Auburn Correctional Facility

Jumay Chu

Jumay Chu was a member of the Viola Farber Dance Company and the Lucinda Childs Dance Company in NYC and of the François Verret Compagnie 1B in Paris, touring the United States and Europe.

She began her training in modern dance at UC Berkeley and trained professionally in NYC at the Merce Cunningham Studio and the Viola Farber School. In the mid-70s and 80s, Jumay taught on the faculty at the Farber School and as a visiting instructor at the Centre National de la Danse in Paris and at the Centre National de Danse Contemporaine in Angers. In 1989 she joined the faculty of the Department of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University, where she taught the practice of modern dance and seminars in critical dance studies. Each year she choreographed dances with her students to perform at Cornell’s Schwartz Center. For her final research project, “Crossing Borders: Dance and the Politics of Migration,” she traveled to China and to Palestine. Jumay retired from Cornell in January 2021. She had been fortunate to attend several productions of the Phoenix Players Theatre Group, and she is thrilled to be invited to rehearsals as a facilitator. It is the privilege of a lifetime to be among such inspired and inspiring writers and performers.