NEW YORK, NY.- Jennifer Muller, a prolific choreographer and dancer whose humanistic works emphasized emotion and storytelling in an era when minimalism and conceptual themes prevailed, died March 29 at her home in Jersey City, New Jersey. She was 78.

Katy Neely, general manager of Muller’s company, Jennifer Muller/The Works, confirmed the death but did not specify the cause.

Renowned for her expressiveness and her balletic modern style, Muller was a former principal dancer with New York City’s Limón Dance Company, a pioneering force in modern dance. But her choreographic career, which spanned more than five decades and produced more than 125 dances, set her apart from her postmodern contemporaries.

“I’m not an abstractionist,” she told The New York Times in 1983. “A great deal of my work has a sense of celebration.”

That vision ran counter to the trends set by such dance luminaries as Yvonne Rainer, Lucinda Childs and Merce Cunningham.

“She inspired love of the art form, love of people, love of the world,” Christopher Pilafian, an original member of The Works, said in an interview. “I don’t remember anybody in my training talking about joy as something that can be cultivated or aspired to. And she did.”

Muller was more intrigued by dancers’ individuality than by technical precision or theoretical experiments. “She wanted to know who we were as human beings, and our stories, as well as who we are as artists,” said Eric Stucky, who joined The Works in 2020 and danced in its final performance, in September 2022. “A lot of choreographers aren’t like that.”

Curious and open-minded, Muller could draw ideas equally from fine art (her 1978 “Lovers” referred to Gustav Klimt paintings), poetry (2013’s “Grass,” inspired by Walt Whitman) or deforestation, as in her signature 1995 piece, “The Spotted Owl.”

“So much of my inspiration comes from direct observation,” she said. “The striking sadness in people’s lives comes from divisiveness in national, political and personal spheres. Much of my choreography comes from a desire to overcome that.”

Those relatable, real-world themes, combined with virtuosic yet lyrical choreography and often incorporating spoken word, original music and dramatic lighting and staging, garnered an enthusiastic international following. The Works, which she founded in New York in 1974, toured more than 39 countries and across the United States.

“It’s like she was saying, ‘It’s OK to be human,’” Pilafian said. “That’s what audiences responded to.”

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Ballet Jazz Montréal and Nederlands Dans Theater commissioned dances from her. An adventurous multidisciplinary artist and polymath, she also crossed over into theater, choreographing works for the Public Theater and New York City Opera, and collaborating with directors including Des McAnuff and Mark Linn-Baker.




In 2011, she wrote and choreographed “The Spiral Show,” the first Broadway-style musical produced in China. Her enthusiasm for collaboration reached a zenith in 1987 with “Interrupted River,” which featured sets designed by artist Keith Haring and music by Yoko Ono.

Despite her popular acclaim, many critics found her work too literal.

Reviewing a 1995 performance of “The Spotted Owl” in the Times in 1995, Jennifer Dunning praised Muller’s “sleekly dramatic staging” but critiqued it as a “message dance.” In a 2004 Times review, Jack Anderson praised the Sufi-inspired “Ecstatic Poems” as “flesh and spirit united” and “theatrically lush,” but felt that another piece, “A Candle at Both Ends,” lacked subtlety.

A sought-after teacher and mentor, Muller led workshops in creativity, nonverbal communication and choreography around the world. Dancers clamored to learn her movement method, the Muller Polarity Technique. Informed by Eastern philosophies, Polarity was based on ideas of rising and falling, gravity and lightness, and a yin-yang flow of energy that freed dancers to move expressively, as opposed to in conformity with codified steps. “Everyone wanted to dance like that,” said Pilafian. “The classes were full all the time.”

Jennifer Muller was born Oct. 16, 1944, in Yonkers, New York, and grew up there and in Westchester. Her mother, Lynette (Heldman) Muller, taught eighth and ninth grades at the Halsted School in Yonkers, where she also produced theater and dance productions. Her father, Donald Muller, directed television shows such as “Baretta” and “Dynasty” under the name Don Medford.

The couple divorced when Muller was a toddler, and her first memory of meeting her father was at age 25, when he attended one of her performances in Los Angeles. Muller never married and has no immediate survivors.

Muller attended Halsted and began her dance training there. At 15, she debuted with the Pearl Lang Dance Company. She studied at the Connecticut College School of Dance, the Metropolitan School of Ballet and Ballet Arts, and the Juilliard Preparatory School.

While a student at Juilliard, she began her nine-year association with the Limón company. By the time she earned her bachelor’s degree from Juilliard, where she was valedictorian of her graduating class, she was already a seasoned professional.

She later became associate artistic director of the Louis Falco Dance Company.

Her artistic affinities were evident early on. At 19, while rehearsing for the Limón company’s State Department-sponsored tour of Asia, she told the Pacific Stars and Stripes newspaper that although she valued her classical ballet training for the control and precision it fostered, “I’m more inclined to modern dance. Somehow it seems to me closer to human experience.”

Global cultures and the shared human experience were enduring themes. She was a founding member of the World Arts Council. A champion of female dance makers, she founded and led the Women/Create! festival for nine years.

Beyond her vast artistic oeuvre, Muller’s legacy is the curiosity, wonder and self-expression she fostered in others, said Pilafian. “In 1974, I was having an existential crisis,” he recalled. “I was looking at Jennifer and I was saying, ‘Why is it worth bothering?’ And she said, ‘Well, it’s just magnificent.’”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.