FSU Alum Choreographic Fellow Darrell Jones, Juried Bessie Award Recipient

The Bessie Awards, also known as the New York Dance and Performance Awards, annually honors exceptional dance and related performance by independent artists. On Wednesday, July 17, 2013 the Bessie Awards Annual Press Conference announced nominees and presented two awards (“The Bessies Awards Announce 2012-2013 Nominees“, Dance/NYC). After recognition in The New York Times‘s “Darrell Jones and Joanna Kotze Win Bessie Awards for Choreography“, The Florida State University College of Fine Arts congratulates MANCC’s FSU Alumnus Choreographic Fellow Darrell Jones, 2013 Juried Bessie Award recipient. Jones will be honored at the 29th Annual Bessie Awards on Monday, October 7, 2013 at 8:00pm at the legendary Apollo Theater in New York City.

Darrell Jones premiered his award-winning work Hoo-Ha (for your eyes only) on May 23, 2013 at Danspace Project (NY). Leading up to the Danspace Project performance, Jones spent multiple weeks at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC), working alone, with students and with his case of Chicago-based performers, developing the new evening-length work. In a short video produced by MANCC, “Research for Hoo-Ha (for your eyes only)“, Jones uses words to describe the work. He initially described the movements as “voguing” and “improvisation… to create states in the body that are recuperative… that are sustainable”.

During his MANCC residency, Jones was assisted by New York-based playwright, director and dramaturg Talvin Wilks and FSU Ethnomusicology Ph.D. candidate, Carlos Odria. Odria helped examine the genderization of sound in the body and the role that sound will play in the new work. In another description of Hoo-Ha, Jones explained its “rhythmic intensity… inner-play of rhythm between the mover and the musician… and the rhythm of the feet”.

In a final lingual expression of the work, Darrell Jones says

[quote]”Hoo-Ha is the release of the oppressed feminine in the male body”, “it involves the idea of gender… but energy is the thing that needs to unleash”.[/quote]

Congratulations again to MANCC’s FSU Alumus Choreographic Fellow Darrell Jones, Juried Bessie Award Recipient!

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Darrell Jones, MFA 1995, is a Florida State University Alumus; his father, Dr. William R. Jones, a distinguished FSU faculty who passed away on July 13, 2012.

Darrell has performed in the United States and abroad with a variety of companies such as Bebe Miller, Urban Bush Women, Ronald K. Brown, Min Tanaka, Ralph Lemon and KOKUMA DanceTheater.

He has collaborated with choreographers (Angie Hauser, Jeremy Wade, Onye Ozuzu), writer (Cheryl Boyce-Taylor), musicians (Jessie Mano, Brian Schuler) and designer (Mawish Syed) in dance films, documentations and interactive multimedia installations. In addition to his collaborative work he continues to work in solo forms.

Along with performing, Darrell has taught workshops and master classes in dance technique and compositional processes throughout the United States, South Africa, United Kingdom and South Korea. Darrell is presently a full-time faculty member at the Dance Center of Columbia College in Chicago.

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The Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC), at the FSU School of Dance, is a choreographic research and development center whose mission is to raise the value of the creative process in dance.