about

 

IMAGE: MALCOLM-X BETTS

Jessie Young is a Brooklyn-based choreographer, performer and teacher originally from Port Angeles, WA. 

Jessie uses dance as a way to integrate movement training and exploratory structures to craft containers for dis/orientation, atmospheric awareness, and embodied imagination. She works choreographically to direct conditions of exploration that render themselves as dances, collages, photographs, sound scores and pedagogical structures. Her teaching approaches a range of practices in contemporary dance forms, choreography, and performance. Young crafts choreography as a poetic provocation, viewing dance as a form that must constantly redefine itself in relation to shifting sensorial, emotional, political, and cultural circumstances.

She has been an artist in residence at New York Live Arts (Fresh Tracks), Brooklyn Studios for Dance (NY), The Floor on Atlantic (NY) and Centrum (WA). As a performer, she has had the pleasure of working with Abby Z and the New Utility, Julie Mayo, Stephanie Acosta and Khecari Dance Theater, among others. Currently, she is collaborating with Julie Mayo, Same As Sister and Kendra Portier. 

Jessie has been on faculty at Lion’s Jaw Performance + Dance Festival, Mark Morris Dance Center and Gina Gibney Dance Center. In addition, she has taught master classes and leads workshops at Bard College, Pieter Performance Space, Beloit College, University of Utah, University of Wisconsin at Madison, Base: Experimental Arts + Space (Seattle) and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she was recently received the Beverly Blossom/Carey Erickson Alumni Award for 2021. She is on faculty at Rutgers University, American Dance Festival, contributes to the online teaching platform freeskewl and has a virtual pilates studio through the platform Core to Coeur.

+ CV

+ Artist Statement