The University of Pennsylvania does not have a dance department. But Penn was still a major catalyst that launched choreographer Jennifer Weber’s career.
Weber, 46, graduated from Penn in 2000 with a degree in communications, and is the choreographer of the Broadway musical & Juliet, which is coming to the Academy of Music March 25 to April 6. The jukebox musical that considers what would’ve happened if Juliet said no to Romeo and lived out her life from there, is on a national tour afters its Broadway success.
Weber’s, however, was an unlikely success.
“I definitely started dancing when I was a kid by watching music videos on television and watching shows that had dance,” she said. She would record performances from the Tonys to teach herself choreography but when she started taking some dance classes, she ended up being “that kid in the back line of the dance recital.”
“So in my freshman year at Penn, I auditioned for all the dance companies that were on campus, and I was famously rejected by all of them,” she said. But rather than leave her dejected, it fired her up.
She started her own company on campus — Strictly Funk, which still exists.
“I literally just hung up fliers around campus, like ‘Strictly Funk is having auditions,’ and just appointed myself director and choreographer of this imaginary company.” That, Weber said, “was the beginning of my career as a director and choreographer.”
Being on a university campus meant she didn’t have to pay for rehearsal space or dancers. During Weber’s junior year, Strictly Funk performed to a sold-out crowd at the Annenberg Center’s Zellerbach Theatre. The company also performed in nightclubs and experimented with immersive art, which Weber continues to create.
“I am much tied to Philadelphia and Penn and those experiences as my formative years,” she said.
After graduation, Weber moved to New York and assumed she could reproduce her Penn success. She quickly learned that everything would be far more expensive and much harder, especially in a pricey city that is a major dance center.
Eventually, she started the all-women hip-hop troupe called Decadancetheatre, which she ran for many years. There she was a one-woman show, doing everything from designing costumes and lighting to accounting and booking flights. Plus, of course, choreograph. Her work blew up when she conceived, directed, and choreographed The Hip-Hop Nutcracker. That show has been touring for 10 years and Disney turned it into a film.
The Hip-Hop Nutcracker got her meetings and introduced her to the world of theater.
Weber’s first two musicals opened on Broadway the same week. KPOP, about the Korean pop-music industry, was short-lived. But & Juliet is going strong, with four companies performing simultaneously: Broadway, the U.S. tour, a United Kingdom tour, and a production in Hamburg, Germany. A fifth one is in the works for Toronto.
But & Juliet is no longer a full-time job for Weber. This year, she opened a show in Japan and has a new version of the ballroom dance movie Take the Lead opening at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, N.J., in April. A new version of the cheerleader musical Bring It On will be opening in St. Louis this summer.
In 2023, & Juliet received nine Tony nominations, and the cast performed the musical’s “Roar” during the awards ceremony. Choreographed to the Katy Perry song, the segment features a “magical costume change” on-stage which is one of the things Weber is most proud of in the show.
Watching that performance, she said, was “wild.”
“Some kid is gonna watch that and start doing the moves. And it’s going to be my choreo.”
& Juliet. March 25-April 6. Academy of Music. $21-$169. 215-893-1999 or ensembleartsphilly.org
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