BIOGRAPHY

Jesse Factor’s award-winning work has been presented internationally at the American Dance Festival, Bates Dance Festival, Art Omi, Avant Goodyear, Boston Contemporary Dance Festival, Fresh Fruit Festival, Graham for Europe, Harvest Chicago Contemporary Dance Festival, House of Yes NYC, Midwest RADfest, New York Live Arts - Live Artery, Opera House Arts, OUTsider Festival, Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, Red Eye NYC, and Queer Spectra Festival. Jesse’s work has been supported by the National Dance Project, National Performance Network, National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron, New England Foundation for the Arts, Opportunity Fund, and Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council.

Factor’s obsession with the cultural phenomenon of the diva figure, iconicity, and remembering provides an entry point into his solo work. His growing repertoire centers artifice, nostalgia, and cross gender-identification. His ongoing ‘Marthaodyssey’' and “MetaMarthasis” series delight in the dissonant intersection of Martha Graham’s high modernism and the pop spectacle of Madonna. Other works such as ‘Relic’, ‘Mommie Queerest’ and ‘Kween Kong’ embody the monstrous and sublime.

Factor danced professionally with the Martha Graham Dance Company, Graham II, National Touring Company of CATS, and earned a BFA from Tisch/NYU, MFA from the University of Iowa.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I wish to let the body speak for itself through the transformations and effort involved in artifice, exaggeration and stylization. The work invites a shared experience for transformation, disruption, and euphoria.