Grant Recipients Viola Farber Award Dance 2025

Shayla-Vie Jenkins

Shayla-Vie Jenkins is smiling against a black background with her hands raised in front of her body and clasped together. She is wearing a dark top under soft, neutral lighting.
Photo by Anna Maynard.
  • 2025 Viola Farber Award
  • Dance
  • Dance Artist, Performer, Teacher, and Choreographer
  • Born 1982, Raleigh, NC
  • Lives in Philadelphia, PA
  • She/Her

Artist Statement

My creative research centers Black aliveness and somatic presence, with choreography and durational improvisation as channels for ritual, mourning, and catharsis. My performance practice is one of acceptance—of messy, resilient life in the constancy of change. Performing invites me to inhabit vulnerability and thrive in the unknown. It is a call to witness and be witnessed, to connect with others, and to explore my multiplicity. 

Performing can be crushing. Performing can be alchemical. The body can be both a vessel and bridge. Dancing and dance-making are profound responsibilities; a delicate exchange between self and surroundings, charging me to hold vital the acts of transmission, interpretation and archive. My artistry anchors me deeply in my Blackness and fleeting NOW. Dancing for me is spirituality in action.

I love dance and the emergent, always arriving, unraveling impossibility of its demand.

- December 2024

Biography

Shayla-Vie Jenkins is a performer, maker, educator, poetry lover, writer, and mama. She is grateful for a life in dance. Jenkins is known for her power, precision, and fearlessness as a performer, along with her generosity and interest in pushing the boundaries of the art form. 

She performed with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company from 2005-2016, contributing to the creation and premieres of thirteen new works. During her tenure, the company received New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards for their performances of Chapel/Chapter at Harlem Stage, New York, NY (2007) and D-Man in The Waters at The Joyce Theater, New York, NY (2013). She has restaged notable Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company works at universities in the United States, and continues to teach and mentor for the company.

Jenkins has also worked with Bebe Miller, Faye Driscoll, Susan Marshall, Moriah Evans, James Allister Sprang, David Gordon, Sage Ni’Ja Whitson, Yara Travieso, and Yanira Castro, among others. She performed in the Merce Cunningham Trust’s Night of 100 Solos: A Centennial Event at Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, NY (2019), and has danced in restagings or reconstructions of works by José Limón and Yvonne Rainer.

In 2023, Jenkins was awarded a Pew Center for Arts & Heritage Project Grant for her site-specific work, On Buried Ground, which honors the lives of freed and enslaved congregants at the historic Christ Church of Philadelphia, PA. The work premiered in the Philadelphia Fringe Festival in 2024.

Jenkins holds an M.F.A. in Choreography and Performance from Smith College, mentored by Angie Hauser, and a B.F.A. through the Ailey/Fordham B.F.A. Program, co-founded by Denise Jefferson. Jenkins was an Assistant Professor in the School of Dance at the University of the Arts. She is currently on faculty at Bennington College’s BFA Dance Lab and Princeton University and is a writer with thINKingDANCE, a Philadelphia-based collective that produces a digital journal of writing on dance.

Shayla-Vie Jenkins kneels on a beach in a neon green outfit, pressing her fists into the ground as she extends her legs sideways. The sky is overcast and, in the background, additional performers dressed in similar neon green outfits crawl across the sand. Beachgoers are seen in the distance walking along the shoreline.

Performance still from REPOSE at Beach Sessions, Rockaway Beach, New York, 2021. Choreographed by Moriah Evans. Performed by Shayla-Vie Jenkins. Photo by Maria Baranova.

Shayla-Vie Jenkins leans backward, holding a makeup brush to her face while surrounded by a cluster of intertwined bodies. The performers are layered in close proximity, creating a composition of overlapping limbs and clothing. Shayla-Vie Jenkins is at the center of the performance, which is lit with warm lighting.

Performance still from Weathering at New York Live Arts, New York, 2023. Choreographed by Faye Driscoll. Performed by Carlo Antonio Villanueva, Shayla-Vie Jenkins, and Jennifer Nugent. Photo by Maria Baranova, courtesy of New York Live Arts.

Four performers are shown bracing a mattress on all sides while Shayla-Vie Jenkins stands on one foot in the background with both arms extended outward. The stage upon which they stand is comprised of several stacked mattresses. The performance space is brightly lit and another performer stands in the foreground of the shot, appearing blurry.

Performance still from Part of Some Sextets at Gelsey Kirkland Arts Center, New York, 2019. Choreographed by Yvonne Rainer. Performed by David Thomson, Emily Coates, Timothy Ward, Liz Magic Laser, and Shayla-Vie Jenkins. Performa Commission. Photo by Paula Court; courtesy of Peforma.

Four performers dressed in white clothing move across an open stage that is dimly lit, each illuminated by blue and orange toned lighting. The space features high ceilings, an archway, and ornate architectural elements. One of the performers standing in the far back of the stage is captured mid-motion with their arms extended outwards.

Performance still from Oba Qween Baba King Baba at Danspace Project, New York, 2019. Choreographed by Sage Ni’Ja Whitson. Performed by Shayla-Vie Jenkins, Paloma McGregor, Kirsten Davis, and Sage Ni’Ja Whitson. Co-commissioned by Danspace Project and Abrons Arts Center. Photo by Ian Douglas.

Shayla-Vie Jenkins and Juliette Jones stand on a stage in front of a backdrop featuring blue vertical textured patterns. Juliette Jones, dressed in a light blue body suit, stands upright with arms extended at their sides, while Shayla-Vie Jenkins, dressed in yellow, stands on the right leaning to the side with her head tilted and arms curved.

Performance still from hand in mine, Shayla-Vie Jenkins (choreographer), at Little Island Amphitheater, 2021. Performed by Shayla-Vie Jenkins and Juliette Jones. Photo by Tony Turner.

Shayla-Vie Jenkins faces the audience as she performs on a raised circular platform under intense red lighting. She is captured in motion with her arms are outstretched and one leg bent backwards.

Performance still from La Medea at BRIC House, New York, 2017. Choreographed by Yara Travieso. Performed by Shayla-Vie Jenkins. Commissioned by PS122 and co-presented with BRIC and Dance Films Association. Photo by Andrea Rodriguez.