BRIDGE PROJECT 2026
New works by Miguel Almario, Olivia Anderson, Jessica Jobaris & General Magic
FEB 5 + 6 | 7:30 PM
FEB 7 | 2 PM + 7:30 PM
12th Ave Arts Studio Theater |1620 12th Ave, Seattle, WA 98122
Presented through the Velocity’s Emerging Creative Incubator Program
Three brand new works and fresh takes
Bridge Project is Velocity’s Emerging Creative Incubator, a multigenerational, intensive process aimed at connecting artists to each other and audiences to dance artists. This year’s Bridge Project features the work of Miguel Almaria, Olivia Anderson, Jessica Jobaris after an intensive 5-week rehearsal process at 12th Ave Arts. As an audience member, you will be invited to engage in a written feedback process that provides the choreographers with valuable information to help with their artist development.
Miguel Almario | Working TItle: Hard Feelings
Hard Feelings is about cost. The toll of belonging to a community built on community and competition, or pushing a body past what it can give, of choosing an art form that never stops asking for more.
The work aims to honor the Black and Brown American roots of street dance while challenging the way these forms are seen, consumed, and contained. Hard Feelings carries the weight of both community and confrontation, and showcases the body as an archive: tracking years of physical pursuit. Every step adds interest. Every injury compounds debt. Through the eyes of an aging mover, Hard Feelings examines the balance between respect and rivalry, devotion and decay.
Jessica Jobaris | Fucking Mercy
Relentless, irreverent, and oddly hopeful, Fucking Mercy, doesn’t ask for forgiveness; it just wants to see if we can still look each other in the eye after the world’s gone feral. A social autopsy of cruelty, performed in motion, this trio becomes a crucible where the urge to dominate collides with the ache to belong. Mercy here isn’t some soft-focus virtue; it’s weaponized, withheld, begged for, and occasionally, miraculously, offered. The dancers, and audience, stagger between the wretched and the sacred, testing how much humanity can survive in a body that’s fighting to stay alive.
Olivia Anderson | Untitled New Work
This dance is rooted in improvisation—an act of listening, surrender, and response. For me, movement begins not with choreography, but with a need: a physical and spiritual need to express what lives inside the body. Dance is first a form of prayer, a way to connect to self and spirit, before it becomes performance. As fascism casts a shadow on our horizon, I wonder: What can art do now? I believe it can do what it has always done—offer a space for resistance, for remembering, for rehumanizing. In this piece, my body becomes both question and answer. Through breath, emotion, and embodied storytelling, I seek to communicate in a language that bypasses intellect and speaks directly to the nervous system. In moving, I hope to move something in you.
ARTIST BIOS
MIGUEL ALMARIO
OLIVIA ANDERSON
JESSICA JOBARIS
WANT TO SUPPORT ONE OF THESE PROJECTS?
Are you interested in supporting the work of one of these artists? Donate to their projects through the link below, being sure to note the project you would like to allocate your gift to in the Donation Description Field. Your gift keeps Seattle a place where dance-makers can thrive!
EMERGING CREATIVE INCUBATOR PROGRAMS
Velocity’s Emerging Creative Incubator supports experimental dance artists who have not made work in Velocity’s Incubator Programs in the last 5 years. It is a platform where Seattle based choreographers are able to build or re-establish a relationship with Velocity and its audiences.
PROGRAM SUPPORT
Velocity’s 2026 season is supported by 4 Culture, the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, ArtsFund, and Creative West. It is underwritten by John C. Robinson, the Glenn Kawasaki Foundation, in addition to generous support from our community donors. If you would like to join this community of sponsors, please reach out to Erin O’Reilly at erin@velocitydancecenter.org.
John C. Robinson
Glenn H. Kawasaki Foundation
ACCESSIBILITY INFORMATION
12th Ave Arts is fully accessible for wheelchairs and walkers. The lobby and bathrooms are at street level, and seating is available without the need for an elevator or stairs. The venue is also equipped with an Assistive Listening Device.
Miguel Almario is a Seattle-based dance artist and educator whose work bridges street and club dance traditions with strength training, injury prevention, and cultural education. His practice grows from the social roots of street and club dance forms created by Black and Brown communities whose creativity continues to shape global culture. Guided by the belief that dance is first and foremost about people, Miguel aims to build spaces where dancers can train with purpose, care for their bodies, and rediscover the joy of movement in community.
As co-founder of The Arete Project, he designs programs that bridge physical training, injury prevention, and cultural education–Helping dancers sustain both their art and their wellbeing. Miguel’s teaching and collaborations span internationally, including Åsa Folkhögskola (Sweden), Foundation Hip Hop Academy (Amsterdam), and InDaHouse UK. Through his work, Miguel centers people before steps, and honors the communities and people that these forms come from while passing on tools that keep their spirit alive for new generations.
Jessica Jobaris is a Seattle-based choreographer and performance artist whose dance-theatre, time-based messes explore perception, absurdity, the sacred, and the profane. Jessica has performed and taught nationally and internationally. Her professional collaborations include touring work with Mark Haim, KT Niehoff, Maureen Whiting, Scott/Powell Performance, Carr Mixed Media and Freehold Theatre, introducing Shakespeare and arts workshops to incarcerated populations. While living in Berlin, Germany, Jessica worked with theater director Kirsten Burger, Alessio Castellacci, Jess Curtis, Felix Ruckert, Maria Scaroni, and MTV Germany. She has served as a guest instructor at Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle Pacific University, the University of Utah, Velocity Dance Center, ArtScape (RSA), and Dock 11 (DE). Her work has been commissioned in Seattle by On the Boards, City Arts, Velocity Dance Center, and festivals in Utah, Idaho, Montana and Capetown, Africa. She has received residencies from White Oak Dance Project through the Field (NYC), and in Arts Monastery (IT). In 2010, she founded Jessica Jobaris & General Magic, a dance-theatre company dedicated to fostering artistic risk, interdisciplinary collaboration, and community connection through movement. Jessica is deeply inspired by Anna Halprin, and is certified in Expressive Arts Therapy through Halprin’s Tamalpa Institute. She has been teaching yoga for the past 17 years, holds a BFA in Dance (cum laude) from Cornish College of the Arts and a MA in Counseling from The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology. When not choreographing, she offers individuals and couples therapy through her private practice, Good Grief Therapy, LLC, in Seattle, WA. Her ongoing choreographic research bridges psychological and therapeutic processes, advancing her inquiry into how the psycho-spiritual dimensions of movement expression can reveal and alchemize the individual and the collective.
*Photo by Sarah D. King
Olivia Anderson studies dance in her kitchen / on the stage / in the street / on the bus / in her tears / in the leaves / as spirit calls her to do so. Olivia is 25 but sometimes she feels 16 and 80 at the same time. She has taught young adults at the Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences and the University of Washington (they teach her a lot). Her passion for physical storytelling has led her to perform and collaborate with artists such as dani tirrell, Keyes Wiley, Alicia Mullikin (EL SUEÑO), Alice Gosti (Malacarne), and many others. She has presented her own solo works in CO- Show 8, bloodsugar, and BOOST Dance Festival. Olivia holds a BA in Dance from the University of Washington. Olivia owns a great curiosity that drives her love of people. The world, and Olivia, are both not ready for Olivia.
*Photo by Allina Yang