EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW | CONTEMPORARY | WHERE ARE THEY NOW
Maeghan McHale: The Bright Side of Chicago — Then and Now
In 2013 she was a rising star in her sixth season with Giordano Dance Chicago. More than a decade later, the Dance Magazine “Top 25 to Watch” has become one of jazz dance’s most trusted teachers and choreographers — and the strong foundation she once spoke of is now the one she builds in others.
By Dance Mogul Magazine | Originally featured June 2013 | Updated and expanded 2026
Maeghan McHale — Dance Magazine “Top 25 to Watch” | Photo: Cheryl Mann
ARTIST SPOTLIGHT — 2026
Maeghan McHale danced twelve seasons with Giordano Dance Chicago, America’s original jazz dance company, and celebrated her tenth anniversary with the company at Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre in 2017. Today she is a sought-after teacher and choreographer — on faculty at Peridance Center in New York and Northshore School of Dance, guest faculty for 2026 at American Midwest Ballet, and a commissioned choreographer whose recent works have premiered at First State Ballet Theatre. The “strong foundation” she spoke of in 2013 is now the one she builds in the next generation.
When Dance Mogul Magazine first sat down with Maeghan McHale in the summer of 2013, she was in her sixth season with Giordano Dance Chicago and already carrying a reputation that outpaced her years. A Baltimore native and a Dance Magazine “Top 25 to Watch,” she had trained at the Baltimore School for the Arts, earned scholarships to Dance Theatre of Harlem and the Giordano Dance School, and was quietly becoming one of the most watched contemporary and jazz artists of her generation.
More than a decade later, that trajectory has bent in a way that says everything about how Maeghan understood the art form even then. She did not chase the spotlight and vanish. She built — a body of choreographic work, a teaching practice, and a lineage. This is the story we told in 2013, restored in full, followed by where Maeghan McHale is today.
The 2013 Feature: A Rising Star in Chicago
Maeghan McHale, named one of Dance Magazine’s Top 25 to Watch in 2010, was born in Baltimore, MD. She went on to study at the Baltimore School for the Arts where she performed works by David Parsons, Hinton Battle, David Grenke, and John Clifford. She received a full scholarship to Dance Theatre of Harlem, where she performed with the Dancing Through Barriers Ensemble. While living in New York City Maeghan studied at Steps on Broadway and performed with Extended Dance Company, as well as off-Broadway under the direction of Tony Award winner Hinton Battle. She has also participated in the Jazz Dance World Congress, The Miss America Parade, and Dancers Responding to AIDS Benefit. In 2005 Maeghan received a full scholarship to the Giordano Dance School, and in 2006 she became a performing apprentice, performing with the company both internationally and nationally. 2007 marked her first season with Giordano Dance Chicago, and she has enjoyed six seasons performing in places such as Hawaii, Latvia, Germany, Luxembourg, Austria, Netherlands, Istanbul Turkey, and Guatemala.
Named to Dance Magazine’s “Top 25 to Watch” at the very start of her professional life — and, more than a decade on, still worth watching.
Photo: Ruben Hernandez
This is Maeghan’s sixth season with GDC. Along with establishing herself as a well recognized dancer, she has also had the opportunity to set her work on the Giordano II company. Maeghan has had her work performed on the Joyce Theater stage, through Dancin’ Downtown at The Joyce, as part of the Dancers Responding to AIDS Benefit. In 2011 her piece “Angelica” won the Performance Award and performed in New York City for Central Park SummerStage, and just won the Performance Award in May of 2013 where the dancers will perform again for Central Park SummerStage sharing the stage with dancers from Martha Graham Dance Company. Her choreography has been recognized with awards such as Critics Choice and Outstanding Choreography/Choreographer. She was a Regional Ensemble winner and earned an Outstanding Choreography award at Youth America Grand Prix (2010), and has placed twice in the top 12 Ensemble category at Youth America Grand Prix finals in New York City. Her ensemble choreography had the honor of being part of Youth America Grand Prix’s “Stars of Today Meet the Stars of Tomorrow” tour in Virginia and in Pennsylvania.
Photo: Cheryl Mann
Dance Mogul Magazine was honored to have an exclusive conversation with Maeghan to hear what she had been up to, her advice for the next generation of dancers, and her plans for the future. That full interview lives in the video below.
Watch: Maeghan McHale — The Dance Mogul Magazine Interview (2013)
The Foundation Beneath the Talent
To understand where Maeghan McHale is now, it helps to understand the tradition she stepped into. Giordano Dance Chicago is not just any company — it is America’s original jazz dance company, founded in 1963 by Gus Giordano, one of the founding architects of American jazz dance as a concert art form. Under his daughter, Artistic Director Nan Giordano, the company has carried the Giordano technique across Europe, the Americas, Turkey, Japan, and beyond. To dance there is to be entrusted with a living piece of American movement history.
Maeghan arrived at that tradition the long way. She was a scholarship student before she was an apprentice, an apprentice before she was a company member, and a company member for years before she ever set a single work on the second company. That patience is the through-line of her whole career. When she told Dance Mogul that young dancers “have to start with a strong foundation” and “become well rounded and stay humble,” she was not offering a slogan — she was describing the exact path she had walked.
Her early recognition as a Youth America Grand Prix choreographer — a Regional Ensemble winner with an Outstanding Choreography award and multiple top-12 finishes at the New York finals — hinted at a second calling that would eventually rival her performing career. She was already making work while she was still very much a dancer. That dual identity, dancer and maker, is precisely what she carries forward today.
Where Is Maeghan McHale Now?
In 2013 Maeghan was in her sixth season with Giordano Dance Chicago. She would go on to complete twelve seasons with the company — and in June 2017, at Chicago’s historic Auditorium Theatre, GDC dedicated part of its program to celebrating her tenth anniversary with the company, including a feature choreographed for her by “choreographer-to-the-stars” Liz Imperio. It was a rare public tribute to a dancer who had become synonymous with the Giordano name.
Since transitioning off the main-company stage, Maeghan has built exactly the kind of teaching and choreographic life her 2013 interview foreshadowed. She now teaches on faculty at Peridance Center in New York and holds a full-time faculty position at Northshore School of Dance, passing the Giordano technique — the very language she learned as a scholarship student — to a new generation of dancers. She choreographs for the Mid Atlantic Center for the Performing Arts, her sister’s school, and remains an active artist with Extensions Dance Center.
Her choreographic voice has continued to travel. She set her work “Out of the Silence” on the dancers of First State Ballet Theatre, which premiered in November 2022, and returned to the company to premiere a new piece, “Revolving Doors,” on its Triple Bill program in February 2024. Her contribution to jazz history has also been documented on screen: she appears in the acclaimed jazz-dance documentary UPROOTED: The Journey of Jazz Dance. For 2026, she is listed as guest faculty at American Midwest Ballet’s summer intensive — another stage on which she will hand her foundation to dancers just beginning theirs.
From a rising star in her sixth season to a full-time faculty member and commissioned choreographer — the foundation Maeghan built in Chicago is now the one she passes on.
Why It Matters to Dance Mogul Magazine
Dance Mogul Magazine has always believed that a dancer’s impact does not end at the edge of the stage — it radiates outward into teaching, choreography, and the careers of everyone they touch. Maeghan McHale’s story is one of the clearest proofs of that belief in our archive. The young artist we featured in 2013 didn’t simply have a good run; she converted a performing career into a lineage, and that is the highest form of cultural preservation there is.
Her journey sits squarely inside DMM’s mission of empowerment and next-generation guidance. From the contemporary stage to the jazz tradition she now teaches, from her own exclusive interview to the faculty rooms where she now shapes young dancers, Maeghan embodies the through-line we return to again and again: master your craft, stay humble, and give it away. Explore more of that spectrum across our Dance Styles Hub.
In 2013 Maeghan told us that Dance Mogul Magazine could help the next generation of dancers “gain a lot of insight by looking at the interviews and learning about people who have been in the community for a long time.” More than a decade later, she has become exactly that kind of person — someone the next generation should be studying.
EXPLORE MORE
Discover more of the artists shaping movement culture across generations. Visit our Dance Styles Hub to explore every style, read our Exclusive Interviews with the greats, and follow the Dance Industry for the conversations moving the culture forward.
The Story Continues
The dancers Maeghan teaches at Peridance and Northshore today may never know that their instructor was once a Dance Magazine “Top 25 to Watch” who spent twelve seasons carrying the Giordano legacy across four continents. What they will know is the technique, the discipline, and the foundation — because that is what she gives them, class after class. The stage may change hands, but the lineage keeps moving.
Dance Mogul Magazine will keep following the artists who turn talent into teaching and performance into legacy. Maeghan McHale was worth watching in 2010, worth featuring in 2013, and worth celebrating now — not for who she once was on stage, but for who she is helping others become.
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