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Janessa
Clark
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Theater Lecturer
Theater

Janessa Clark (American/Swedish) is a BESSIE Award nominated choreographer, dance filmmaker, performer, and installation artist. Her practice combines dance, video, and language to create socially-engaged art for stage, screen, and locale-specific environments. The work created nourishes a desire to challenge and rupture traditional modes of choreography and spectatorship through co-authorship and experiential agency. Janessa holds an MA in Performance Practices and Research from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London and a BFA in Choreography from Arizona State University. She founded and directed the New York City-based dance collective, Janessa Clark/KILTERBOX, from 2001-2012 and in 2012 dissolved KILTERBOX to form nomadthenewcompany, which worked from Stockholm 2012-2018. Janessa has enjoyed her time as an artist in residence through CEC ArtsLink’s Back Apartment Residency in St. Petersburg, Russia, Exploring the Metropolis at the Jamaica Arts Center, and at THE VISIONARY in upstate New York. Her films and live works have been presented widely over the past 20 years including at HERE Arts Center, Danspace Project, and Dixon Place in New York City, the Barry Art Museum, the American Dance Festival, Bate Dance Festival, Teatro Victoria (Canary Islands), the Vitruvian Thing (Greece), SDVIG (Russia), Danscentrum (Sweden), and numerous international film festivals. Janessa’s video dance project, COMMUNION, a response to the Covid-19 crisis was nominated for a 2021 BESSIE Award for Outstanding Production.

As a dance artist Janessa has been fortunate to collaborate and perform with artists and companies such as Tino Sehgal, Gibney Dance, Laura Peterson Choreography, and Noemie LaFrance among others, and she has received grants from Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Swedish Arts Council, the Croft Residency, and Harlem Stage. She has also taught nationally at New York University's Summer Dance Festival, the College at Brockport, Old Dominion University, Montclair State University, and internationally at the University College of Dance/DOCH, Balletakademien, and Luleå Tekniska Universitetet in Sweden and at SDVIG in St. Petersburg. Currently, Janessa is touring a film collaboration with Pittsburgh’s Attack Theatre, developing a gallery installation in Boyne City, MI, and creating a new live hybrid work She resides in Brooklyn, NY.

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