Meet your neighbors: Jan Tievsky, the dancer in our midst

Visual artists, architects, photographers, writers, musicians and a conductor call Forest Hills home. The neighborhood has also captured a dance professional, Jan Tievsky.

A professional dancer and instructor, Tievsky started a dance program at Glen Echo Park in 1976. She came to Glen Echo from Los Angeles, where she got her degree in performing arts and teaching. There, Tievsky says, she taught some “very talented teenagers including Michael Jackson.” Her first project at Glen Echo was a choreography collaboration with painter Nan Gressman. This evolved into teaching dance classes, which morphed into the Glen Echo Dance Theater. Tievsky further elaborates:

“Within two years, we became the resident dance program at Glen Echo Park. Glen Echo Dance Theater was a major center for dance in the Washington metro area for more than 25 years and served many residents of the upper NW neighborhood. In addition to my company and apprentice company, the studio was home to numerous companies and choreographers, including Pola Nirenska and Liz Lerman.”

In 1990, Tievsky left Glen Echo to set up the dance program at Georgetown Day School, and in 1998 started working with the internationally recognized Dana Tai Soon Burgess Dance Company. She is now the vice president of the company’s board of directors.

Tievsky has also performed with the Pola Nirenska Dancers at Kennedy Center, Sharon Wyrrick and Dancers in New York City and was an artist-in-residence at ArtPark, the performing arts park of New York.

Now, she is returning to Glen Echo Park. Starting in early September, Dana Tai Soon Burgess Dance Company will run a new dance program at Glen Echo Park, with dance classes held in the newly renovated Hall of Mirrors dance studio, and Tievsky will be the studio manager. The teaching staff will include dancers from DTSBDC. Dance classes, including a series of drop-in classes on September 6, 7 and 8, will be offered to teens and adults in styles including contemporary/modern, hiphop, Bollywood, stretch and improvisation, and ballet.

The company will also be holding an open rehearsal that is free to the public at the Hall of Mirrors Dance Studio at Glen Echo Park. The event will be on Saturday, September 3rd from 12 to 1 p.m.

Register for classes through the Glen Echo Park website.You can also email Jan Tievsky with any questions about classes.