Celebrating Jessica Berson at Yale
Friday February 28, 2020: 2-5 pm
Dance Studio
Broadway Rehearsal Loft
294 Elm Street
New Haven, CT
Please join us in New Haven for a gathering to celebrate the life and work of Jessica Berson (1972- 2019), hosted by the Performance Studies Working Group at Yale.
Between 2011-2016, Jessica made major contributions to building the dance studies curriculum at Yale. She designed and taught such new courses as “Theories of Embodiment,” “Dance, Commerce, and Capital,” and “Dancing Desires,” and made her mark on the core course, “The History of Dance.” In 2016, she hosted an extended residency for dance-theater artist Tim Miller, and in 2017 she studied disability and sexuality in the UK on a Fulbright Fellowship. An inventive artist-scholar and a warm and generous colleague, she danced, directed, and authored numerous articles and the monograph The Naked Result: How Exotic Dance Became Big Business (Oxford University Press, 2016).
We will gather together to read excerpts from Jessica’s work, remember her incredible teaching, and make space for anyone who wishes to say a few words in her honor. Afterward, we’ll gather at The Study (1157 Chapel Street) for drinks.