About

With attention to process, form, and nuance, JPMW creates and presents dance and dance happenings that affirm the meaningful state of our subtle, fragile bodies in relationship to place, phenomena and the present moment.

We use improvisational and authentic movement practices as investigative methods towards sensation, pleasure, and the experience of seeing and being seen. These collaborative, real-time practices dissolve traditional structures of artistic process as well as habitual, learned movement patterns, and engage the work instead in an ongoing conversation with the body as memory, culture, and place.

We are curious about transferring the raw and spontaneous experience of process into performance, and in the artistic activation of shared space as a form solidarity and collective care.

History

Jennifer Perfilio Movement Works (JPMW) was founded in 2016 by Jennifer Perfilio, as a commitment to fostering the vitality of dance and dance performance amidst the dramatically changing pace of San Francisco’s artistic landscape. JPMW creates and presents work rooted in collaborative process, community engagement, and support for other artists.

Most recently, amidst the pandemic, its waning, and the post-pandemic, JPMW produced an ongoing series of free, outdoor public art events, that activate the expansive urban landscapes of Golden Gate Park, including the Music Concourse, the Dahlia Dell, and the Great Meadow of the Botanical Garden. Rooted in an ethics of collective care, these performance happenings explore and present ways of sharing space rather than occupying it.

Since it’s inception, JPMW has been presented locally in the Bay Area by dance organizations, including Dance Mission Theater, LEVYdance, Studio 200, RAWdance Concept Series, Shawl-Anderson Dance, PUSHdance, and Epiphany Dance Theater. In 2023, JPMW was commissioned by Epiphany Dance Theater to create and perform a site-responsive work that interacted with the dynamic space and exhibits of the Human Phenomenon Gallery of the SF Exploratorium, as part of SF Trolley Dances 20th Anniversary production. JPMW was also commissioned by composer Andrea Densmore, to choreograph several works for the contemporary, multi-genre opera entitled Eve, and performed at the Palace of Fine Arts Theater in 2022. In 2018 JPMW commissioned a work by NYC choreographer, Jonathan Kinzel, entitled Duet for L and S​, which was premiered as an informal showing at ODC Studios. We have been granted artist residencies through the Resident Artist Workshop (RAW), and Summer Performance Festival (SPF), which culminated in a series of site-specific performances reflecting on precarity in the Tenderloin.

Artistic Director

Jennifer Perfilio is a multi-disciplinary performer, dance educator, choreographer, and the founder and Artistic Director of JPMW. She holds a BA in Dance and Spanish Language from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Originally from New Jersey, Perfilio has lived as a dance and teaching artist in San Francisco since 1999. As a free-lance artist, Perfilio has performed in the works of many choreographers in NYC, Nashville, and San Francisco, including Aura Fischbeck, Christy Funsch, Amy Foley, Irene Hsi, Charles Moulton, Mary Carbonara, HT Chen, Mark Dendy, Donna Rizzo, and Andrew Krichels, among others. She has a long history as a site-specific dancer, committed to intersecting art and public space through performance work with choreographers Stephen Koplowitz, Alexandra Beller, Jess Curtis/Gravity, Katie Faulkner, and for 10 years with Kim Epifano and Epiphany Dance Theater, in varying roles as performer, Assistant Artistic Director, teaching artist, and liaison for Kids on Track. Her teaching is rooted in improvisational forms, kinesthetic knowledge of place, and anatomy-based inquiry.