Jeffrey P. Friedman

Dr. Jeff Friedman is a dance artist and scholar, and has been professor of dance studies at Rutgers University, New Jersey, since 2003. His research includes developing an embodied oral history interview methodology to serve the dance communities of the San Francisco Bay Area as founding director of the LEGACY Oral History Program (https://www.mpdsf.org/). He has received numerous grants and awards for his contributions to dance-related oral history documentation, including seven grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, ten years of grants from the California Arts Council, and the Forrest C. Pogue and James V. Mink service awards for oral history from the north-east and south-west regions of the National Oral History Association. His documentary dance film titled Muscle Memory, choreographed based on LEGACY’s oral history collection, has been performed worldwide, creating a new protocol for converting oral histories into documentary dance works. Over the course of his career, Dr. Friedman has been a Fulbright Fellow (in Germany) and a visiting lecturer and visiting dance critic in several institutions and countries.