Jenelle Figgins ’11
Jenelle Figgins is a dancer, teacher, and choreographer from Washington, D.C., with over a decade of experience performing on the world stage, engaging with communities through education and choreographing exciting new work.
Figgins is an inaugural Choreographic Fellow for The Utah Ballet Choreographic Institute for the summer 2024.
In fall 2023, Figgins set her first ballet Spread on the Purchase Dance Company, originally commissioned for our Dance majors at the height of the pandemic in 2021.
“I’m so excited to return to SUNY Purchase and to this work, ‘Spread’, that was created during the Quarantine in 2021. I look forward to revisiting and expanding on the original themes around containment, contamination and liberation.”
She is an alum of Springboard Danse Montreal. Figgins has danced professionally for Collage Dance Collective, Les Grands Ballet des Montreal, Dance Theatre of Harlem and Aspen Santa Fe Ballet.
In the 2014, Figgins was awarded the Princess Grace Award, was named one of Dance Magazine’s Top 25 to Watch in 2015, and ‘Theatre Aspen’ crowned her an Aspen Hero following her work in social justice in 2020.
Figgins has self-produced several art installations in the American Southwest—most recently ‘A(l)lready Ancestors’ solo installation as Skye Gallery in Aspen—and is a promising ballet choreographer.
In 2021 Figgins served as Assistant Choreographer of RENT! at The Signature theatre in DC and in 2022, participated as one of just 11 dancers in The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts “Reframing the Narrative,” a weeklong program to highlight and recognize the extensive contribution of Black voices in ballet, selected for “representing the future of ballet including artistic excellence, advocacy, and aspirations of choreography or leadership.”
In 2024, Figgins premiered D.O.T.S. for Moveius Contemporary Ballet’s Voice From Within program for Atlas Performing Arts Centers’ Intersections Festival in Washington D.C.
Figgins aspires impact on the world through work made to strengthen the life conditions of those who find it.
Jenelle Figgins is the twin sister of Samantha Figgins ’11.