“Benson is the lovechild of Pina Bausch and Tiny Fey. I call him ‘Pina Fey’.”
DANCER
Jamie Benson, proclaimed as “one of the strongest, hottest contemporary dancers of his generation" by LA Times critic Lewis Segal, is a New York-based dancer, choreographer and instructor. Benson began choreographing and teaching at age 14 for Albany, Oregon’s State Champion dance team, the Hi-Steppers and Krew, becoming the first male declared an “All-Star” by the Oregon Dance/Drill Association. Accepted on scholarship to the Dance Department of Seattle’s Cornish College of the Arts, Jamie became one of the youngest students to be nominated for a Princess Grace Award, and presented his solo Melt Mold Break for On the Boards Theater and Art’s Edge Festival.
Relocating to Los Angeles, Benson was heralded as “Chaplin-like” by Backstage after originating the role of Eldon in LATC’s Ovation award winning Shag with a Twist. Benson performed in the film Rent, McDonald's Mario Art commercial, Rei Aoo's Dance Planet, on the television series Dance360 before capturing the attention of legendary post-modern choreographer Rudy Perez. Jamie created two solos for the Rudy Perez Performance Ensemble tribute tour including the Luckman Fine Arts Complex and Pasadena Armory.
CHOREOGRAPHER
Jamie Benson's high-brow-meets-low-brow choreographic work aims to defy performance traditions and infect a mass audience. After some success as a dancer, Jamie Benson choreographed two satire-laden evenings of dance for Highways Performance Space, deemed by the LA Times as "the hub for experimental performance". The first work, Bathroom Follies, positioned classical dance forms in a public restroom landscape. After an encouraging response, Benson followed with Go Metro, placing contemporary dance forms within a public transit environment. Go Metro was wildly successful and featured positively in the LA Times and LA Weekly. Jamie Benson evolved this work from a series of vignettes to a 30 minute performative installation called Mass Transit. Mass Transit was commissioned for the Bootleg Theater's 1st Annual Dance Festival in 2011, again scoring Benson positive press from the LA Times, LA Weekly and Good Magazine.
Jamie Benson also contributed choreography to the West Hollywood revival of Mart Crowley's gay anthem play, The Boys in the Band, at the Coast Playhouse. He later became the choreographer for filmmaker Jesse Schoem's short film United and the Fatelink web series Dumbass Filmmakers.
Upon moving to New York, his vignette Bowel Movement was a hit of the 2012 Comedy in Dance Festival at Triskelion Arts in Brooklyn. This audacious work was also featured in the Phaidon Press book Wild Art. That year Benson lead over 600 dancers from New York, Oregon, and South Korea in Slyvain Emard’s massive international line dance event Le Grand Continental.
In 2013, Benson received a residency from the Joyce Theater to found the Shakedown Dance Collective for dancers of all sizes and experience levels. The short film he created with the group, 3 Day Weekend, was an official selection for the 2014 Cinedans Film Festival. The group has also performed for Dixon Place, New York Dance Parade, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s River to River Festival and Ecstatic Music Festival and Park Avenue Armory.
In April of 2014, Benson performed his orgasm-themed work Babs' Favorite Sound at Triskelion's 5th Annual Comedy Festival and adapted a Go Metro vignette called Party To-Go for the New York Transit Museum's inaugural presentation of Platform. These works were favorably featured in the Dance Enthusiast and New York Times.
Funded by the Brooklyn Arts Council and commissioned by the New York Transit Museum in 2015, Jamie Benson presented the Shakedown in Third Rail, a 20 minute performance piece inspired by crowdsourced subway stories from NYC residents. The work was a resounding success, being featured on NY1 News, Brooklyn 12 News, Dance Spirit Magazine and more.
Benson’s short film First Thing was also accepted into the 2015 Athens Video Dance Project, Cuba's Video Danza Havana, Bucharest International Dance Film Festival, and the 2016 Salamanca Moves. Later that year, Benson was invited to compete in So You Think You Can Choreograph at Proctor's Theatre. Through the creation of entertaining art, Jamie Benson continues to defy performance traditions in order to affirm a variety of dance forms to a mass audience.
DANCE INSTRUCTOR
Benson was the dance instructor and choreographer for the Washington State University Dance Squad while conducting dozens of Dance Camps across the Northwest with Dance Tec. In Los Angeles, Jamie Benson instructed at Gold's Gym Hollywood, Fancy Feet Studio, the Pasadena Academy of Dance and for an after-school program at Los Feliz Elementary. In New York, he has taught an "Action Heroes" class at Spoke the Hub, led hundreds of dancers in the international line dance event Le Grand Continental and co-founded the Shakedown Dance Collective for people of all shapes, ages, and creeds.
Dance Student Testimonials
“He’s a one of a kind instructor. If we ever live in the same town again, I am pre-booking my classes with him! Maybe one class everyday even to compensate for the withdrawal!”