Janessa Clark
Parent Artist Space Grant (Summer 2023)

Janessa Clark 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 site-specific environments. Her work nourishes a desire to challenge traditional modes of choreography and spectatorship through co-authorship. 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 directed the NYC-based collective, KILTERBOX, from 2001-2012 and the Stockholm-based nomadthenewcompany, from 2012-2018. Janessa has enjoyed artist residencies through CEC ArtsLink, Exploring the Metropolis at Jamaica Arts Center, THE VISIONARY in upstate NY, and most recently at Loyola Marymount University. Her work has been presented widely over the past 20 years including at HERE Arts Center, Dixon Place, Barry Art Museum, American Dance Festival, Bate Dance Festival, and internationally at numerous festivals. Her video-dance project, COMMUNION, a response to the Covid-19 crisis was nominated for a 2021 BESSIE Award for Outstanding Production.

As a performer, Janessa has been fortunate to work with 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.  Currently, she is on faculty in the Theater Arts department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is developing new multimedia work at home in Brooklyn. She is thrilled to be a recipient of a Parent Artist Space Grant at BAX this summer.