Photo by Whitney Browne
Christine Jowers/Follow @cmmjowers on Instagram
Christine Jowers
Christine Jowers is a dancer, writer, editor, curator, producer, and teacher, and the founder of The Dance Enthusiast. Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and raised in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, Christine has ancestral roots of multiple generations in St. Thomas, St. John, St. Kitts, St. Martin, Puerto Rico, and Culebra. She credits her dedication to art, communication, and community to her cultural heritage and family upbringing.
Founder of The Dance Enthusiast / Dance Writing and Dance Literacy
In 2007, while still dancing professionally, Christine founded The Dance Enthusiast, an independent nonprofit platform dedicated to dance writing, documentation, audience engagement, and dance literacy. Over 18 seasons, she has guided the site as founder, editor-in-chief, journalist, and publisher, developing creative formats to share the stories of dance artists with local, national, and international audiences.
Through The Dance Enthusiast, Jowers has supported dance artists by documenting and critiquing their work, encouraged dance writers at many stages of their careers, and created opportunities for audiences to join the conversation about dance. Her writing has appeared in Dance/USA’s e-journal, From the Green Room; The Dance Insider; The Hopkins Review, the literary journal of Johns Hopkins University; and The Huffington Post.
Christine’s commitment to opening the dance conversation beyond professional critics and academics led her to create The Dance Enthusiast’s Audience Reviews section. In her 2014 ArtsJournal essay We the Audience, Lynne Conner praised the section as a place where anyone with “an interest and a computer” could “join the conversation and shape a dance world worth talking about.” Conner noted Jowers’s belief that audience reviews encourage new voices, empower new perspectives, and help audiences develop a vocabulary for what they see and experience.
Before the rise of Instagram Reels, Facebook Stories, and TikTok, Christine created and published short video stories to draw readers into the lives and work of professional dancers. This video program eventually grew into Dance Up Close, funded by Dance/USA’s Engaging Dance Audiences program through a grant from the Doris Duke Foundation. She also created, co-produced, and curated The Dance Enthusiast’s Enthusiastic Events series, live programs that brought dance into conversation with visual art, film, fashion, literature, food, theater, and other forms of cultural expression.
Jowers’s work in creating and sustaining The Dance Enthusiast has been recognized by the dance community for its service, innovation, community engagement, and commitment to the field. In 2022, she was honored by The New York Dance and Performance Awards (The Bessies) for Service to the Field and received the American Dance Guild Award for Distinguished Achievement in Dance.
Performance, Production, and Dance History
Before founding The Dance Enthusiast, Christine worked for more than 30 years as a professional dancer, teacher, and producer. She performed solo works and principal roles by early modern dance artists including Isadora Duncan, Doris Humphrey, Eleanor King, Jean Erdman, Murray Louis, Anna Sokolow, and Paul Sansardo, and danced in works by contemporary choreographers and performance artists including Larry Keigwin, Rebecca Rice, Nancy Allison, Kun-Yang Lin, Charles Moulton, Ann Carlson, Janis Brenner, BJ Sullivan, and Margie Gillis.
As a performer and independent producer, Jowers created solo and interdisciplinary programs exploring dance history, women artists, and the legacy of Isadora Duncan. Her production Awakening Dancing Goddesses was featured in The New Yorker, which wrote that “Jowers’s whiplike body carries off an impressive range of styles, from meditative to chaotic, flowing to abrupt,” in an evening of allegorical dance exploring the life and art of Isadora Duncan.
Christine’s first independent production, The Singular Voice of Woman (1997), was presented at The Place in London and featured Janet Eilber, Jacky Lansley, and Lesley Main. Judith Mackrell, dance critic for The Guardian, noted the production’s “exceptional solos” and described Jowers as “not only a remarkable performer but an important dance historian.”
Teaching, Workshops, Community Work, and Board Service
Christine has taught, led workshops, mentored interns and emerging writers, and facilitated public conversations on dance history, writing, performance, aging, and the changing needs of the field. She has taught at the José Limón Institute in New York City, the Laban Centre for Movement and Dance Studies in London, and Danceworks in London, and has conducted master classes at educational and cultural institutions in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Caribbean.
She has led dance workshops, taught choreography, and performed for children and teenagers through Artists in the Schools, Teen Arts, Young Audiences, and Very Special Arts programs. She also created community dance programs and workshops for children, families, and adults, including a dance program at the YWCA in Summit, New Jersey, and cj/MOVING ARTS PROJECTS’ Moving Kids Salons in New York City.
Christine was a founding board member of Kun-Yang Lin/Dancers (KYLD) in Philadelphia. She served for six years on the board of the Martha Graham Dance Company, including during the beginning of the company’s 100th anniversary celebration and its historic move to Times Square. She currently serves on the board of the American Dance Guild in New York City.
Visual Art and Current Work
Christine lives in Boston with her husband, Rob. In addition to her work with The Dance Enthusiast, she practices mixed-media art, with work exhibited in New York City, Charlestown, and Newton, Massachusetts.
Read features by Christine Jowers/Follow @cmmjowers on Instagram
