteachers for more than 25 years. He co-authored Generating Community with Susan Perlstein of Elders Share the Arts, where served as the program director. In 1993 he completed his Masters Degree in Group Work from the Hunter School of Social Work.
For six years Jeff was artist-in-residence at the Children’s Hospital National Medical Center and for 9 years he was a national training artist for the Wolftrap Institute. Jeff was an adjunct faculty member of Naropa University for five years and taught at Smith College and Weslyan University as a guest teacher. He served as senior program manager at the Lincoln Center Institute in New York City for 9 years where he created collaborations with city schools and city universities.
While at Lincoln Center Institute, he was part of the aesthetic education training faculty and trained hundreds of classroom teachers to use movement and aesthetic education in their subject areas.
Recently Mr. Bliss served as a training artist for the NYC Dept. Of Cultural Affairs’ Arts Partners Program, at the Nashville Institute for the Arts, the Bates Dance Festival, and at Movement Research in New York City. Along with Amie Dowling, he created a summer intensive training program called Community Arts Link. He currently teaches a community dance class at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival and teaches Contact Improvisation in a variety of settings.
Jeff began performing with Betty Jones Dance Company and then joined Liz Lerman/Dance Exchange for 8 years. Later, as a member of Group 6 (with Chris Aiken, Nancy Stark Smith, Ray Chung, Julie Carr, and Peter Bingham) Mr. Bliss explored composition and performance issues in improvisation. Most recently he has performed as a guest artist at St. Marks Church in NYC, at the Walker Art Center’s Improvisation Summit in Minneapolis, at the Argentina National Dance Festival, and at The Kitchen with Hank Smith as part of the New York Improvisation Festival.
