ARTIST BIO

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.