DEL Lab Schools Feature: Jennie Miller
We’re spotlighting our 2025 DEL Lab Schools recipients. Join us in celebrating Jennie Miller!
Jennie Miller teaches PreK-5 at Public School 3 in Greenwich Village. For the past 23 years she has run the dance program created there by Joan Sax, added a second dance teacher, Samantha Chan, and infused the school with dance performances, classes, dance clubs, and a dance-a-thon for Safe Passage in Guatemala.
It is a school where everyone dances.
P.S. 3 site-specific dance company, Dance Adventure
At P.S. 3, the focus on dance making, even for the smallest dancers as well as the progressive, arts infused collaborations with classroom teachers makes the job full of joy for her and the children.
Jennie’s dancer’s heart has always been in site work. Inspired by Edith Segal and her work at Camp Kinderland as well as her own love of the outdoors, Jennie loves to take kids to dance outside in various sites, often in collaboration with site-specific artists around the city.
The DEL philosophy supports and aligns with site work as we can make a dance anywhere using what we see, hear, touch and learn to create.
In 2012 Jennie created Dance Adventure with her daughter, Lily Rubin-Miller, and Samantha Chan. The goal of this children’s site-specific dance company is to create dance in unexpected places. This company has worked with many artists and dancers to create dances that explore themes of identity, social justice, climate justice, immigration and racism.
Pictured on right: A student of Jennie’s featured in the New York Times, dancing on the High Line.
Jennie studied ballet with Lynda Yourth in San Diego and attended School of American Ballet in New York. She went to Barnard College and Bank Street College, where she earned a Master’s in Education.
In 1994 she began teaching PreK/K at P.S. 3. After a childcare leave to care for her children, Lily and Jake, Jennie returned to P.S. 3 as the dance teacher in 2002. She studied at DEL prior to this.
One vital component of her life and her teaching is social activism. Raised by radical progressive parents in free schools in the 60’s, Jennie has participated in many political action groups such as Take Back the Night, A Day Without Art, Act Up, Barnard Columbia Earth Coalition, Occupy and Planned Parenthood. Focusing on issues of social justice and dance in order to help young people create a social justice consciousness is central to much of her work.
Jennie was the recipient of the Arnhold EdD scholarship in the first cohort at Teacher’s College. Her studies are on pause at the moment. Jennie has also been photographing dance for many decades. She is the staff photographer for Loco-Motion Children’s Dance Theatre as well as being on their board.
Jennie Miller
We asked Jennie to answer the following questions:
1. What is one of the biggest learnings or takeaways that has stuck with you from a DEL Course/Workshop?
The concept that you can make a dance out of anything!
2. How do you apply the DEL Model in your teaching environment? Tell us more about how you use what you’ve learned from DEL in your real life.
I am retiring but will still apply the idea that my heart will lead me.
3. At the center of the DEL Model is the Teacher’s Heart, which represents the core artistic and philosophical values and beliefs of every dance educator.
My first love, my teacher’s heart, has always been site work. It is so perfect for elementary students and middle school students. I have tried to take dancers to experience the world and use what they see, hear, taste, touch and learn to create dances on site. Dance Adventure came out of my love for this crazy, experiential, ridiculously fun way of dancing both in the city and in the country with our summer camp. The philosophy of DEL fits so well into this work.
The DEL Lab School initiative is designed to acknowledge and celebrate dance educators who are bringing the DEL Model to life in their unique teaching contexts.
Photos courtesy of Jennie Miller.