Dance Educator & Choreographer
About
Biography
is an award winning dance educator and freelance choreographer. Ms. Golonka was on faculty at Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp for 13 years, ending her tenure as Director of Dance. Golonka has taught and created works at many dance studios, high schools for the performing arts, and Universities around the country. Golonka is a Buffalo, NY native and longtime NYC resident. She has danced with the Jessica Lang Project, Hannah Khan Dance Company, Third Law Dance/Theater and Thang Dao Dance Company. She has performed with Battleworks Dance Company, Take Dance Company, Camille A. Brown and Dancers, Peter Chu’s CHU This, Darrell Grand Moultrie and Nicholas Villeneuve. Jennifer trained at the Martha Graham School for Contemporary Dance and the Limon Institute.
Jennifer Golonka was the Director of Dance at Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School, and has taught and created works at many dance studios, high schools for the performing arts around the country, and at the University of Colorado at Boulder, University at Buffalo, Stony Brook University, the Symphony Strings on Mountain, Cincinnati Ballet Summer Intensive, as a guest choreographer for the Pacific Arts Dance Center’s The Nutcracker, and the White Wave Dance Festival in Brooklyn, NY.
Golonka is a Teaching Artist at Arts Connection, and was featured in the January 2014 issue of Dance Teacher Magazine for her work on the DELLTA program, (Developing English Language Literacy Through the Arts). Jennifer recently created a Dance For Camera course for 8th grade students, designed to help them hone their inner artist while building language and collaborative skills. Golonka was honored to receive the 2015 Janklow Award, naming her Teaching Artist of the year.
Her choreography and movement direction have been featured in many plays and musicals including original works Sunny Good Enough written by Jonathon Farmer, and Nature of Captivity by Matthew Paul Olmos (Mabou Mines, NYC). Both have recently been published. Golonka was Co-Director/Choreographer of The Threshold Project with KC Chun-Manning in Denver Colorado and Co-Director/Choreographer of Nimbus Dance with Beth Elkins-Wales and Brad Wales in Buffalo NY. Both companies explored the relationship between current events, site-specific work and multi-media collaboration.
In 2013, Golonka founded the LuminaryDance Project, a workshop designed to provide dancers with a comprehensive artistic education while building their technique. These workshops happen throughout the year, across the counrty, at various dance centers and universities.
