my name is jenna.
I have been moving since the very beginning. I am obsessed with messing with gravity- and was always trying to find ways to prolong that feeling. I grew up in Dallas, Texas and was held for many years by beautiful creatives in the Dallas-dance community. I graduated from SMU Meadows School of the Arts with a BFA in Dance Performance and a BA in Film & Media Arts. I performed as a company artist with B. Moore Dance under the artistic direction of Bridget Moore for multiple seasons beginning in 2022. I researched internationally, moving in multiple labs, workshops, and processes where I was gifted with rich knowledge and vulnerability from artists such as Pau Aran, Sidra Bell , Ethan Colangelo, Bret Easterling, Mike Esperanza , Madison Hicks , Annamari Keskinen and Ryan Mason, Cameron McKinney, Kevin Pajarillaga, Joshua L. Peugh, Ella Rothschild, Maleek Washington, and Tom Weinberger, among many others. I am currently based in Dallas freelancing, and readily available for national and international travel. I would love to connect and dive into process.
My freshman year of college, I picked up a camera which shifted the gravity of movement for me in a pivotal way. I have the privilege of not only holding my own practice in my hands, but to enter someone else’s relationship between their body and the world they exist in- and to be tasked with prolonging what I see. I have learned so much about every single human I’ve had the gift of capturing, and it has given body language a new layer of vitality in my life. I create independently and collaboratively in multiple mediums, producing work that often merges live and captured movement. I love meeting people, and experiencing their process and intimate relation to this world. I have collaborated with dancers and actors on a wide range of projects to capture their body of work, as well as create presentational and promotional materials for more people to see their work. My materials have been featured in programming at The Joyce Theatre, Edinburgh Fringe Fest, Finding Compassion, Moving Forward Winter Fest, and SMU Meadows School of the Arts.
Photos and video on this page by Olga Rabetskaya.
to describe my practice mundanely— the day asks a certain laundering from me. i try to measure loads by the most i can carry in my arms without dropping anything on the way to the wash— not even a lone sock. i try not to use dryers— they weather things in their attempt to speed things along. besides, air-drying anything… to let the wind have you in a suspended act of letting go. waiting. breathing. drying. patience. impatie-. patience. i always find a beautiful and ironic vulnerability in hanging such intimacy on the line over the balcony for everyone outside to see. cyclical. a folding and unfolding. after all that freedom in the wind, i drench what hung in a different kind of impatience, putting everything into the dark corners of a stuffed drawer. don’t worry i do wear myself and my practice. a lot. i wear myself , to a different degree of decisiveness and indecision, leaving all the day’s potentials hanging on the bedframe or on the floor piling for another morning. but as i’ve gotten older and begun to make a career out of sweat, i’ve realized the importance of squeezing layers and options into my backpack for the day. i wear change these days more than ever before. it just means more laundry. a lot of things i wore for only a moment probably don’t need to be washed-but best to keep things fresh. a lot of things long overdue to be washed. i’ll get to it all. i’m getting to it all. i have to. unfolding. wearing. washing. waiting. drying. folding. unfolding. wearing. washing. waiting. quite beautiful, this cycle.