About
Jenefer Davies is Chair of the Department of Theatre, Dance and Film Studies, Professor of Dance at Washington and Lee University, and Artistic Director of the W&L Repertory Dance Company. She received an MFA in Choreography and Performance from The George Washington University and a MALS in Dance from Hollins University. Her choreography has been commissioned by dance, opera and theatre companies and has toured to Spain, Greece, Scotland, and throughout the United States. Davies founded the contemporary modern dance company, Progeny Dance, later Davies & Dancers, which has performed at Green Space, Ailey Citibank Theatre, and Dixon Place in Manhattan, and The Center for Performance Research in Brooklyn. Her work has been supported by the Virginia Commission for the Arts; Washington and Lee University's Lenfest Grants, Johnson Fund, and Glenn Grants; the Treakle Foundation; Associated Colleges of the South Mellon grant; among others. She created one of the first academic programs in aerial dance in the country and her aerial dancers have performed at the Ailey Citigroup Theatre in NYC, at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC and from the rooftops of buildings on the Washington & Lee campus. Davies has been published in the International Planetarian Magazine, World Congress on Dance, the Nu Delta Alpha Journal and the Athens (Greece) Institute for Research in the Arts Consortium, among others. She serves on the Editorial and Reviewer’s Board of the Athens Journal of Humanities and Arts and has reviewed dance proposals for Oxford University Press. In 2021 she received the National Outstanding Research Award from the National Dance Education Organization for her work in aerial dance. Her first book Aerial Dance: A Guide to Dance with Rope and Harness was published by Routledge Press in 2018 and Writing the Body: the Art of Dance Composition was published in late 2023.
