I make dances that sometimes include people dancing, sometimes include you dancing, and sometimes hope that dance can exist without dance, by being moved by something.
I am a dancer, but I don’t dance. Dance is the language I speak. It is inside me and all over me.
My work is primarily concerned with the confusion and desire between self and other, and focuses on the most complicated relationship we all have: that of the self to the self.
Jillian Peña is a dance and video artist primarily concerned with confusion and desire between self and other. Her work is in dialogue with psychoanalysis, queer theory, pop media, and spirituality. She has been presented internationally, including at Dance Theater Workshop and The Kitchen in New York, Akademie der Kunste Berlin, Centre for Contemporary Arts Glasgow, and Mix Brazil Sao Paulo. As a dancer, Jillian has enjoyed performing with Jennifer Allen, Ann Liv Young, Beth Gill, and Eleanor Bauer. She has an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she was a fellowship recipient, and a BA from Hollins University. Jillian is a Jack Kent Cooke Graduate Scholar and a Practice-based PhD candidate in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She was a 2008-2009 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence in New York, a 2009 DanceWeb Fellow at Impulstanz in Vienna, a 2010 Artist-in-Residence at Archauz, in Århus, Denmark, and an upcoming 2011 Arist-in-Residence at the National Dance Center in Bucharest, Romania. Her dance company, the Jillian Peña Social Club, would love to include you.
I locate my video-based work within the dance community with the proposition that dance is an embodied shift that can exist without a represented body as its location. Casting the audience as subject and performer, I desire to generate a hyper-self-awareness in the viewers, who join the performance by gazing at their selves. This brings an instability of existence and agency to consciousness, but the sensation of it within a group might propose a way to transcend it.
I am a dancer, but I don’t dance. Dance is the language I speak. It is inside me and all over me.
My work is primarily concerned with the confusion and desire between self and other, and focuses on the most complicated relationship we all have: that of the self to the self.
Jillian Peña is a dance and video artist primarily concerned with confusion and desire between self and other. Her work is in dialogue with psychoanalysis, queer theory, pop media, and spirituality. She has been presented internationally, including at Dance Theater Workshop and The Kitchen in New York, Akademie der Kunste Berlin, Centre for Contemporary Arts Glasgow, and Mix Brazil Sao Paulo. As a dancer, Jillian has enjoyed performing with Jennifer Allen, Ann Liv Young, Beth Gill, and Eleanor Bauer. She has an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she was a fellowship recipient, and a BA from Hollins University. Jillian is a Jack Kent Cooke Graduate Scholar and a Practice-based PhD candidate in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She was a 2008-2009 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence in New York, a 2009 DanceWeb Fellow at Impulstanz in Vienna, a 2010 Artist-in-Residence at Archauz, in Århus, Denmark, and an upcoming 2011 Arist-in-Residence at the National Dance Center in Bucharest, Romania. Her dance company, the Jillian Peña Social Club, would love to include you.
I locate my video-based work within the dance community with the proposition that dance is an embodied shift that can exist without a represented body as its location. Casting the audience as subject and performer, I desire to generate a hyper-self-awareness in the viewers, who join the performance by gazing at their selves. This brings an instability of existence and agency to consciousness, but the sensation of it within a group might propose a way to transcend it.
