Joel Hall Dancers Youth Company
Joel Hall Dancers & Center, 4511 N. Clark, Chicago, IL 60640
About
Joel Hall Dancers Youth Company is a pre-professional dance company where young dancers train in Black jazz dance and perform the works of Joel Hall. Company members are selected from the most promising young dancers to study the artistry of Joel Hall and learn the profession of dance. The Youth Company performs the unique and exhilarating works of Joel Hall throughout the region as part of the Joel Hall Dancers, a Chicago-based, internationally renowned Black Jazz dance company that performs a 50-year repertoire of “Urban Jazz.”
Joel Hall Dancers Youth Company is part of Joel Hall Dancers & Center, which for 50+ years has been building spaces of diversity, access, equity, and inclusion since its founding in 1974. The organization highlights and spotlights the Black and Brown and LGBTQIA+ experience and uses Urban Jazz as a social change and joy catalyst. Joel Hall Dancers & Center offers both online and in-person classes in an inclusively accessible space that welcomes diverse backgrounds and experiences, fostering collaboration and growth among all ages and identities.
The Youth Company operates within an organization whose mission is to awaken the dancer in everyone’s soul by providing comprehensive dance education and artistic expression, with a focus on the history and cultural significance of dance and on making dance accessible and affordable. The leadership team includes William Gill as Artistic Director, Joel Hall as Co-Founder and Artistic Director Emeritus, Heather Zimny as Rehearsal Director, Emmanuel Ramirez-Hernandez as Ballet Master, and Moo Vang as Director of the Training Program. William Gill has taught and danced professionally throughout the US and internationally for the past 25 years, danced for the Dallas Black Dance Theatre for 9 seasons, worked with Donald Byrd, Alonzo King, Donald McKayle, and Milton Myers, and has taught and choreographed at multiple Chicago dance organizations and at Roosevelt University as a professor of dance in the Chicago College of Performing Arts.
Joel Hall established and co-founded the Chicago City Theatre Company in 1974, served as Artistic Director and prime choreographer for his dance company, and was Chief Dance Instructor for the training studio, and he was named the 2025 “Dance Champion” by Dance/USA. The organization’s choreography for “In the Shadow of Nina Simone” received the African American Arts Alliance “Black Excellence Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance,” and Dance Magazine has hailed the Joel Hall Dancers as “Jazz Dance at its best.” Joel Hall Dancers & Center has been named one of Chicago’s Cultural Treasures in 2021, is a founding member of the Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project, and is a recipient of the “New Business of the Year Award” from the Edgewater Chamber of Commerce.
Through its First Company, Youth Company, training, and community programs, Joel Hall Dancers & Center has used dance to unite and inspire since 1974 and is one of eight Chicago-based project partners in the Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project, which addresses historical inequities in arts funding by providing financial and operational support to Chicago-based Black dance makers. JHDYC provides accessible excellence in Black jazz dance training for youth throughout Chicagoland.
Last updated April 18, 2026.
Joel Hall Dancers Youth Company is part of Joel Hall Dancers & Center, which for 50+ years has been building spaces of diversity, access, equity, and inclusion since its founding in 1974. The organization highlights and spotlights the Black and Brown and LGBTQIA+ experience and uses Urban Jazz as a social change and joy catalyst. Joel Hall Dancers & Center offers both online and in-person classes in an inclusively accessible space that welcomes diverse backgrounds and experiences, fostering collaboration and growth among all ages and identities.
The Youth Company operates within an organization whose mission is to awaken the dancer in everyone’s soul by providing comprehensive dance education and artistic expression, with a focus on the history and cultural significance of dance and on making dance accessible and affordable. The leadership team includes William Gill as Artistic Director, Joel Hall as Co-Founder and Artistic Director Emeritus, Heather Zimny as Rehearsal Director, Emmanuel Ramirez-Hernandez as Ballet Master, and Moo Vang as Director of the Training Program. William Gill has taught and danced professionally throughout the US and internationally for the past 25 years, danced for the Dallas Black Dance Theatre for 9 seasons, worked with Donald Byrd, Alonzo King, Donald McKayle, and Milton Myers, and has taught and choreographed at multiple Chicago dance organizations and at Roosevelt University as a professor of dance in the Chicago College of Performing Arts.
Joel Hall established and co-founded the Chicago City Theatre Company in 1974, served as Artistic Director and prime choreographer for his dance company, and was Chief Dance Instructor for the training studio, and he was named the 2025 “Dance Champion” by Dance/USA. The organization’s choreography for “In the Shadow of Nina Simone” received the African American Arts Alliance “Black Excellence Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance,” and Dance Magazine has hailed the Joel Hall Dancers as “Jazz Dance at its best.” Joel Hall Dancers & Center has been named one of Chicago’s Cultural Treasures in 2021, is a founding member of the Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project, and is a recipient of the “New Business of the Year Award” from the Edgewater Chamber of Commerce.
Through its First Company, Youth Company, training, and community programs, Joel Hall Dancers & Center has used dance to unite and inspire since 1974 and is one of eight Chicago-based project partners in the Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project, which addresses historical inequities in arts funding by providing financial and operational support to Chicago-based Black dance makers. JHDYC provides accessible excellence in Black jazz dance training for youth throughout Chicagoland.
Last updated April 18, 2026.
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