Jan Erkert is a dancer, choreographer, and educator. She moved to Chicago to dance with Shirley Mordine & Company and formed her own company, Jan Erkert and Dancers, in 1979, for which she choreographed over 70 works. Erkert served as a professor of dance at Columbia College Chicago from 1990 to 2006. She has been the head of the Department of Dance at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign since 2008.
March 11, 2019: Jan Erkert talks to CDHP from her office at the University of Illinois about her early years of dance study, how she ended up in Chicago after college, and her career there as a dancer and choreographer.
June 05, 2019: As a follow up to her previous interview, Erkert speaks more extensively about directing a dance company and a university dance department. She describes different approaches to choreography using past works as examples and discusses the role writing has played in her career.