Jennifer Archibald (R) at the Grand Rapids Ballet in Grand Rapids, Michigan Credit: Scott Rasmussen / c/o Jennifer Archibald
Earlier this year, Jennifer Archibald was pictured on the cover of Dance Magazine, America’s most prestigious journal for professional dancers and choreographers. That’s a huge deal. Plenty of choreographers whom you’ve heard of, even if you don’t pay attention to dance, have never made it to the cover of Dance.
Now, just months later, Archibald is sitting in her new office at the University of South Florida in Tampa, where she’s the newest addition to the faculty of the School of Dance and Theater.
Casual fans may not understand what a huge deal this is for USF and for Tampa. Archibald is recognized internationally as a revolutionary figure in the dance. Her work spans and combines everything from hip-hop to ballet. Her USF colleagues can barely contain their excitement that they get to work alongside her every day.
“It’s impossible to talk about Jennifer Archibald without using superlatives,” Michael Foley, a professor of dance at USF, told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. “She is the person of the moment right now.”
As one local dance aficionado opined, it’s kind of like Quentin Tarantino coming to USF to teach filmmaking.
To outsiders, it may seem odd that one of the world’s most important choreographers, a Toronto native who’s long been based in New York, would end up at a state university in Florida, a state that is, at least of late, known for being less than hospitable to the arts. For Archibald, though. It seemed like a natural step.
“I have a long relationship with USF,” she told CL. “One of my first residences of my career was here, one of my first artistic residencies. I also taught here at USF for the summer intensives through Florida. Dance Association, for about 10 years. I already knew the faculty, I know Tampa very well, so it just seemed like a good place for me as far as, y’know, working with family. It was really important for me to transition into a department that would understand my skill set.”
Besides Archibald’s personal relationship, USF’s dance program is also one of the most respected in the country, and has a reputation for attracting top-tier students, faculty and guest artists.
What makes Archibald so important in the dance world, Foley said, is that she blends styles and disciplines in a way that perhaps no other choreographer ever has. She hasn’t molded her work to fit the dance world’s templates; in fact, the dance world has bent to accommodate her work.
“Where Jennifer sits in kind of the pantheon of contemporary concert choreography is at the intersection of so many styles and genres that she’s actually reinventing things with every piece that she makes,” he added. “She’s one of the only choreographers who can traverse hip-hop, commercial, contemporary and ballet. Her work can be in an arena at a K-Pop conference at an arena in Los Angeles, and then it can be on the stages of the National Ballet of Canada, or it can be an evening-length piece with Ballet X in Philadelphia based on ‘The Lord of the Flies’.”
Jennifer Archibald Credit: Rebecca Marcela Oviatt / c/o Jennifer Archibald
Those who’ve never attended a ballet or a contemporary dance concert in their life, may have even seen Archibald’s work. Her resume includes commissions from ballet companies across the country, but also from Nike, Tommy Hilfiger, and musicians for whom she choreographed stage shows or videos.
And dance fans have seen her influence extend beyond her works. Even the most staid ballet companies, rooted in the rigors and traditions of classical form and notoriously resistant to change, are expanding their vocabulary and their repertoire, layering club and street dancing on top of ballet. And that’s largely because of Archibald.
Long-time Tampa-area dance audiences have had plenty of chances to see Archibald’s work over the years, Neophytes will get a chance later this month, when her work titled “Mirrors”is part of USF’s Fall Dance Concert on the USF Tampa campus. Works by Foley, USF dance faculty members Andrew Carroll and Bliss Kohlmyer and guest artist Saar Magal are also on the program.
Although she’s choreographed for some of the absolute best dancers in the world, and has been a long-time member of the dance faculty at Yale University, Archibald told CL she’s excited by the talent level of the USF students who will be performing her work this year.
“They’re great,” she said. “The skill set and the range is excellent, and that’s exactly what I need. I need a dancer who can play to the different genres, in execution, and it’s working. It’s working well.”
Besides setting works on her students, Archibald will also be working with them as she creates commissioned works that will appear on national and international stages.
“This is sort of my lab,” she said. “I’m going to be working on a work for a dance company in Canada, and I’m going to be coming up with the idea for my next full-length ballet. I’m working with USF students to start building new ideas and new movement phrases.”
So, for the foreseeable future, much of Archibald’s work that appears on world stages will have its roots right here in Tampa, at USF. And her global significance in the international dance world will no doubt focus more of the dance world’s attention on the region and USF dancers as they graduate and enter professional companies.
But maybe the just-plain-cool thing is that Tampa is now home to the person who could be considered the world’s most significant choreographer.
“She doesn’t have an equal, because she’s so singular,” Foley said. “No one is doing the kind of work that she’s doing, at the level that she’s doing it. And that level is the very highest.”
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This article appears in Oct. 16 – 22, 2025.
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