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Teacher Bio
Bob Boross is known internationally for his artistic excellence in jazz, tap, and musical theatre dance....Read more
Bob Boross is known internationally for his artistic excellence in jazz, tap, and musical theatre dance. Bob's theatre jazz dance teaching is influenced by his training with jazz dance pioneers Matt Mattox and Michael Owens, while his tap dance technique draws from a mix of a light, off of the heels Broadway style with an enhanced syncopation. His classes impart a high level of technique, sensitivity to musicality and nuance, theatre dance style, and encouragement of personal expression and performance qualities.
His impactful career includes dancing on Broadway in Can-Can with choreography by Roland Petit, setting his work on dance companies throughout Europe and Scandinavia, and teaching as a US State Department sponsored cultural artist at the Boris Eifman Dance Academy in St. Petersburg, Russia. His musical choreography includes Guys and Dolls, Victor/Victoria, Forum, Blood Brothers, The Drowsy Chaperone, Best Little Whorehouse, and in July 2019 Bob will choreograph My Way – A Musical Tribute to Frank Sinatra at Shadow Lawn Stage/NJ.
In 2016 Bob was featured as a jazz dance master in both Dance Teacher and Dance Studio Life magazines, and as an invited professor at the NDEO Jazz Dance Conference in Newport, RI. Bob was the featured musical theatre teacher for the Kennedy Center’s 2016 “Dance Day,” produced by Nigel Lythgoe’s Dizzy Feet Foundation. His choreography in the US has been commissioned by Velocity Dance DC, the NY Jazz Dance Choreography Project, Jazz Dance Los Angeles, and the Jazz Roots Dance Company.
Bob has been a teacher of jazz dance, tap dance, and musical theatre dance for nearly forty years, most notably as head of jazz/tap at the University of California/Irvine Dance Department and the musical theatre dance program head at Shenandoah University. He is currently Adjunct Dance Professor with both the dance and theatre departments at Marymount Manhattan College in New York. He has led university master classes at Carnegie Mellon, Northwestern, NYU, Southern Methodist, and Hunter and Rhode Island Colleges.
For more information on Bob's work, visit www.BobBoross.com
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Class Descriptions
Class includes traditional exercises of pliés, tendu, dégagé, etc, but executed often in a demi-plié level with both parallel and turned out leg positions. Also included are intricate isolation exercises for head, shoulders, ribs, and hips. Floor stretching is included, and the class concludes with a combination drawn from a range of musical influences - theatre jazz, lyrical, blues, swing, new age, rock, etc.
Bob’s tap dance classes range from Basic to Intermediate levels. Within all levels, Bob’s tap dance technique draws from a mix of a light, off of the heels Broadway style with an enhanced syncopation. He stresses a relaxed execution in footwork, and precise way of striking the floor with the tap. His classes impart a high level of technique, sensitivity to musicality and nuance, full body tap dance style, and encouragement of personal expression and performance qualities.