Clay High School Distinguished Hall of Fame Nominee

JENAI CUTCHER (‘95)

Jenai Cutcher’s creative practice spans the page, the stage, and the screen and includes dancing, choreographing, teaching, movie making, writing, and researching histories of dance. In 2015, she became the founding artistic and executive director of Chicago Dance History Project, for which she received the 2019 Ruth Page Award. Jenai has performed with tap dance artists such as Brenda Bufalino, Michelle Dorrance, Barbara Duffy, John Giffin, Savion Glover, Derick Grant, Katherine Kramer, Max Pollak, and Lynn Schwab, and her own choreography has been presented throughout the country. She has written articles for several dance publications including Dance magazine and the Village Voice, three dance books for children, and Columbus Moves: A Brief History of Contemporary Dance. Her first feature-length documentary, Thinking On Their Feet: Women of the Tap Renaissance, explores the work of the women who resurrected and revolutionized the art of American tap dance and continue to pioneer the field. Jenai performed in the Tap City show in New York City She lived in NYC and performed there in many prestigious venues. While living in NYC, Jenai was affiliated with the Alternative Speakers Bureau. One of her assignments was presenting seminars for executives at General Electric’s Crotonville Development Center in Westchester County, NY. She stressed created thinking and thinking on the spot and had those executives tap dancing! In 2016, she interviewed with Michael Workman of Sixty Inches from Center, a nonprofit online publication and archiving initiative in Chicago. In the summer of 2019, Jenai visited the Bahamas for research on Chicago native, Shirley Hall-Bass Creative Nassau Radio featured a segment with Jenai and some of Shirley’s relatives and former students. With her research on Chicago dancers, Jenai connected with 91 year old Charlie Grass and his daughter, Marie Grass Amenta. As a teenager, Charlie’s dance partner in a vaudeville acted called The Riff Brothers, was Bob Fosse. She and a friend, Heather Brown, recreated the routine. After interviewing Charlie for CDHP, Charlie offered to teach the young women the routine. Jay Shefsky of WTTW in Chicago, featured a segment on this event on a Chicago news show. Singing the song was Charlie’s daughter, Marie. The segment can be viewed at news.wttw.com/2019/05/29/bob-fosse-charlie-grass-riff-brothers- chicago. During her recent (January 2020) trip to Europe, Jenai interviewed John Neumeier for CDHP. Mr. Neumeier is the Director and Chief Choreographer for the Hamburg Ballet. Mr. Neumeier, originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, studied dance in Chicago. Also on this trip, Jenai gave a presentation on Documenting Jazz Dance at a seminar at Birmingham City University in England.

Jenai has a BA in English and MFA in Dance, both from The Ohio State University. She was the recipient of the Ohio State University Presidential Fellowship 2008-2009. In addition to directing CDHP, she teaches tap dance and dance history at Northwestern University and is an artist-in-residence with Chicago Park District.

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