Dance & Drama
KJ is an educator, performer, collaborator, maker, and truth-seeker that sees movement as a vehicle for change and becoming. KJ earned a Master of Fine Arts in Dance and an Interdisciplinary Specialization in Teaching and Learning for Diversity, Social Justice, and Community Engagement from The Ohio State University. KJ served as a Graduate Associate with OSU’s Be the Street, a performance studies project on Human Mobility and Placemaking, and is the 2021 recipient of the Graduate Associate Teaching Award (GATA) from The Ohio State University Graduate School. KJ served as the MFA Graduate Student Representative for the Undergraduate School Committee and the curator and administrative lead for OSU’s premier Community Conversations series. KJ graduated Magna Cum Laude with a degree in Dance from Slippery Rock University and holds a certificate in Diversity, Intercultural, and Community Engagement from OSU and an Embodied Social Justice Certificate under the advisement of Rae Johnson, Rev. Angel Kyodo Williams, and Dr. Sara King, among others.
KJ has taught as a teaching artist across the Puget Sound including Velocity Dance Center, Bainbridge Dancer Center, Bremerton Dance Center, Cornish College of the Arts, Dance Fremont, and eXit SPACE School of Dance. KJ has had the privilege to perform with Seattle-based companies: Michele Miller and Catapult Dance, Marlo Martin’s BadmamarDANCE, and The Three Yells. Her freelance engagements range from Maya Soto, Nico Tower, Paige Barnes, Ellie Sandstrom, to Eddie Taketa, Daniel Roberts, Ursula Payne, and Jennifer Keller. Her work has been presented at PUSH Dance Company’s 2013 Spring Gala (CA), The BOOST Dance Festival (SEA), Bainbridge Performing Arts Center (SEA), The Ohio State University, and the National American College Dance Festival at the JFK Center for Performing Arts (D.C).
KJ’s teaching and research challenge present-day patterns of disembodiment. Through integrated practice, she engages the body’s social, familial, and cultural conditioning by activating sensation, emotion, and habitual nonverbal communication to imagine new ways of being together and in the world. Her research and facilitation value communal art-making, shared authorship, engaged citizenship, somatic literacy, the embodied impacts of oppression, inclusivity, and accessibility.