Shayla-Vie Jenkins is a Philadelphia-based performer, maker, educator,
poetry lover, writer, and mama. She is grateful for her life in dance, having
performed for a decade with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company and in
inspiring projects with renowned artists such as Faye Driscoll, Susan
Marshall, Moriah Evans, David Gordon, Sage Ni’Ja Whitson, and Yara
Travieso to name a few. Jenkins’ work also includes performances with
modern dance titans–Merce Cunningham Trust’s Night of 100 Solos, Jose
Limon Dance Company’s solo Chaconne and Yvonne Rainer’s
reconstruction of Part of Some Sextets. Jenkins was an Assistant
Professor in the School of Dance at the recently shuttered University of the
Arts and is currently guest teaching at Bennington College. Her creative
research explores the intersection of Blackness and somatic presence,
with her choreographic works embodying performance as a ritual act of
mourning and catharsis. In 2023, she was awarded a Pew Center for Arts
& Heritage grant for her site-specific work, On Buried Ground, which
honors the lives of freed and enslaved congregants at the historic Christ
Church. The work premiered to a sold-out run at the 2024 Philadelphia
Fringe Festival.
