Guest Artist Speaker Series: Global Perspectives and Artistic Practice Jes DeVille

This series intends to engage the UCI community with national and international participants and focuses on the diversity of artistic practices.

Jes DeVille (they/them) is an Afro-Latinx choreographer, educator, and creative producer, who has been building community through dance and event-making for 17 years. After establishing their early career through The Juilliard School via mentorships with choreographers Stanley Love and Fiona Marcotty, DeVille broadened their work attending The Hip Hop Dance Conservatory (H+), later stepping into an arts management role as their Special Projects Coordinator circa 2005.

They are currently an experiential design fellow through Buckminster Fuller Institute’s Design Science Studio, where their practice includes innovating an all-ages outdoor dance curriculum as part of University of California, Irvine’s Emergent Media Design Lab. This work comes in response to limited in-school activity due to Covid-19 nation-wide pandemic regulations. They founded Openhaus Athletics in 2017, which combines dance, design, technology, and visual art to breathe new life into commercial brands. Clients have included Google, Dropbox, GoPro, YBCA, City of Sunnyvale, and SF Film Festival. To bolster this work, DeVille acquired an EcoTherapy certification in 2020 through the EarthBody Institute, studying under ecopsychologist Ariana Candell, LMFT, R-DMT.

DeVille’s artistic focus on eco-embodiment and environmental design has offered an access-point for a variety of science, place-based, and immersive tech-driven endeavors. Named 2021 Artist In Residence for vertical dance company Bandaloop’s inaugural UPDRAFT fellowship, they have also operated as a choreographer for PBS series Dragonfly TV-Kids Do Science, MTV series Re-Made, New York Hip Hop Dance Festival at Apollo Theater, Lagunitas Circus, and Big Bang! California Academy of Sciences After Dark. DeVille has also been a production lead for SF City Hall Centennial Gala, World Education Congress, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival’s children’s carnival – Cirkus Quirkus, Sea of Dreams at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, Game Developers Conference and New York Dance Festival; as well as a corporate team building facilitator with outdoor urban adventure group The Go Game. Their experience as a dance educator and program director has spanned K-12 schools and senior living communities throughout the Bay Area and beyond, with a strong focus on bridging socio-economic and cultural gaps by facilitating participatory performances, creative movement camps, athletics coaching, and musical theater initiatives for educational institutions, prioritizing those that are historically underserved.

DeVille became Managing Director of Epiphany Dance Theater in 2019, where they have worked with the Board of Directors to lead the organization through administrative and brand management as well as the various pandemic negotiations surrounding annual event San Francisco Trolley Dances. Their responsibilities include but are not limited to grant writing, financial reporting, event co-curation and production, Kids on Track curriculum development, and regular review with contracted artists.

Photo Credit: T.D. McCoy