JANESSA CLARK is a Brooklyn-based, BESSIE Award-nominated multimedia artist. Her practice combines dance, video, new technology, and language to create movement-driven projects for stage, screen, and site-specific environments. The work created nourishes a desire to challenge traditional modes of choreography and spectatorship through co-authorship. As a performer, Janessa has worked with artists such as Tino Sehgal, Gibney, Michael Cole, and Laura Peterson Choreography among others. She has also collaborated on multimedia projects with Alexandra Beller, Christopher Matthews, Mary Trunk, and Alex Yudzon.

Janessa’s recent highlights include a 2025 SLIP Residency at Moulin/Belle, a 2025 Harvestworks Technology Immersion Program Fellowship, a 2024 Lake Studios Berlin residency, a 2023 BAX Summer Space Grant, a 2022 Visiting Artist Residency at Loyola Marymount University, a 2021 BESSIE Award nomination for Outstanding Production for her video dance project Communion, the 2020 Crojik’s Largesse from the Croft Residency and a 2019 Artist Fellowship in St. Petersburg, Russia through CEC ArtsLink. Janessa’s choreography, films, and installations have been presented throughout the US and Europe including at the Barry Art Museum in Norfolk, VA, the Berlin Soundance Festival, HERE Arts Center, ADF’s Movies by Movers, and at Bates Dance Festival. She has received grants from Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Swedish Arts Council, the Croft Residency, and Harlem Stage among others. Currently, Janessa is part of the Theater Arts faculty at Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she just premiered her dance and technology piece VOLTA. She has also redirected part of her research into the possibilities of emergent technology and A.I. for choreography.

Janessa resides in Brooklyn.

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