After a liberal arts education at Amherst College and at the University of California at Berkeley, Jenny Coogan studied under the artistic direction of Martha Hill at the Juilliard School in New York City. She was awarded a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Dance from the Juilliard School in 1981. She has done graduate studies in Laban Movement Analysis and Somatics at the University of New York, Brockport USA and received in 2001 certification as a licensed teacher of the Feldenkrais Method ®.
During the past 30 years she has been working in the field of contemporary dance as a dancer, choreographer and educator, as the director of the independent dance group, Coogan Dancers and as a somatic practitioner. Among others, she has worked with Lukas Hoving, Daniel Lewis, Susan Marshall, with the Tanzprojekt München, as well as in the German state theaters of Darmstadt, Freiburg and Nürnberg. Productions of the Coogan Dancers have been presented at festivals including, the Documenta/Kassel, Spring Dance Festival /Utrecht, Tanzwerkstatt Europa /München, Tanz im August/Berlin, Riverside Dance Festival /New York, International Dance Week /Prag, Wiener Festwochen, Tanzplattform Deutschland/Berlin and at the Festival of Contemporary Music in Dresden.
Since 1995 Jenny Coogan has been teaching at the Palucca Hochschule für Tanz in Dresden; since 2004 as Professor for Contemporary Dance. She travels in Europe and in the USA teaching dance, consulting and choreographing at universities and institutions. Her artistic research focuses on the application and integration of somatic practices and organic learning principals as an expressive and functional resource in the art of dance. Presently she is co- director of a BMBF project based on developing and implementing innovative and somatic based teaching and learning strategies in contemporary dance training at the Palucca Hochschule.
As a freelance choreographer she is currently creating community projects with older citizens and enjoys a private practice in the Feldenkrais Method.

Training