Studio Stories: CANDY BOX Dance Festival special with jess pretty - Season 13, Episode 151

jess pretty is an Assistant Professor of Dance at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and the current artistic director of AUNTS; a punk/DIY performance series that hosts events/festivals/shows to highlight the works of experimental dance makers in NYC. she has shown her work at La Mama Experimental Theater Club (2017 La Mama Moves Festival), New York Live Arts (as a 2016/17 Fresh Tracks artist), CATCH!, Gibney Dance Center, Brooklyn Studios for Dance, the CURRENT SESSIONS, panoply performing arts space, Green Street Studios, three ACDA conferences, and the Chocolate Factory Theatre. pretty has been an artist in residence at Kent State (2017), the Chocolate Factory Theatre, and the Center for Performance Research (2019-2020) and was also a 2020 member of the Queer Art Fellowship. pretty has collaborated and been a part of the works of: Will Rawls, Claudia Rankine, Kevin Beasley, Okwui Okpokwasili, Peter Born, Catherine Gallasso, David Thomson, Katie Workum, Niall Jones, Jennifer Monson, Cynthia Oliver, Leslie Cuyjet and Dianne McIntyre.

call and response is a methodology for building connection and community; a celebration and appreciation for black life; an archival tool; and lens for embodiment. this work is personal and archival; calling on me to turn towards my own story, lineage and memory as the site of choreographic creation. in looking at myself, i aim to build a black queer archive to provide proof of life (instead of the constant images of black death we experience) for future generations. 

how do we come together? how do we see each other? how do we care for each other? how do we make space for pleasure, joy, ease and non-urgency? how do we 'get free' using the body as the site for radical transformation? taking place somewhere between an improvised self portrait and the middle of the dance floor, call and response directs our attention inward to the deep histories our bodies hold. calling us to say ‘yes’ to "the encounter”, to vulnerability, to the collective, to the moving body, to change and to transformation.