Jack Ferver
The support of the FCA has made a great impact on me. Of course fiscally, but perhaps even more importantly, psychologically. I felt seen. The timing of receiving this grant was critical. I have experienced a fair amount of homophobia in response to my work. As I have persisted, I have noted a trenchant resistance as well as attempts at erasure from certain critics and institutions. To be seen and honored by a committee that I had not actively sought out, gave a feeling of balance to the derisive critique I also hadn't actively sought out.
- Jack Ferver, December 13, 2016
Artist Statement
I am an artist using theater, performance art, and dance to interrogate and indict an array of psychological and socio-political issues, particularly in the realms of sexual orientation, gender, and power struggles. Through high-energy, often violent choreography and the juxtaposition of hyperbolic prose with hyper-real dialogue, my work explores the tragicomedy of the human psyche, blurring boundaries between fantastical theatrics and stark naturalism, character and self, humor and horror.
As an artist, my practice is based in the exploration of Otherness. My works, while frequently humorous, are built to reflect the psychological toll and distress of xenophobia and displacement. I create by first engaging the psychological concerns of the work, then formally working with raw emotional content to create text, choreography, and direction—what I call the “trauma method." Mirrors often appear in my works, and that is precisely what I view my role as an artist to be: A mirror.
- December 2015
Biography
Jack Ferver is a New York based writer, choreographer, and director. His genre defying works, which have been called “so extreme that they sometimes look and feel like exorcisms" (The New Yorker), interrogate and indict an array of psychological and socio-political issues, particularly in the realms of sexual orientation, gender, and power struggles. His visionary direction blurs boundaries between fantastic theatrics and stark naturalism, character and self, humor and horror.
Ferver's 2016 Grants to Artists award supported the creation of a new work, I Want You To Want Me (2016), a ballet-play exploring themes of gender, sexuality, and horror, which premiered at The Kitchen, New York. Other notable premieres include Two Alike, at DiverseWorks, Houston (2011); Mon, Ma, Mes, at French Institute Alliance Française's Crossing the Line festival, New York (2012); All Of A Sudden, at Abrons Arts Center, New York (2013); Chambre, at Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY (2014); and Night Light Bright Light, at American Realness festival, Abrons Arts Center, New York (2015).
His works have also been presented in New York City at Danspace Project; Dixon Place; the Museum of Arts and Design, as part of Performa 11; The New Museum; and Performance Space 122. Domestically and internationally, Ferver has been presented by the American Dance Institute, Rockville, MD; the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, Boston; the Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art, Portland, ME; and Théâtre de Vanves, Vanves, France.
Ferver has received residencies and fellowships from the Maggie Allesee National Center of Choreography at Florida State (2012); Baryshnikov Arts Center (2013); the Watermill Center (2014); the Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art (2014); Live Arts Bard, the commissioning and residency program of The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College (2014); and Abrons Art Center (2014-2015).
Ferver is a Professor at Bard College and Guest Faculty at New York University. He has also taught at the State University of New York at Purchase and has set choreography at The Juilliard School.
