Artist-in-Residence in Dance
Courses
At Williams
- 2007-present: Artist-in-Residence in Dance
- 2009-present: Co-Artistic Director of CoDa, Williams College Contemporary Dance Ensemble
- Spring 2019-present: Creator and Lead Teacher of “Let’s Dance!” outreach program for North Adams Public School elementary students
Bio
Janine Parker has been teaching for thirty years. She has had a long affiliation with the Boston Ballet School, as faculty member and Associate Principal and continues to teach in its Summer Dance Program. Previously, Parker ran the Children’s Dance Extension Division at the Walnut Hill School for the Arts, and was the Assistant Director for the school’s Summer Dance Workshop. In 2003 Parker moved out to Western Massachusetts, where she served as Artistic Director for Pioneer Valley Ballet. From 2007-2013, Parker was the founding director/teacher of The Ballet School at Bement, an afterschool program in Deerfield, MA. She has been a regular or guest faculty member/choreographer at various schools in the area, including Deerfield Academy and East Street Dance Center. Parker danced with various ballet and modern companies in Massachusetts, and continued to perform character roles when she retired from dance. Since 1989 she has written about ballet and dance extensively, formerly for The Boston Phoenix and currently for The Boston Globe, The Berkshire Eagle, and The Arts Fuse. She co-wrote the memoir of her colleague Laura Young. The book, Boston Ballerina: A Dancer, A Company, An Era, was published by University Press of New England in November 2017. In 2007 she joined the Williams College Dance Department and, as Artist-in-Residence, teaches several levels of ballet technique as well as history of and choreography from the ballet repertoire; she is a co-director of CoDa, the department’s contemporary dance ensemble. In 2019, Parker — in conjunction with the ’62 Center’s Outreach initiative, the Center for Learning in Action — created “Let’s Dance!”, a dance program for elementary school children in the North Adams Public School system.