A COLE JAZZ DANCE COMPANY styled after Jack Cole's original collective of dancers that performed in his nightclub acts and Hollywood film work. Building upon Cole's dream of forming a true concert Jazz dance troupe, The NEW Jack Cole Dancers train as a company in the Cole Technique and develops new, innovative work in the essence of Cole for immersive, theatrical and concert venues.
"The tide is turning. Or, has it turned? With the arrival of The NEW Jack Cole Dancers, we see a return, for dance and choreography, to form, shapeliness, and stylishness. We see dancers taking measure of the space within; the space between each other; and the space their music lays down in hot syncopation. As part of a receptive audience at the 2025 Jazz Dance Conference West in Los Angeles, I watched the six-member troupe set the stage on fire in Cam Loeser’s “Club Act: Sing Sing Sing,” created in the style of the great Jack Cole. Try though I did to remain cool and removed, I clapped my hands raw, I shouted my head off. It’s that exhilarating."
- Debra Levine
​
​Author, “Jazzed: Jack Cole and Twentieth Century American Dance" published by the University Press of Kentucky, early fall 2026
Beginning in the 1930s, Jack Cole and His Dancers dazzled New York and Chicago nightlife with a new, provocative style of entertainment. Used to cheap performances meant for their drunken peripheral, nightclub patrons were enraptured by Cole’s unique and alluring immersion of cultural dance styles that played with all aspects of dance - rhythm, tempo, levels, patterns - filled with knee slides, drops, hinges, backflips, rhythmic footwork and high-energy partnering. These nuanced, 'high art' experiences pushed the boundaries of how commercial dance translated to the masses. Who wouldn't have been captivated by this majestic work, viewed up close for cheap with a drink in hand?
​
The first seed of this phenomenon was seen at the Embassy Club in NYC, where Cole set Indian Classical Dancing to modern Swing Music of the era. Cole and his dancers were the first to put Benny Goodman's iconic ‘Sing Sing Sing’ on the map, an exultant big-band hit that would later be most recognized from Bob Fosse’s choreography in his Broadway show, Dancin'. Fosse’s own wife and muse, Gwen Verdon, began her career assisting and dancing for Jack Cole. Vernon could be seen swinging and grooving in Cole’s nightclub acts and films years before meeting her Bob Fosse and becoming a Broadway legend in her own rite.
​
Jack Cole believed in the power of discipline and unity. While Cole’s work continued to thrill nightlife audiences for three decades, his dancers also demonstrated his dynamic style on film. In the 1940s, Harry Cohn, president of Columbia Studios, granted Cole his one demand for signing onto the studio as a resident choreographer: his own, in-house nucleus of dancers trained and versed in his style to be utilized in his films. Cole is, to this day, the only person to have ever had an actively training dance company within a major picture studio. His dancers are immortalized in iconic films such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, On The Riviera, Kismet, and more.
THEN
NOW
The NEW Jack Cole Dancers revive this dynamic, mesmerizing style iconized by Cole's original troupe, bringing high-caliber Theater and Jazz Dancing to a variety of spaces and venues - immersive clubs, cabaret bars, and concert and proscenium stages.
​
The Company, made up of artists from Broadway, Alvin Ailey, Twyla Tharp, and more, reflects Cole's insular approach by training in the Cole Technique and the cultural dances that influence it. Using this integrative method, Cam Loeser develops and sets new work in the spirit of Cole on the Company. Emphasizing diversity and a gender-fluid approach to casting, The NEW Jack Cole Dancers simultaneously bring this work into the 21st Century while maintaining the nostalgia of the timeless age of classic Jazz Dance.
