Jamie Benson revolutionizes how art industries advocate for worthy causes as a marketing & development consultant to artists, organizations & public relations firms. Wielding a bold, irreverent voice, Benson overrides the assumption that marketing is not a creative pastime. He, through strategy & sheer strength of will, has won features in the New York and LA Times, Maxim Magazine, Wall Street Journal, NY1 and Brooklyn 12 News, Good Magazine, Dance Enthusiast, Dance Spirit Magazine, Broadway World, DNAinfo, LA Weekly, LAist, Backstage West, Dance Magazine & more. Jamie Benson has been hired by Pilobolus Dance Theater, CUNY Dance Initiative, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Noel Pointer Foundation, Trent & Company, Kupferberg Arts Center, NYU Tisch & for famed film composer David Newman. Lily Binns, Co-Executive Director of Pilobolus Dance, claims that “for all of the conferences, books, newsletters, blogs, & feeds that all of us follow, Jamie Benson's approach is hands-down the best I've come across.”
As a rebel-clown dancer & choreographer, Jamie defies performances traditions & dares a mass audience to interact with dance. Heralded as "Chaplin-like” by Backstage West, “insightful and irreverent” by the LA Weekly, Benson's highbrow-meets-lowbrow work has been presented through LA & New York, as official selections in international film festivals, featured in the Phaidon Press book Wild Art, and received funding by Brooklyn Arts Council.
Alumnus of Cornish College of the Arts, Benson first garnered critical attention as a dancer who originated the role of “Eldon” in LATC’s Ovation award winning production of Shag with a Twist in 2005. Benson has also performed in the Film Rent, McDonald's Mario Art commercial, Rei Aoo's Dance Planet, on the television series Dance360 & as a member of the Rudy Perez Performance Ensemble.
Jamie Benson's choreographic work aims to defy performance traditions & infect a mass audience. Benson's stuff has been presented at Luckman Fine Arts complex, Electric Lodge, Highways Performance Space, the Bootleg Theater, Coast Playhouse, Dixon Place, New York Transit Museum, Triskelion Arts, Proctor's Theatre, as well as the Phaidon Press book Wild Art. His film 3 Day Weekend was an official selection for the 2014 Cinedans Film Festival & latest film First Thing was selected to be part of the 2015 Athens Video Dance Project, Cuba's Video Danza Havana, Bucharest International Dance Film Festival, & Salamanca Moves in 2016.
Benson was the dance instructor & choreographer for the Washington State University Dance Squad while conducting dozens of Dance Camps across the Northwest with Dance Tec. In Los Angeles Jamie Benson instructed at Gold's Gym Hollywood, Fancy Feet Studio, the Pasadena Academy of Dance & for an after-school program at Los Feliz Elementary. In New York, he has taught an "Action Heroes" class at Spoke the Hub, led over 500 people in the international line dance event Le Grand Continental & co-founded NYC’s Shakedown Dance Collective for people of all shapes, ages, and creeds.
