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Words cannot express how much Ms. Sinclair meant to me and so many of her students. I would not be where I am today without the many life lessons she taught me, including how to manage and express my emotions through art and dance, discipline, patience, and most importantly treating everyone with kindness even when they may not do the same for you. I am so grateful that I had the chance to be taught and mentored by a truly remarkable woman - Ms. Sinclair.

- Amber Dawkins ‘97

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I just resurrected this film I made 52 years ago. The portion featuring Jessie’s dance program starts at 14:00.

—Jeffry Steele (C ‘72)

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Went back through my negative notebooks...

A joyful day.

WAP John C'70

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Such a wonderful artist and teacher!!! I really enjoyed Jesse Sinclair's classes. We loved and trusted her.

When we returned to school in the fall of 1967, Jesse Sinclair invited us to witness the devastation of the 12th Street Riot in Detroit. We took a school bus from Kingswood into the city to see many of the 400 burned buildings in Black neighborhoods following the five days of conflict between Black citizens and the Detroit Police Department. I have always remembered her and felt grateful to her for offering this direct visceral experience and key awareness. Much discussion ensued. These days, you can hear Gordon Lightfoot's song Black Day in July on youtube. It was banned on American radio stations for 30 years.

Andrea Callard (1968)

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I'm so upset that I won't be able to take part in this special tribute to Jessie Sinclair. She really was one of a kind. The Procession is so ingrained in my DNA that I wouldn't need rehearsal to perform it today over twenty years later. So many of us walked into our first dance class with Ms. Sinclair with our ballet foundation but she wanted something more organic and free. Having her as my dance instructor for four years gave me a different appreciation for dance and what my body could do as a dancer. I appreciated her in life and honor her memory as a teacher, woman and dancer!

Tia Walker '92

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Photographed by Fred Olds

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This is a picture taken at my house, after the Spring concert of 1982, I think (either that or the Winter, ‘81 concert). I am nestled in between Scott Byrd and John Burger on the lefthand couch, with John Ziegelman on our laps. Other Performance folks present are Jimmie Westbrooks, Mindy Smith, Ayumi, Alison Goodwin, Eric Selinger, Steve Googasian and Karen Fisher. Kina Cline is next to John. I am afraid I don’t remember many of the younger kids pictured, though I am sure I loved them at the time! And of course there’s radiant Jessie, at the apex of the pile, as if holding us. It really shows how connected we were, and the fun we had. I feel like we were always piled up or draped over each other in some way or another. So many memories…Dances set to Phil Collins’s “Hand in Hand,” Meredith Monk ( “…I still have my gold ring! Bee-u-tee-ful, I looove it!”), “…Fiiiive corrrrrpulent porrrrrpoises,” Tight End’s “Beep! Beep!” (— we thought the lyric “Hydrophilic” was “Hide Your Feelings”!), each of us treated as collaborators by Jessie, not just students. We did not always make things easy for her. And Jessie just loved us anyway.

Do any Performance ‘81-‘82 folks out there remember the time, at a very early morning rehearsal, when Jessie walked into the studio without a word and scribbled “Please please for coffee” on a piece of paper and handed it to one of us?! We continued to joke about that for a long time.

My family kept in touch with Jessie, and I was lucky to have enjoyed a long chat with her in the year before she died. I had read Twyla Tharp’s book, Keep It Moving, and wanted to share it with Jessie. She told me to make sure to dance, even just a little, even if not obviously, every day of my life. And so I do. Thank you for everything Jess-i-ca.

Libby Cunningham, KSC ‘82

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Jessie was demanding, funny, visionary, dedicated, inclusive, and kind. She had the amazing talent of creating choreography and costuming that made amateurs look like professionals; performances that left audiences feeling elevated, thoughtful, and inspired; and experiences that helped her students find their centers, arming them for the challenges of life. Her art built bridges across Cranbrook, throughout Detroit, and around the world. I miss you Jess. My husband and I are dancing in our kitchen in your honor!

Diana "Bug" Lawrence, K'75

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Cranbrook and Jessie Sinclair saved my life. But mostly Jessie. She allowed me (encouraged me!) to wear purple pants with turquoise leg warmers. She recognized and cultivated an off-beat kindred spirit with a passion for art and performance and weirdness and fun. I have never forgotten her. This is me on the left, John Burger (C '83) with a junior or sophomore dancer. Amy Kelly, I believe. She gave me freedom. I am forever grateful. Rest in power, great lady!

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It’s hard for me to imagine how my love for Kingswood would have been different without Jessie. Always positive, just somehow lesser. As a boarder arriving from a small town in the 10th grade, Kingswood was inspiring but also intimidating. To my good fortune (and that of countless other students), Jessie took me under her wing., invited me into her home, spoke with me as a peer, and made me a part of her close-knit performing dance group. I never had the lithe, long body of a dancer, but I had the heart. Jessie helped me find the self-confidence I needed to thrive at Kingswood and beyond. She literally taught me to “fly” – but equally importantly she helped me understand that I didn’t need help to do so – that everything I needed was already inside me. Thank you Jessie.

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Rehearsal at the Ballet Gulbenkian studios

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When I arrived at Kingswood I had no idea how important the Dance course with Jessie would turn out to be. My first experience with Modern Dance after years of ballet classes. The classes, performances and "tours" the Dance group did were an important experience of my AFS year, and a decisive addition to my choice of career. The fabulous Tour that the Jessie Sinclair dancers of 1975 did in Portugal, together with us students of the Lisbon Dance Conservatoire, is still in the memory of those who participated. I joined Ballet Gulbenkian, the major dance company in Portugal, in 1975/6, and as the company became more and more contemporary, memories of Jessie and her amazing qualities as a teacher, and as a person, kept returning. She was fundamental in my decision to embrace dance as my career and I will always remember her fondly.

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1983 was the year Jessie changed my view of dance. 

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1983 was the year Jessie changed my view of dance. 

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I arrived at Kingswood and Jessie's studio as a battered refuge from the elite ballet world. I would drive her crazy asking, "so is this a pointed or flexed foot, is that 45 degrees or 90?" Eventually I came to understand and see how well she was able to put together beautiful movement pieces with her collaboration with the Art Academy students and the dance students from CK. I learned about improvisation and just so much about art. When I started in college I was an art major, but also finished a BFA in dance. Later, I danced with a professional modern company in NY and ended up being a physical therapist for dancers working with amazing dance companies. In fact, my office resembles a dance studio a lot more than a clinic. After a lifetime in dance, I can say that Jessie was the one that turned dance and art around for me. Without her I think I probably would have turned my back on dance for the rest of my life. Thank you Jessie! - Kendall Alway (K'84)

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Miss Sinclair, as I have always thought of her, allowed me to explore dance in a new way. She gave me an outlet for the creative energy in my body and I am exceptionally grateful for that. But she was more than a dance teacher to me. As I think of her now, what keeps coming up is how she responded in a time a grief, when one of her dance students and my good friend, Andres, died. We were both grieving in our own way and she opened her home to me and let me stay there sometimes (I was a boarding student) - just so we could be in each other's company. There was nothing expected of me, we didn't even have to talk. And the next day in class, we could dance.

-Laura Alport, class of '93

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Jessi was a bright light, kind and gentle, though she could be fierce in her commitment to teaching the joys of motion and creativity.

I can’t remember when I had my first dance class with Jessi, but she was an inspiration and a keen supporter of my love of dance from the first moments in her class. She was part of my growing passion for the artform, the creative potential of choreography that became the focus of my education and career following graduation from Kingswood in 1966. She contributed to my belief that I could make a life and career in dance, in spite of the headwinds from many quarters, including my parents. She encouraged the path I chose, and helped me choose a college that would allow me to follow my dream.

Amy Zell Ellsworth - 1966

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Jesse Sinclair front and center next to Rick Shem

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(Reggie (Jaguar) to R; Doug Balchan... to L. ; scrambled order: Doug Thomas, Elyse Pivnick, Susan Gratch, Hollis Booth, Liz Hilder, Pam Mullen, Camille Majzoub, Betsy Wolf, Sally McIntyre, Mary Matthei, Camille Wilson

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Make a gift to the Sinclair Geroux Legacy Fund

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Make a gift to the Sinclair Geroux Legacy Fund

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The Jessica Sinclair and Charles Geroux Legacy Fund for the Arts

Honoring Two Legends:

The goal is for this fund o be permanently endowed by Reunion 2024 in June. Click here for more information: https://schools.cranbrook.edu/giving/the-sinclair-and-geroux-legacy-fund

This fund will serve to enhance our performing arts programs at Cranbrook Schools, engaging students with accomplished actors, musicians, and dancers from a wide range of disciplines. Allowing artists to perform, share, teach and interact with students will enrich and strengthen all of the arts programs at the schools and expose students to innovative work and groundbreaking formats.

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Martha Graham once said of Ruth St. Denis, "she opened a door, and I walked into a life."  I had danced my whole life before walking into Ms. Sinclair's studio, but she was the one who taught me what it meant to be a dancer.  She taught me to use dance as artistic expression, to collaborate with other dancers and art forms, and to find my own voice within my movement.

I remember my first day in her Dance III class..  This would have been fall of 1991.  She gathered us together and began class with an image; we were to picture our bodies as a gate.  A gate?  I could fouetté, and penché. I could do jazz walks and split leaps. I could even do a double pirouette and land in the splits, but how the heck was I supposed to be a gate?  I stood opening and closing my arms, thinking, “No way am I a gate.”  The other students, mostly upperclassmen, began moving in and around each other.  They crawled under legs, pushed arms, leaned and twisted, touched and swayed, and somehow before my eyes, became a mass of movement turning itself inside out, and around and through itself.  They became, a gate.

Ms. Sinclair never taught us movement, she pulled it from us with improvisation, and I embraced it.  Sometimes it was a phrase, or some spoken words like “sparkling sequins swirling on my face” that gave us as an impetus to our own dance, but I lived for the warm days when we would go outside and let the sculptures and fountains on campus inspire our movement.  Refusing to see the other dancers, or the gawking students who walked by, I would close my eyes and dance, my own movement, like coming home.

I left Cranbrook to major in dance, earn my MFA in Dance, and am now a Professor of Dance and Director of the Dance Program at Western Michigan University.  Dance is an art form that is handed down one body to another, an oral tradition - the dances of our teachers live on in our bodies and are passed to the next generation of dancers.

Ms. Sinclair's legacy of dance lives within us, her students, and in those we dance with.  I am forever grateful for all she taught me.

Megan Slayter Jubenville, class of 1995
aka - the girl in the metal dress.

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Susan Loveland in a costume designed by Nick Cave, 1989. Copyright Fred Olds/Courtesy Cranbrook Archives.

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In 1989, photographer Fred Olds traveled with Sinclair and her dancers to the former Soviet Union to perform at the Children’s Palace in Moscow, the Choreographic Institute in Tblisi, and at the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory State Theatre in St. Petersburg. Olds remembers that the peak of applause at this concert came for a dancer in a 16-foot-tall dress designed by artist, Nick Cave (CAA ’89).

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Dancers perform at the David Whitney Building in Detroit, 1985. Copyright Fred Olds/Courtesy Cranbrook Archives.

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Creativity and Experimentation: A Snapshot of the Dance Department - Cranbrook Kitchen Sink

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Creativity and Experimentation: A Snapshot of the Dance Department - Cranbrook Kitchen Sink

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A new collection that documents two decades of the Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School Dance Department is now open for research. The materials were donated to the Archives by the former Director of the Dance Department, Jessica Sinclair, and photographer Fred Olds.

Sinclair started teaching modern dance as part of Kingswood School’s physical education program in 1963. During her tenure, the program flourished, and Dance became its own department. Students performed throughout the year at the Performing Arts Winter Festival, the annual Evening of Dance concerts, and at events such as the Guy Fawkes Ball at Cranbrook Academy of Art (CAA).

In 1982, Sinclair invited Fred Olds to photograph her dancers in collaboration with a fiber installation by Gerhardt Knodel, who was Head of the Fiber Department at CAA at that time. This event led to a twenty-year collaboration between Olds and Sinclair. Olds photographed students in performance, in the studio, and at local and international events.

Between 1982 and 2002, the Dance department performed in Chicago, Toronto, and at the David Whitney Building in Detroit, where Sinclair choreographed “Dance in 4 Spaces,” with a grant awarded by the Michigan Council for the Arts. In 1989, Olds traveled with Sinclair and her dancers to the former Soviet Union to perform at the Children’s Palace in Moscow, the Choreographic Institute in Tblisi, and at the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory State Theatre in St. Petersburg. Olds remembers that the peak of applause at this concert came for a dancer in a 16-foot-tall dress designed by artist, Nick Cave (CAA ’89).

Throughout the years, Sinclair collaborated with a diverse group of fiber artists, sculptors, and architects to infuse creativity and experimentation into her work. The archival collection reflects this process in photographs, ephemera, and video.

– Gina Tecos, Archivist

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Chris Kjolhede, Joel Kramer, John Cwiakala, Mike Hawkins

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Photo from Chris Kjolhede. It took him less than an hour to put his hands on it.

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I was privileged to know Jessie when I was 14 and 15 years old, now 42 years ago. Last week I was thinking of her and after a quick search, I learned of her recent passing. What a loss! She taught us to walk like we were floating  in water to Phil Collins, "In the Air Tonight." She taught us that natural talent is nice, but passion and hard work are the ingredients needed for success. I went on to dance for many years, but no other teacher was as memorable and loved as she.  I know that she is now dancing her most beautiful and freeing dance yet! Thank you, Jessie, for giving us heart and soul.
Stacey McDonald class of 1984

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Jessie convinced me to join her dance troop while on the Cranbrook faculty.  Such sweet memories!  I departed Cranbrook for a teaching position in Caracas,Venezuela in 1975. We communicated about the possibility of visiting Escuela Campo Alegre with her dancers.  We pulled it off with assistance from the US Embassy. The group performed at ECA and around other inside and outside venues.  My job was to handle sound and lighting.  What a wonderful human being and my appreciation for dance was nurtured by her.

Tom Canfield

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I had the opportunity to dance for Jessie Sinclair on several occasions.  What great fun! Not sure what compelled me to dance in a Speedo with a number of my classmates, see attached photo. Jessie had choreographed some type of war party dance that I and a couple of my football team mates and others danced in. What was she/we thinking? If nothing else I learned to have the confidence to make a fool of myself and take chances. Thank you Jessie, with love Neal 75’

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Rest in peace, Miss Sinclair.

The way I teach drama has everything to do with the way you taught me dance.  Our art is a response - a response to world events, to our physical environment, to our own hearts.  Celebrating beauty, exploring pain, and diving into the intersection of the two.

I always looked forward to our advisories, drinking tea in fancy cups at Stony House.  Thank you for trusting me to take care of MissCat and letting me play house in your sweet cottage full of art and clothes which were all so YOU! High school catapulted me into myself and I credit you as an example of how to lean into one’s authenticity and one’s passions.

Thank you for being a trusted adult during my freshman year when I felt like a fish out of water.  Thank you for supporting me during my parents’ divorce.  You were magical fairy dust and a bedrock all at the same time and I still want to be you when I grow up.

Katie Banks McBride, '99

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She taught us how to do The Hustle in ‘77 when I was in 11th grade -  that’s a lesson that keeps on giving.   Thank you Jessie! Susan Albrecht ‘78

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For six Cranbrook young men of the late ‘60s, Jessie allowed us, prodded us, inspired us to move our bodies to rhythm and music in ways that were so liberating even in that time. I see you, feel you in the wind in the trees, the waves on the beach. Thanks!
Chris Kjolhede, ‘68

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Remembering Ms. Sinclair is like remembering a significant part of myself.  She was such a remarkable lady, one that inspired confidence and vision in all movement.  The extraordinary freedom she was able to instill in her dancers was a gift in itself.   I was very seriously pursuing a career in ballet and modern dance challenged me to find another part of myself.  Jessica managed to take my understanding of rules in dance and turn them into a foundation for expansive creativity.  I was always inspired by her and she will be greatly missed.
-Noelle Y. Doner, ‘96

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I was a sports guy, certainly no dancer, but Jessica Sinclair made her mark on both sides of the lake.  She made dancing a main event.

Rod Fonda, C ‘69

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An honor, privilege and pleasure to learn and work with "Jessie"

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An honor, privilege and pleasure to learn and work with "Jessie"

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I was blessed with the opportunity to design the lighting for the dance class annual performance creating alongside of Jessie (as she told me to call her) from 1983-86.  While knowing what she was looking for she gave me the opportunity to be creative and play with various looks and ideas.  She would often say, come up with something you love.....just make it and the dancers look great.   An honor to have had that opportunity.
Wade Jackson ('86)

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PAD in the surrey for the production of "Oklahoma"  with Sarkis, Janet, Fred, Jessica, Katie and Chuck.  

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Such wonderful memories working with these incredible faculty members!

Posted by Katie Lorts

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Beautiful tribute.
AB

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Watch dancers from across the decades perform a tribute to Jessie

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Watch dancers from across the decades perform a tribute to Jessie

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In celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Strickland Dance awards, past winners of the award for original choreography share moments that prove to us that nothing can stop us from dancing on. These moments were inspired by longtime dance instructor Jessie Sinclair, with gratitude to current dance instructor Kay Rediers and award sponsor David Strickland '72. With original music "Daybreak" by faculty member Jim Gabriel. Featuring Strickland award alumni Mary Baron '10, Lauren Robuck '20, Kali Hightower '20, Ryan Plecha '10, Luke Koski '20, Julia Feord '17, Anne Littman '02, Kamaria Washington '13, Laine Chan '14, Katherine Banks McBride '99, Jill Foronda '85, Helayne Schiff '81, Shelly Tang '12, Megan Slayter '95, Gabriel Forestieri '95

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Forty Years On - Strickland Dance Award Alumni Keep Dancing

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Jessie (center) with Performing Dance group

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Jessie brandishes her sword outside the studio, 1970

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Jessie with dancers

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Longtime dance instructor Jessie Sinclair with dancers

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Dance Repertory Group, 1968

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Jessie Sinclair and the dance repertory group 1968 woodwinds

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Debbie Rutzen, Jessie Sinclair, Claudia Schuette and JoJo Macey

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Evening of Dance

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jessie sinclair dance article 99 crane clarion-001

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In the studio, 1968

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Jessie's dancers travel to the Soviet Union

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With Mrs. Houston, Mrs. Morse and Miss Houser in 1968

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jessie sinclair with mrs houston morse houser 1968 woodwinds 