JESSICA SWAN

"Polished and evocative ... [Swan's] voice is clear and inviting, a wry observer."          - Kirkus Reviews

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JESSICA SWAN is an American novelist, playwright, and librettist. Her work includes ballets, operas, and musicals that are emotion-driven and employ dance as a function of the narrative. Rooted in myth and psychology, Swan's dreamlike stories resonate in meaningful ways for today's audience.

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​Swan conceived and wrote the libretto for "Sugar Hill: The Ellington/Strayhorn Nutcracker" (premiered December 2023 at the Auditorium Theater in Chicago), a jazz-steeped reimagining of the classic tale as a dance-fantasy about the magic of individuality, set to the music of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, with orchestrations/ arrangements by John Clayton (Grammy Award winner) and Larry Blank (three-time Tony Award nominee) for a live 17-piece jazz orchestra and a 31-person cast choreographed by a team of world-class choreographers of ballet, street dance, jazz, tap, and Lindy Hop— all directed with choreography by Joshua Bergasse (Emmy Award winner and Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics nominee) and co-choreography by Jade Hale-Christofi with additional choreography by Jon Boogz (Emmy Award winner) and Caleb Teicher. 

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"Unforgettable and enchanting... Elegant coolness." - Rolling Out

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"4 STARS. Like jazz itself, this show is just so darn American, infusing The Nutcracker with a boundless joy and optimism, all embodied in its extraordinary rhythm." - The Chicago Sun Times

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"Thrilling... glamorous and compelling... magnificent in concept and execution." - Chicago Reader

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"An intoxicating world of music and dance." - The Chicago Tribune

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Swan holds a rhetoric degree from U.C. Berkeley and has published three books: The Big Book of Motivation Games (McGraw-Hill Companies) co-authored by a senior research psychologist as an addition to the best-selling The Big Book of Business Games series; Dear Isabelle (Harbor House Books); and Completely Lost (Odette Books). She is a former writer for Psychology Today magazine and has co-authored work published in the academic journal The Behavior Analyst. Her novels are featured on NPR, San Jose Mercury News, East Bay Times, and spotlighted in the Las Vegas Review-Journal as a must-read. Swan lives in New York.

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Photo: Laura A. Oda/ Bay Area News Group