Image Description: Jesi is dancing while wearing a gray sweatshirt, her arms are lifted to shoulder height and her eyes are gently shut. A backdrop behind her glows a golden yellow.

Image Description: Man on the left, Jack Blackmon, has olive skin and wears a white t-shirt, athletic pants. His shirt's linear image bleeds into his tattoos. He is making an attempt to move full force across the space arm first. Man on the right, Paul Singh, brown skin wearing similar clothing, looks back at Jack directly in the eyes and catches his arm to stop the momentum. Photo by David Gonsier.

Image Description: Black and white photo. Gerald is visible from the shoulders up, wears a dark t-shirt, and looks directly into the camera/at you. Photo by Katherine Helen Fisher.

Image Description: K.J. wears a blue dress and tall boots and stands in front of a piece of artwork on a white wall. Photo by Beatriz Meseguer/MoMA.

Conversation with K.J. Holmes, Jesi Cook, Gerald Casel, and Paul Singh

Thursday, March 25 at 6-7:30pm EDT
*Join these artists for classes on Friday, March 26
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ABOUT THE EVENT:
This conversation, facilitated by Jennifer Nugent, open to the public. No registration required. Click on the Zoom link below in our footer to join. In an effort to encourage spillage, sharing, and questioning, all FESTIVAL teaching artists participate in public conversation with the other artists scheduled to teach on the same day as them.

PAYMENT:
Sliding scale $0-50.
PayPal: freeskewlteam@gmail.com
Venmo: @freeskewl

​ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
​Jesi Cook is an artist based in Brooklyn and currently a 2019-2020 Movement Research AIR. Her interest in healing the body has led to investigations in somatics, improvisation, sound, drawing/painting, and Chinese medicine theory. Her choreography and collaborations have been presented at LmaK Gallery, MoMA PS1, Roulette Intermedium, AUNTS, PAM, Pieter Space and others. 
She is a Licensed Massage Therapist and healer practicing Tui-Na, Reiki, and Acupressure since   graduating from Pacific College of Health and Science in 2013. 
She is a practitioner at Maha Rose and Bedstuy Acupuncture & Massage, and private practices in Greenpoint and East Village. 
Her recent drawings Seed Scores were selected in the most recent issue of The Capilano Review, Im Looking For a Way to Dance. 
She holds a BFA from SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance.
jesicook.com

Paul Singh has been dancing for a long time. He has a degree from a university in dance. He has danced professionally on concert stages for many choreographers in many venues in many countries. He also believes in contact improvisation deeply and so has sought out skill and connection until becoming a good teacher, a better advocate, and a great student again. He invests in the simultaneity of his desire to know and unknow so that he can empathize with every given moment. It’s not easy, but it’s where he wants to be. He currently teaches at Sarah Lawrence College, Movement Research, and The Juilliard School.  If you’d like to know more, just ask him.

Gerald Casel (he/they) is artistic director of GERALDCASELDANCE. His work complicates questions surrounding colonialism, collective cultural amnesia, whiteness and privilege, and the tensions between the invisible/perceived/obvious structures of power. Casel is associate professor and Provost of Porter College at UC Santa Cruz. A graduate of The Juilliard School, with an MFA from UW Milwaukee, Casel received a Bessie award for sustained achievement. Not About Race Dance, awarded a National Dance Project grant, will be in residence at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography and will premiere at CounterPulse with a forthcoming tour. His work, through Dancing Around Race, a community engagement process that interrogates racial inequity in the Bay Area and beyond, continues to grow.
​www.geraldcasel.com

K.J. Holmes, a Brooklyn, NY based dance artist/actor/singer/teacher, currently travels on Zoom teaching/performing/creating. K.J. has collaborated extensively with Julie Carr, Simone Forti, Karen Nelson, Lisa Nelson and Image Lab, and Steve Paxton; has performed in the work of Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People, Xavier Le Roy, Lance Gries, Mark Dendy, Melinda Ring, Karinne Keithley Syers;  Matthew Barney’s film Redoubt; collaborates with drummer Jeremy Carlstedt (LIP); teaches in NYC at NYU/Experimental Theatre Wing and through Movement Research; K.J. is a yogini, an Ayurvedic nutritional consultant and a Somatic director of time. K.J. is creating 900 Bees are Humming whilst in her hive.
kjholmes.info
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