Who are the NOLA Chorus Girls?
The NOLA Chorus Girls are a New Orleans based dance group inspired by female dancers of the jazz age. We teach and perform original choreographies to New Orleans music.
No auditions required! Anyone can join!
The NOLA Chorus Girls was founded in 2011 and has seen more than 200 women pass through its doors since its inception.
OUR MISSION
Our mission is to bring together New Orleans women interested in; jazz, blues, swing, history, vintage style, and those inspired by the spirit and aesthetics of early 20th century chorus lines, as well as iconic jazz dancers of both stage and screen. To create a deeper connection to our community, we do all our original choreographies to music by New Orleans artists.
WHO CAN JOIN?
This group is for adults of all ages, races, sizes, shapes, and ability levels. From 18 to 80+, from total beginners to super advanced, literally anyone can do it. No auditions required. You just gotta sign up!
(Teens are also welcome to sign up with a parent/guardian also participating.)
CLASSES
In person classes at The New Orleans Jazz Museum & The Contemporary Arts Center available now!
More info here: https://nolachorusgirlsjanfeb.dancecamps.org/booking.php
Can't take our classes in person?
We have an online option!
More info here: https://nolachorusgirlsonlinejan2022.dancecamps.org/booking.php
Questions? Email anytime! Nolachorusgirls@gmail.com
PERFORMANCES
Performances coming soon!
BOOK US!
We enliven parties, events, balls, openings and festivals!
We perform routines, get your party started, create ambiance, can swing dance and charleston like nobody's business, and can offer any style jazz and swing dance era dance lessons!
Ask us about our swing dancers and jazz bands!
Join Us!
Ever wish you were a dancing girl in one of those fabulous 1930's MGM movie musical numbers or a flapper in a 1920's speakeasy? Yeah?! Us TOO!
Live out your dancing girl fantasies with The Chorus Girl Project! Become a NOLA Chorus Girl! New Orleans women of all ages and ability levels welcome to participate! Beginners to dancing and performing welcome!
For more information please email us at nolachorusgirls@gmail.com, or sign up for our email list!
Directors
Instructing, Art Direction, Choreography, Costume Design, History,
Cheerleading, Cat Herding, ETC…
AMY JOHNSON
Amy Johnson is a traditional jazz & swing dance performer, teacher, producer, and creative director of music and dance-related projects. She is most known as the creator of the groundbreaking lindy hop competition, The Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown as well as The New Orleans Swing Dance Festival.
Amy has travelled extensively winning major Lindy Hop competitions in the early 2000's before relocating to her current home, New Orleans where she has lived for 15 years. She has performed multiple tour runs in the United States and Europe with Meschiya Lake and the Lil Big Horns, has taught and performed at Lincoln Center's Midsummer Night's Swing, The Emmy Awards Governor's Ball, The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, has been featured on television programs, commercials, movies, and has been in countless music videos for local jazz and blues artists. Her performances alongside the traditional jazz band, Loose Marbles, is often cited as the predominant force behind New Orleans' post-Katrina jazz revival.
Amy's genre-based fame has inspired countless new people to discover the joys of swing dancing, and with the re-location of The Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown to New Orleans, she helped introduce New Orleans music to swing dancers world-wide. Amy has been influential in putting New Orleans on the map as a major swing dance destination, and was honored as one of Gambit's 40 under 40 in 2013.
LAURA MANNING
For nearly two decades Laura Manning has been a performer, choreographer, and instructor of early jazz and swing-era dances, with a speciality in directing: dancers, troupes, events, shows.
As an instructor, Laura facilitates technically-proficient dancing while guiding students to rely on their own tastes and choices to help them stand out from the crowd. She brings her patient disposition, love and deep knowledge of dance history, unique insight from years of full-time practical work in a city world-reknown for its vintage music, and her desire to share what she has learned directing, choreographing, and working with musicians to every class she teaches.
In addition to leading the all-ages NOLA Chorus Girls, Laura manages MindSteppers, a partner dance initiative aimed at the younger set of the city. The program trains school staff how to dance so that they may then teach their entire student body indefinitely without needing to pay for outside, specialist instructors. One of the program's results is the annual MindSteppers Dance Championship, where hundreds of New Orleans school children compete in partner and ballroom dances, free for students and their families.
THE DYNAMIC DUO
In addition to founding the NOLA Chorus Girls in 2011, Amy and Laura have, over the past decade, produced and directed, respectively, several theatrical, jazz music and dance productions throughout the greater New Orleans area. These include full length productions for The New Orleans Fringe Festival, complete festival direction of NOLA Girl Jam, programming for The New Orleans Jazz Park (Satchmo and French Quarter Fest), participation in New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, The French Market's Creole Tomato Festival - with our very own Chorus Girl 'Creole Tomato Cabaret' - and the twelve month run of The Old New Orleans Lil Big Vaudeville Variety Show, where they became friends and colleagues.
Contact us!
Interested in joining our next session or just want some more information? Send us an email at nolachorusgirls@gmail.com, or use this handy form!
