Dance Faculty
Shayla-Vie Jenkins
Photo credit: Paul B. Goode
About
Shayla-Vie Jenkins is a performer, maker, educator, poetry lover, writer, and mama. She performed with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company from 2005-2016, contributing to the creation and premieres of thirteen new works. Jenkins has also worked with Bebe Miller, Faye Driscoll, Susan Marshall, Moriah Evans, James Allistetr Sprang, David Gordon, Sage Ni’Ja Whitson, Yara Travieso, and Yvonne Rainer among others. 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, Pennsylvania. The work premiered in the Philadelphia Fringe Festival in 2024. She is the recipient of the 2025 Viola Farber Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Jenkins holds an M.F.A. in Choreography and Performance from Smith College and a B.F.A. through the Ailey/Fordham B.F.A. Program. She was an Assistant Professor in the School of Dance at the University of the Arts. Currently on faculty at Bennington College’s BFA Dance Lab, Jenkins is a writer with thINKingDANCE, a Philadelphia-based collective that produces a digital journal of writing on dance.
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