Jennifer McQuiston Lott

Founder/Resident Choreographer

Jennifer Lott is the co-founder and resident choreographer of the Traverse City Dance Project, and in 2025 served as the co-director of the inaugural Northern Michigan Dance Festival. She is an Associate Professor at the USC Kaufman School of Dance and is a licensed teacher of Countertechnique, an innovative, internationally-acclaimed contemporary dance practice. Lott earned her BFA in Ballet Performance from Indiana University, and her MFA in Dance from the University of California, Irvine, where she was awarded a Graduate Fellowship & numerous merit-based scholarships. She is certified in GYROTONIC® and GYROKINESIS® and is an ABT® Certified Teacher in Primary through Level 3 of the ABT® National Training Curriculum. She regularly teaches classes and workshops nationally and internationally. 

Jennifer has danced professionally with Gibney Dance Company, Groundworks Dancetheater, Armitage Gone! Dance, Inlet Dance Theatre, Collective Body Dance Lab, Eglevsky Ballet, and others.  Her choreographic works and short dance films have been presented across the US and internationally. Her many musical collaborators include composer/producer Ryan Lott, composer Andrew Norman, glass harp innovator Jonny Rodgers, cellist/rapper/producer Jordan Hamilton and the chamber ensembles yMusic, Clocks in Motion, & Tenth Intervention. She was a featured performer in the official Son Lux videos Undone(dir. David Terry Fine) and You Don’t Know Me (dir. Nathan Johnson/The Made Shop). Her passion for new music has led her to devise and direct a number of collaborations between students from the USC Kaufman & Thornton Schools, and in 2020, she developed & curated the Traverse City Dance Project's No-Distance Festival, a 5-month series of virtual collaborations & online events involving and raising funds to support over 35 music, video and dance artists worldwide. She devised and curates theTraverse City Dance Project's Compositions Lab, which sponsors the creation of new works by emerging professional choreographers and composers. An avid hiker and nature enthusiast, she is also a producer and mentor for the USC Arts and Climate Collective, an interdisciplinary organization that supports and showcases student creators working at the intersections of climate action and storytelling. She divides her time between Los Angeles, Traverse City, and her hometown of Indianapolis.