Bio
Jessica Pearl Asteria Bailey is a movement artist born and raised on the Westside of Chicago. Her dance background is rooted in African American social dance, hip-hop, as well as musical theater. She graduated from Princeton University in 2019, where she majored in Sociology and received certificates in African American Studies. She recently graduated from Antioch University New England, where she received her Master of Arts in Dance Movement Therapy: Couple and Family Therapy.
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As a Dance/Movement Therapist...
I provide movement-based workshops that support people with building social cohesion and trusting their bodies as a reliable source of information and expression. My goal is to create spaces that resituate dance and movement as an accessible, inclusive social practice that’s available to everyone as opposed to an exclusive activity only meant for those who are “gifted”.
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In order to do this, we use movement to learn the language of our body, working to understand how it speaks to us and responds to our thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Once we know the language of our bodies, we use movement to understand how we are impacted by our social, systemic reality. This entails developing an awareness of the ways we have become disembodied by systems of oppression and using dance/movement to create new, more affirming pathways of being.
As a Movement Artist...
I allow myself to be a channel whose purpose is to express the embodied memory of my ancestors, both chosen and blood-related. This purpose has challenged me to use movement as a tool for freeing myself and assisting others in their own freedom journeys. As someone whose movement foundation is built from African American social dance traditions, I am constantly thinking about movement as a language, ritual, and relational teacher. I do not believe in frameworks, techniques, or institutions that remove dance/movement/expression from the bodies of everyday people, placing only those who are exceptional on pedestals to be idolized and admired. Seeing and feeling myself move are how I know that I am alive! That I can grow! That I can change!
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