Please join us for the second class in our Winter Master Class Series featuring Jennifer McNamara, who was a Principal Dancer with the Nashville Ballet and is now an Associate Professor of Dance at Mercyhurst University.
For registration, please contact us at:
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Please see below for her complete biography:
Jennifer McNamara, Associate Professor of Dance at Mercyhurst University, was raised in Syracuse, NY. She spent two seasons dancing with Richmond Ballet; among notable performances with the company were The Green Table (Kurt Joos) and Serenade (George Balanchine). She spent the next eleven years with Eugene Ballet, where she toured the United States, Canada, Taiwan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Syria, Jordan, and Tunisia. She was grateful to grow as an artist in narrative ballets including performing the role of Lucy in Dracula (Charles Bennett). She created leading roles in many of artistic director Toni Pimble’s contemporary works as well as in works by a wide variety of guest choreographers. Jennifer was invited to join the Nashville Ballet, where she rose to principal dancer; in her six years there, she was especially noted for dramatic portrayals such as the Chosen One in The Rite of Spring (Salvatore Aiello) and the title roles in Scheherazade (Dennis Spaight), Romeo and Juliet (Paul Vasterling), and Lizzie (Vasterling). She was coached by the late Elaine Thomas of the Royal Ballet for performances as Myrtha in Giselle, the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker, and Odette/Odile in Swan Lake, among others in the classical canon. Additionally, she spent a year as a freelance artist in New York City, working primarily with Gail Gilbert of David Parsons Dance Company.
After retiring as a performer, Jennifer leaned into her love for teaching, words, and making things. She was an adjunct professor at Middle Tennessee State University, the assistant rehearsal director for the Centennial Youth Ballet, a teacher for New Dialect’s daily contemporary ballet classes, and she was on the faculty of the School of Nashville Ballet. Jennifer has also designed and built costumes for her own choreographic works as well as on commission; at Mercyhurst, she continues to work with her husband to build costumes for some of the department's productions.
As a Pilates educator, Jennifer’s ongoing experiences inform her teaching both in and out of the studio; she is also deeply interested in implementing healthy pedagogical practices as a pathway to making the dance field more diverse, equitable, and inclusive. She is a past recipient of the Individual Artist Fellowship (Dance) from the Tennessee Arts Commission. Publications include a chapter in each of the forthcoming books, The Handbook of Dance Education Research (Intellect Books, 2025) and The Oxford Book of Ballet Pedagogy (Oxford University Press, 2026), both co-authored with Doug Risner. She wrote the chapter “Afterword(s)” in Masculinity, Intersectionality & Identity: Why Boys (Don’t) Dance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) and is the co-editor, with Doug Risner, of the book Dancing Mind, Minding Dance: Socially Relevant and Personally Resonant Dance Education (Routledge, 2023). Jennifer earned her MFA in Dance from Hollins University in 2018.
Also check out other Arts events in Erie, Workshops in Erie, Performances in Erie.
