Company description:
Jessie Jeanne & Dancers (JJ&D) is a rigorous creative laboratory and performance collaborative for visceral and somatic research, via contemporary dance making practices. We value audacity and somatic awareness. Through creative process we traverse cultural and interpersonal boundaries, unearthing new pathways of communication and connection. We have a commitment to commissioning local, national, and international dance choreographers to set original works on New England-based dancers, striving always to work with one established and one emerging choreographer each season in an effort to fortify the dance economy. JJ&D also provides educational opportunities for early career performers and makers by offering educational programming through workshops and residencies, allowing young New England artists to grow and contribute to artistic discourse.
Piece we will present:
Beneath Crystal Skin (2017)
Choreography: Jessie Jeanne Stinnett with the dancers
Running time: 20 mins
Beneath Crystal Skin seeks to boldly rupture the superficial layer of socially imposed ideas and customs cocooning our authentic selves. Catalyzed by the play of childhood, the angst of teenage transformation, and tremors of the current abrasive political climate, the work activates stories that bare nude personal and collective histories of womanhood through the lens of sexuality. Via visceral narrative, the 20 minute quartet, performed by company dancers Olivia Coombs, Whitney Cover, Katie Lake, and Jen Passios, challenges the social frameworks that dictate our relationship to sex, offering a conscious release from our ingrained attachments to the systems that choreograph us. The creation of Beneath Crystal Skin has been sustained in part by the James K Spriggs Foundation, a donor-advised fund. The work has also received support from the New England Dance Fund from the New England Foundation for the Arts. Stinnett will continue to develop the work over the rest of 2017 and into 2018.
Jessie Jeanne & Dancers
