Jesse Zaritt
Jesse Zaritt's work engages drawing as dancing - a visual and physical practice linked to dreaming, drafting, and materializing futures. His choreographic, performance and teaching practices research the ways in which excessive, contemplative and resistive dance practices change how movement arises in the world and how dancing participates in processes of social transformation. A series of solo works made between 2008 and 2019 interrogate attachments to Jewish ritual and community, seeking to queer dominant paradigms of familial/national belonging, religion, gender and sexuality. Zaritt currently works in creative dialogue with Sara Shelton Mann.
Zaritt has performed his solo work in Taiwan, Uruguay, Russia, Korea, Germany, New York, Japan, Mexico, Israel and throughout the United States. His solo Binding was the recipient of three 2010 New York Innovative Theater Awards—Outstanding Choreography, Outstanding Solo Performance, and Outstanding Performance Art Production. He has performed with the Shen Wei Dance Arts Company (NYC, 2001–2006), the Inbal Pinto Dance Company (Tel Aviv, 2008), and in the work of Netta Yerushalmy (NYC, 2009–2016) and Faye Driscoll (NYC, 2010–2015); he was an artistic adviser for Driscoll's Thank You For Coming projects (2014-2019). He created duet works in collaborative partnerships with Jumatatu Poe (2012-2015), Mark Haim (ADF commission, 2015), and Katie Swords (2015-1019). Zaritt is an Associate Professor at the University of the Arts, having previously been the inaugural 2014–2016 Research Fellow in the University’s School of Dance. He has taught nationally and internationally at schools and festivals including Bard College, Hollins University and the American Dance Festival.