BIOGRAPHY

Jessie Owens is a performing artist, choreographer, and a structural integration and embodiment practitioner. Her work as an artist is rooted in her desire for candidness and intimacy with herself and her collaborators. She finds deep meaning in effort and risk-taking and these are elemental in her movement practice and performance work. She is the founder of ERGO/movement, a performance project based in Vermont and creates site-specific works, as well as works for stage, studio, film, orchards, and small spaces. In addition to ERGO/movement, Jessie collaborates and performs with many other Vermont-based artists. She holds a BA in Dance and a minor in German Studies from Smith College, and a graduate degree in Health Arts and Sciences and Embodiment Studies from Goddard College, where the focus of her research was on embodied adaptability. Jessie teaches embodiment and myofascial self-care practices, leads retreats, and is the proprietor of Fulcrum Structural Integration and Myofascial Bodywork, where she helps people to remember how to live more fully in their own bodies. With an insatiable appetite for learning, she is a perpetual student of fascia and human movement. She lives in the woods, surrounded by her non-human neighbors, who are her constant teachers.

Jessie found her way into dance when she took her first West African dance class in 2000 when she was 21 years old. Moved beyond measure, she has since allowed dance to help her shape and design her life. From 2002 to 2012, she performed with Burlington’s Spielpalast Cabaret, a non-profit dance and theater company modeled after German Weimar Era cabarets, and was the group’s art director and co-producer from 2005 until 2013. She co-produced performances annually in Burlington and throughout Vermont, as well as the group’s venture to the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland in 2011. She founded ERGO/movement in 2015 after completing her bachelor's degree in dance at the non-traditional age of 35. Jessie was a founding board member of the Vermont Dance Alliance and served as Vice President from May 2017 until March, 2022.