"My work is deeply rooted in the act of ODE-MAKING — choreographing poems & love letters to the artistic treasures that have shaped our cultural landscape, breathing new life into the echoes of the past."
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Jessi Stegall (she/her) is a choreographer based between Chicago, IL and Boston, MA. She has been a choreographer-in-residence with DanceWorks Chicago, Boston Center for the Arts, the National Center for Choreography (Akron), New Dance Partners (Kansas City) Hot Crowd Dance Company, Little Fire Artist Collective, Fever Dream Dance Collective, Harvard ArtLab, National Parks Service, and was featured as one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” (2022). In 2024, she premiered her first evening-length (65 min) production, “The Theremin Vignettes”, at The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, MA, produced by Global Arts Live. In 2025 she will be an emerging choreographer at Springboard Danse in Pittsburgh, PA. Jessi’s approach to choreography is guided by ode-making: crafting poetic responses and love letters that honor and amplify the voices and visions that resonate through time. Her mission is to breathe new life into the echoes of the past, deepening our understanding of and connection to artistic treasures that have shaped our cultural landscape. As a dancer, Jessi has performed works by Raja Feather Kelly, Jill Johnson, Ilya Vidrin, Ali Kenner Brodsky, Mariel Pettee, and Jamila Glass. In addition to her work in dance, Jessi holds an M.S. in Bioethics from Harvard University with a focus in Narrative Ethics, a B.S. in Expressive Art Therapy from Lesley University, and is an alumna of Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.
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I currently approach dance-making as an act of ode: expressing curiosity for and paying homage to worlds built by others. The manifestation of this approach results in somewhat bizarre physical interpretations of real stories and artifacts that have been historically dismissed or overlooked. My guiding mission is to provide audiences an entry point into fields, studies, and narratives that they are not likely to encounter elsewhere. My work demands a high level of musicality, precision, and virtuosity. I believe my work is distinct in its rhythmically challenging and complex timing, strong incorporation of breath and vocal sound, and clear character development in nonlinear form. I infuse my work with humor and heartache, always aiming to produce high caliber work that is at once technically rigorous and wholly human.
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