Jess Humphrey

Jessica makes dances to leverage the profound potential of people moving together, deepening their relationships with each other and the world through the tenderness and vulnerability elicited by the creative process. Her movement research began in childhood with gymnastics and continues with dancemaking from various, shifting perspectives, and states of body~mind. Her dances are expressions of her engagement with contemplative/somatic practices, Integral Theory, and reverence for the work of those within whose lineages she moves. She co-facilitates Portal, a transborder platform for dances created through somatic and contemplative experimentation in Tijuana and San Diego alongside Briseida López Inzunza, Miroslava Wilson Montoya, and Gizeh Muñiz Vengel. She has co-created several evening-length dances over the past 20 years with artists such as Deborah Hay, Sara Shelton Mann, Guillermo Gomez-Pena’s La Postra Nostra, Leslie Seiters, LIVE, and throughout her 13-year collaboration with Eric Geiger. She has an MFA in Dance with a focus on contact improvisation and creative process from the University of Utah and holds certifications in Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis, Integral Facilitation (Diane Musho Hamilton, Rob McNamara), Dance-Specific Pilates (Rael Isocowitz, Karen Clippinger), and has studied Body-Mind Centering for nearly 20 years (Mary Lou Seereiter, Amy Matthews, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen). Jessica is a Professor of Dance at SDSU where she continues to learn through teaching (dancemaking, contact improvisation, somatics), researching (dancemaking and its potential for healing, psychophysical development, and spiritual deepening), and working with the Prison Arts Collective to bring arts education to incarcerated participants. 

www.jesshumphrey.com

Rebecca Bryant

Rebecca Bryant --improviser, dancemaker, and educator-- comes from a visual art background, and creates performances combining set and improvised dance with sound, text, video and objects. They are interested in blurring the lines that separate disciplines and addressing current social phenomena in their danceworks and teaching. Having worked extensively with the Lower Left Performance Collective, Bryant’s expertise in teaching ensemble and contact improvisation has lead them to teach workshops in New York, Toronto, Stockholm, Oslo, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Bogota, and at the Los Angeles Improvisational Dance Festival, West Coast Contact Improv Jam, Texas Dance Improvisation Festival, Contact Festival Freiburg, TransContact Festival (Romania), Kontakt Budapest Festival, and at over 25 universities across the US.  Bryant is a dance professor at California State University Long Beach, where they teach contemporary dance praxis, improvisation, somatics, and dance pedagogy. They have presented their danceworks in 27 states across the US and in 14 countries across Europe and North/Central/South America.

Jen Hong

Jennifer Hong (洪慧珍) BA in Chinese, Reed College Portland, OR, 2000. MFA in experimental choreography, UC Riverside, 2020. She has danced with many choreographers in Portland and Los Angeles: Minh Tran + Co, Laurel Jenkins, Rashaun + Silas, and Rosanna Tavarez, among many others. Major influences include Anna Halprin and Frey Faust, founder of The Axis Syllabus©. An initiated student of the Teacher/Wong Loh Sin See 黃老先師 of the Chee Choong 慈忠Temple in Malaysia, a Daoist/Confucian/Buddhist practice, she synthesizes spiritual, artistic, and scientific elements into her work and life. She co-facilitates the Santa Monica Contact Improv Jam and has taught CI and dance as a guest lecturer at UCLA, CalArts, CSULA, USC Gloria Kaufman, Middlebury, and UC Riverside.

Cheyenne Dunbar

Cheyenne "Amen" Dunbar is a Boxing and Muay Thai coach, Capoeira Angola A-kuolua (trainer), and Escrima y Machete practitioner (Afro-Colombian fencing), as well as an accomplished performing artist. Cheyenne has decades of experience as a martial artist, as well as being a lauded singer, musician, and dancer.

Holding a black belt in Kung Fu San Soo, Cheyenne has extensively studied the internal Chinese martial arts of Taijiquan and Ba Gua and has roots in wrestling (Roman/Greco) and boxing, with extensive professional Muay Thai training and experience.

Cheyenne has been singing and performing since the age of 8. First with the Brooklyn Boy's Choir, he began developing his voice; and has become a paragon of powerful vocal might both as a solo artist and in multiple Southern California bands spanning many genres.

Cheyenne's interest in movement beyond martial arts developed after being hit by a car at the age of 27. Due to a severe concussion, Cheyenne had to relearn, and refine both fine and gross motor skills again, and this sparked a lifelong study and fascination with movement. Following the path to healing, Cheyenne discovered Contact Improv dance, and is now a sought after teacher of the craft.

Cheyenne's life-long purpose is to support his community to empower them for self-expression, self-protection, and healthy living.  He believes that this is a human responsibility, more than a lifestyle.