Janessa Clark is a German-born New Yorker currently working in Stockholm. She holds an MA (Hons) in Performance Practices and Research from London's Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and a BFA (Hons) in Dance and Choreography from the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University where she also received the Award for Excellence for her undergraduate work. She founded and directed the New York City-based dance company, Janessa Clark/KILTERBOX, from 2001-2012 and in 2012 Janessa dissolved that company in order to form a new choreographic platform under her direction called nomadthenewcompany, which worked internationally with a changing group of collaborators until 2017. Forgoing a new moniker, Janessa has decided to continue creating work under her own name.
As a performer, Janessa has collaborated with Tino Shegal, Gibney Dance, Noemie Lafrance Sens|Production, and Laura Peterson Choreography. She has also collaborated on performative photographic/visual projects with Martin Cooper, Christopher Matthews, Lior Lerman, Beronika Tybell.
Janessa’s choreography has been presented throughout New York including at Danspace Project (Out of Space), Dixon Place, Dance New Amsterdam, NYU’S Tisch School of the Arts, WOW Cafe Theater, the DANCENOW Festival; in London at the Webber Douglas Performance Space, in San Francisco at CounterPULSE, and throughout the Northeastern US in addition to appearing in the 2004 short film Squeeze Play directed by Chiedu Egbuniwe. Internationally she has toured throughout Europe and was the only American choreographer invited to perform in the 2006 MASDANZA Festival in the Canary Islands of Spain. Janessa has been the recipient of several prestigious arts grants including the Harlem Stage’s Fund for New Work, two Estrogenius commissions from Manhattan Theater Source, a WOW Cafe Theater commission, a 2006 Thompson & Knight Foundation grant, and the 2009 Women at Work Award from Gibney Dance.
As a pedagogue, Janessa has taught at Dance New Amsterdam, Steps on Broadway and New York University's Summer Dance Festival in New York, the University College of Dance (DOCH) and Balletakademien, in Stockholm and in Cape Town, South Africa and Yerevan, Armenia. She has also been on faculty at prestigious performing arts academies in Arizona, Connecticut and Massachusetts. As an arts administrator, Janessa has worked with Gibney Dance, David Dorfman Dance, Alexandra Beller/Dances, Deganit Shemy and Erica Essner Performance Co-Op. She was the assistant producer for the 2012 Brink Festival in London, and has an additional background in programming and curatorial practices.