John Jasperse is a dance artist living and working in NYC since graduating from Sarah Lawrence College in 1985. In 1989, he established John Jasperse Company, later renamed John Jasperse Projects to better reflect the nature of the organization’s ongoing work as a project-based production structure. In 1996, Jasperse created Thin Man Dance, Inc., a non-profit structure that supports the work of John Jasperse Projects (JJP).

John Jasperse’s work has been presented by festivals and presenting organizations in the U.S. including The American Dance Festival, Durham, NC; Diverseworks, Houston, TX; The Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, Burlington, VT; Museum of Contemporary Arts, Chicago, IL; On the Boards, Seattle, WA; Philadelphia Live Arts, PA; Summer Stages, Concord, MA; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA; and internationally in Australia, Brazil, Chile, Israel, Japan, Panama, Russia and throughout Europe, including La Biennale di Venezia; Cannes International Dance Festival; Dance Umbrella, London; EuroKaz, Zagreb; Kampnagel, Hamburg; Montpellier Danse; Tanz im August, Berlin; TanzQuartier Wein; Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt; and the VEO Festival, Valencia. In NYC, JJP has been presented at numerous venues including four appearances in The Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival at the Harvey Theater, as well as numerous seasons at Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project, The Joyce Theater, The Kitchen, New York Live Arts and Performance Space 122.

Through the aegis of JJP, Jasperse has created sixteen evening-length works: Within between (2014), Fort Blossom revisited (2000/2012), Canyon (2011), Truth, Revised Histories, Wishful Thinking, and Flat Out Lies (2009), Misuse liable to prosecution (2007), Becky, Jodi, and John (2007), Prone (2005), CALIFORNIA (2003), just two dancers (2003), Giant Empty (2001), Madison as I imagine it (1999), Waving to you from here (1997), Excessories (1995), furnished/unfurnished (1993), Eyes Half Closed (1991), and Rickety Perch (1989), as well as various shorter works including PURE (2008), Fort Blossom (2000), and Scrawl (1999) and projects in collaboration with other artists.

Jasperse’s work has received several prestigious awards and fellowships including a 2014 Doris Duke Artist Award; two New York Dance and Performance (“Bessie”) Awards—in 2014 for Within between in the category of Outstanding Production and in 2001 in recognition of his body of choreographic work; a 2011 US Artists Brooks Hopkins Fellowship; a Tides Foundation Lambent Fellowship in the Arts from 2004-2007; a 2003 Fellowship from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts; a 1999 Scripps/ADF Primus-Tamaris Fellowship; a 1998 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship; a 1998 Doris Duke Award; the 1997 Mouson Award by Künstlerhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt, Germany; three prizes in the 1996 Rencontres Internationales Chorégraphiques de Bagnolet; the Choreography Prize at the 3rd Suzanne Dellal International Dance Competition (1996) in Tel Aviv, Israel; and multiple fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1992, 1994, 1995-96) and New York Foundation for the Arts (1988, 1994, 2000 and 2010).