John Munger
Guest Artist 2006-07 & 2007-08
John Munger began his formal dance career in the late 1960’s. His mentor, with whom he studied and performed for seven years, was pioneering modern dance legend Hanya Holm who is best known for choreographing the original productions of My Fair Lady, Camelot, and other Broadway musicals. He also studied modern, ballet and jazz with Norman Cornick, who had been a member of Lester Horton’s company along with Alvin Ailey, Bella Lewitzky and others. John performed for several years as a soloist with Cornick’s Colorado Dance Theatre. While in Colorado he also founded the dance program at Fountain Valley School and served as Artistic Director of the Joy of Movement Dance Company.
He moved to Minnesota in 1978, where he became School Director and then General Manager of Nancy Hauser’s Guild of Performing Arts. Since 1984 he has free-lanced as a teacher, performer and choreographer in the Twin Cities, creating over seventy works. His choreography has been recognized with McKnight and Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowships and with numerous commissions. He has appeared at the Walker Art Center, the Ordway McKnight Theater, Northrop Auditorium, Red Eye Collaboration, Macalester’s Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center, Intermedia Arts, Bryant Lake Bowl, O’Shaughnessy Auditorium, The Southern Theater and a variety of other venues. He is a seven-year veteran of the Minnesota Fringe Festival. He has also served as a panelist for choreographers’ fellowships at numerous agencies including the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Minnesota State Arts Board.
John currently teaches modern dance technique at Zenon Dance Company and School and creates new work on his company, the Third Rabbit Dance Ensemble. He also performs character roles such as Drosselmeyer and Dr. Coppelius with Continental Ballet of Bloomington. He pays for groceries and the mortgage by working from his home office as Director of Research and Information for Dance/USA, the Washington-based national service organization for non-profit professional dance. In this capacity he is regularly quoted by the New York Times, Dance Magazine, Dance Spirit Magazine and a variety of other entities seeking data about dance in America. A 1967 graduate of Harvard with an honors degree in English Literature, he is married to dancer/photographer Sharon Varosh and he plays ragtime piano for the fun of it.
