Pat Taylor | Photo by Joe Lambie

Pat Taylor is a fourth generation Angeleno, and the founding Artistic Director of JazzAntiqua Dance & Music Ensemble. Although raised in a household where jazz served as the musical backdrop to daily life, it was while she was teaching, performing and choreographing throughout Europe for seven years, experiencing first hand the world’s love and respect for our jazz tradition, that she made her personal commitment to a rooted exploration of the jazz aesthetic through movement.

An ardent advocate and facilitator of community arts programming, Taylor traces this passion to both her early dance training through local parks and recreation programs and to growing up during the Black Arts Movement in Los Angeles. As a teen she studied and performed with the Dunham based R’Wanda Lewis Afro-American Dance Company, followed by a dance scholarship at Inner City Cultural Center (one of the nation’s first multi-cultural arts center) where she eventually also taught Dunham Technique, and was a full merit scholarship student and TA at the Ailey School.

Taylor is the recipient of several recognitions including: a Brody Arts Fund Choreography Fellowship; project grant awards from Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Black Art Futures Fund, The Center for Cultural Innovation, Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, California Humanities, and Francis E. Williams Artists Grant; and finalist awards from the Leo’s Choreography Competition for the Jazz Dance World Congress, and the Palm Desert Choreography Festival.

Her choreography has been presented at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Hollywood Bowl (Playboy Jazz Festivals), California African American Museum, Glashuset (Sweden), CIAEI Theater (Brazil), The Jazz Bakery, Irvine Barclay Theater, Minneapolis’ Southern Theater, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, among other distinguished venues.

A frequent artist in residence, Taylor has created work for Loyola Marymount University, Meadows School of the Arts/Southern Methodist University, Peabody Conservatory/Johns Hopkins University, Rhythmically Speaking Dance, Salve Regina University, University of Idaho, Irvine Valley College, Pasadena and Santa Monica Colleges, and the International Congress of Jazz Dance.

Taylor holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts (jazz aesthetics emphasis) from Goddard College. She is honored to be a contributing author – “The Duality of the Black Experience as Jazz Language,” for Rooted Jazz Dance: Africanist Aesthetics and Equity in the Twenty-First Century (University Press of Florida, 2022).