Larissa Velez-Jackson (LVJ) is a NYC-based choreographer and multi-platform artist. She uses improvisation as a main tool for research and creation. Her practices yield dance, sound, speech, and deep humor, making contemporary art’s critical discourse accessible to audiences. LVJ has presented work at numerous NYC venues such as: Bushwick Starr, Roulette, New Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Art and Design, Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project, American Realness Festival at Abrons Arts Center, and The Chocolate Factory Theater. In 2011, she launched a song-and-dance collaboration with her husband Jon Velez-Jackson called Yackez. Yackez most recently presented their two act theatrical event at New York Live Arts in March 2017. Described in New York Magazine’s blog, Bedford and Bowery, “Whether it’s rapping, dancing, or throwing down in the (wrestling) ring, their work is high-energy, silly, odd, and even chaotic at times, going from spectacle to cartoon to pop culture critique and back again.”

The year 2016, Velez-Jackson’s tenth year of making experimental dance, fulfilled the famous Martha Graham adage “it takes ten years to make a dancer,” or in this case a choreographer. In 2016, LVJ was awarded the prestigious Foundation for Contemporary Art’s “Grant to Artists” award, The Award (mentoring initiative 2016-2017), a Gibney Dance Center DIP residency, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Process Space residency (for Yackez), Mount Tremper Arts Watershed residency (for Yackez), and was nominated for a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Emerging Choreographer. After which she was a choreographic Artist in Residence at the historic Harkness Dance Center at 92Y from 2017-18. She has been a Movement Research Artist in Residence from 2018-2020 and prepares for a new commission with the Chocolate Factory Theater in 2022, researching self and community care and healing through her newly named Star Pû Method (f.k.a Star Crap Method). This new work for LVJ Performance Co. is also supported by the Shonberg Fellowship at The Yard in Martha's Vineyard as well as most recently, a Caroline Hearst Choreographic Fellowship at Princeton University (2021-2022).

LVJ is a Boricua-American originally from Newark, New Jersey, and a recent cancer survivor, committed to the healing and transformative potential of art and integrated body/mind practice. She is honored to have most recently been awarded Dance/NYC's Disability. Dance. Artistry Residency for 2022.

COURSES TAUGHT:
Performance 

LINKS: 
https://vimeo.com/147207384
larissavelez.com
yackez.com
instagram: @larissatwitta