Jessie Jeanne Stinnett is a dancer, choreographer, Climate Reality Leader, and founder and co-artistic director of Boston Dance Theater. Her work translates complex socio-political and environmental issues into embodied, community-centered performance experiences. Rooted in collaboration, her practice brings together dancers, scientists, visual artists, and activists, with recent projects focusing on climate justice and the impacts of sea level rise on coastal communities. Jessie holds a BFA from The Boston Conservatory and an MFA from Trinity Laban Conservatoire. Her work has been presented by institutions including the Metropolitan Opera, Tate Britain, and Boston Baroque Opera, and supported by major national foundations. Central to her practice is accessibility and equity, offering low-cost public performances, open rehearsals, and paid residencies for artists from communities most affected by climate change. Elisabeth Schilling is a dancer and choreographer working across movement, contemporary music, design, and visual art. Her transdisciplinary projects are developed through close international collaboration and long-term research into texture, sound, and relational systems. Her work spans stage productions for black box theatres, choreographic scores for urban space, and experimental formats for visual art contexts, with a strong emphasis on audience encounter and site-specific engagement. Founded in 2016 in Luxembourg, her company has toured extensively, presenting nearly 230 performances in 19 countries, from major European capitals to rural regions. Elisabeth’s practice foregrounds accessibility, responsibility, and interconnectivity, using choreographic structure to reflect broader societal dynamics. She maintains long-term artistic partnerships with TRIFOLION Echternach, Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, and Philharmonie Luxembourg, where she regularly develops community and youth-oriented projects.

Listen – the dance

“Listen – the dance” is a proposition, a laboratory, an exploration. After years of verbal exchange and reciprocal dreaming, Jessie Jeanne Stinnett (United States) and Elisabeth Schilling (Germany / Luxembourg), two international choreographers, have joined forces to explore a mutual curiosity – the relationship of music and dance. Jessie and Elisabeth will makea new dancework in collaboration with a TBD female contemporary German composer (in Elisabeth Schilling’s network), who will electronically work Hildegard Bingen scores in a contemporary way. A creation residency, supported in part by Goethe-InstitutBoston Studio 170, will take place in Germany in 2025 and serve to create the framework for the new piece, which will be premiered in 2026 when Jessie Jeanne Stinnett returns with her company Boston Dance Theater to Germany as a full company.

 

To Mom, I Want to...is a collaborative theatre project initiated by playwright Jiayun Zhuang, active in China and the US, together with the Berlin-based collective Nomadic Minutes (CAO Kefei, ZHANG Deng, ZHOU Niannian, and LIU Shiyu—artists born in China across four different decades, now residing and working in Germany).

With a focus on the relationships with their moms, the project examines the interplay between these theatermakers’ diasporic experiences in Germany and their sentiments toward their motherland. It explores how individuals continually traverse temporal and physical boundaries, information asymmetry, and sociocultural differences between their home and host societies. In the post-pandemic context, the project also probes into the anxieties associated with uncertain mobility, the heightened sensitivity of negotiating dual identities, and a perceived trend towards cultural deglobalization. Supported by Shanghai’s Theatre YOUNG and Berlin’s Ballhaus Ost, the production will debut in both cities in 2025.

The Making of “To Mom, I Want to...”

Performance Documentation: Rene Staebler (Berlin)
ZOU Xueping (Shanghai)
Video Editor: Wenhua Shi
Subtitle Editor: ZHANG Deng

Coproduction partners: Jiayun Zhuang (China/US) and Nomadic Minutes — CAO Kefei, ZHANG Deng, ZHOU Niannian, & LIU Shiyu (Germany)

HEATHER KAPPLOW from Allston will complete an artist residency at the ZK/U Center for Art and Urbanistics (Berlin) in November/December and then travel on to Hamburg to develop a project together with the performing artist, cultural worker and researcher Danja Burchardt, which will form the artistc research basis for a future-oriented project dealing with ephemeral artistic interventions, that honor our subtle ways of creating culture in our daily lives.

See how Heather talks about the Studio 170 | Germany experiences: