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.