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Updated 9/22/2016

Paula Josa-Jones/Performance Works

  • C

    CT

Institution/Business Type: Performing Group

Since 1985, Paula Josa-Jones/Performance Works has gained a national reputation for risk-taking, adventurous contemporary dance theater that explores the borders between states of being, including gender, species, past/present, movement/stillness, light/dark - works that are visually rich, provocative and grounded a rich improvisational movement practice. We are committed to collaborations with artists in all disciplines, and to fostering relationships with an international creative community. With our performances, what Mary Oliver says about her poetry relates closely to how we want to engage our audiences. She says, "I want every poem to 'rest' in intensity. I want it to be rich with pictures of the world. I want it to carry threads from the perceptually felt world to the intellectual world. I want the poem to ask something and, at its best moments, I want the question to remain unanswered. I want it to be clear that answering the question is the reader’s part in an implicit author-reader pact." Our goal with our teaching and residency work is to help others connect to their own delicious sense of embodiment through movement and improvisation and to nourish a deeper experience of listening, bold, playful movement exploration and attunement to self and others.

Paula Josa-Jones is a dancer, choreographer, writer, visual artist and movement educator known for her visually rich, emotionally charged dance theater. Her work includes choreography for humans, inter-species work with horses, dancers and riders, film and video. Josa-Jones has been called "one of the country's leading choreographic conceptualists" by the Boston Globe and the Village Voice describes her work as "powerful, eccentric, and surreal". Her dances have been produced in Russia, Europe, Mexico and throughout the United States. She has taught in the dance programs at Tufts University, Boston University and at universities, colleges and dance festivals nationally and internationally. She is a Certified Laban Movement Analyst and a Registered Somatic Movement Therapist (RSMT) accredited by the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association (ISMETA.) She is also a Guild-Certified TTEAM (Tellington Touch Equine Awareness Method) practitioner. Her writings on movement and dance have been published in Contact Quarterly. She is currently writing a book on her work with horses called The Common Body: Horses and humans sharing the language of movement and the body. Josa-Jones is a 2013 recipient of a Connecticut Artist's Fellowship, and a 2014 Bogliasco Fellow. She has received two Choreography Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, an NEA US/Mexico Cultural Exchange Fellowship and an Artist's Grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She is the recipient of two New Forms grants from the New England Foundation for the Arts, an Artist's Foundation Fellowship in Interarts for her video dance collaborations with Vin Grabill, and two finalist awards in choreography from the Massachusetts Council for the Arts. She has been in residence at Yaddo (twice) and the Djerassi Foundation in Woodside, California. Paula Josa-Jones/Performance Works has received support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the New England Foundation for the Arts, the Arts Lottery, Creative Time, the Dakota Foundation, LEF Foundation, the Claneil Foundation and the Polaroid Foundation. The company's work in Mexico was supported by the US/Mexico Fund for Culture, and they received two grants from the Trust for Mutual Understanding for choreographic projects in Russia. Josa-Jones has received commissions from the Joyce Theater, Jacob's Pillow, Dance Umbrella, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, and nuArts at Northeastern University, among others.

 

Find Me

Paula Josa-Jones
Job Title: Artistic Director, Choreographer
Phone: 508-627-1752
Address:
30 Flanders Lane
Kent, CT 06757

Social Media:

Additional Content:

About

Overview

Institution/Business Type:

Performing Group

Legal Status:

Nonprofit - Independent

Year Founded:

1986

Overview

Institution/Business Type:

Performing Group

Legal Status:

Nonprofit - Independent

Year Founded:

1986

Disciplines

Primary Discipline:

Dance - General

Additional Disciplines:

  • Multi-Disciplinary

Activities and Services

Activities and Services:

  • Performance / Concert / Reading
  • Consulting - Curatorial Services
  • Creation of a Work of Art (Including Commissions)
  • Curriculum Development
  • Residency - Community
  • Residency - In School
  • Residency - Other
  • Workshops / Demonstrations / Master Class
Seasons Active: spring, summer, fall, winter
Events Per Year: 10

Communities

Populations Engaged:

  • Adults
  • Elders
  • General Public
  • People with Disabilities
  • Teens
  • Youth-At-Risk

Geographic Reach:

  • Town / City
  • County
  • Multi-County Region
  • State
  • Multi-State Region
  • National
  • International

Media Gallery

I Have Worked With

Roger Williams College

Date: 10/2014

Artist in residence in the dance department.  Setting new work on students. 

Boston Conservatory

Date: 09/2014

Guest teaching in the Dance Theater class.

Green Street Studios

Performance Facility

Date: 09/2014

Taught a workshop as part of their Moving Target series. 

Skidmore College

Date: 07/2014

Performance of Speak during the Body-Mind Centering Conference. 

Affiliations and Accomplishments

Professional Associations

Professional Associations:

  • Body-Mind Centering Association
  • Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies
  • Tellington Practitioners' Guild

Professional Associations

Professional Associations:

  • Body-Mind Centering Association
  • Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies
  • Tellington Practitioners' Guild

Awards

Awards:

  • 2013 Connecticut Artist's Fellowship in Choreography
  • 2014 Bogliasco Foundation Fellow in Choreography
  • National Dance Project
  • Trust for Mutual Understanding
  • Meet the Composer
  • National Endowment for the Arts Choreography Fellowships
  • Massachusetts Cultural Council Choreography Fellowship and Finalist Awards
  • NEA US/Mexico Fellowship/Residency

Education

Education:

  • MA Tufts University
  • CMA (Certified Movement Analyst), Laban/Bartenieff Institute for Movement Studies

Artist Info

Teaching Artist

Ages Served:

  • Middle School-age
  • High School-age
  • College-age
  • Adults

Subject Areas:

  • Arts Integration - Health

Certifications and Training:

  • CMA: Laban Movement Analyst
  • RSME/T: Somatic Movement Therapist & Educator
  • Somatic Experiencing Practitioner-in-training
  • TTEAM Practioner: Tellington TTouch Equine Awareness Method
  • Dance, movement and theater educator

Fee range:

$500 - $25,000

Teaching Artist

Ages Served:

  • Middle School-age
  • High School-age
  • College-age
  • Adults

Subject Areas:

  • Arts Integration - Health

Certifications and Training:

  • CMA: Laban Movement Analyst
  • RSME/T: Somatic Movement Therapist & Educator
  • Somatic Experiencing Practitioner-in-training
  • TTEAM Practioner: Tellington TTouch Equine Awareness Method
  • Dance, movement and theater educator

Fee range:

$500 - $25,000

Touring Artist

NEST Eligible Artist

Technical Requirements:

  • Please contact us for specific technical requirements.

Fee Range:

$500 - $25,000

State of Residence:

Connecticut

Minimum Number of Performers:

5

Maximum Number of Performers:

8