JESSICA BAYNES

Movement specialist feels movement can express and communicate feelings, traditions, and values without a need for language.

Photo: BeccaWebb Photography @beccawebbphoto

"I grew up in an artistic household. My father was a professional Irish musician and music producer, so we regularly had artists from around the world come to our house to visit and record. At age four, I began studying Flamenco and Irish dance. I developed my studies in both artforms, competing in Irish dance for several years.

In high school, I started performing my first professional gigs on weekends as a Flamenco dancer, throughout Southern California with my supportive and masterful mentors, Stefanie and Gerty Rey. These teachers taught me about the cultural significance and context of dance through live-in apprenticeships, where they would integrate dance instruction with other lessons in cooking and pedagogy. At this time, I enrolled in San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts where I studied modern dance and ballet and found a passion for modern and contemporary dance. 

At 17, I went to the University of Utah to study Modern Dance. Within my first two months of college, I sustained a mild traumatic brain injury. In my one year recovering, I sought alternative forms of dance engagement from my traditional performance studies.

Professor Juan Carlos Claudio invited me to teach for his adaptive dance program, Grey Matters: Dance for Parkinson’s –an experience which piqued my interest in dance for health. It also led me to found the organization Healing in Motion Dance, a program that teaches adaptive ballet for participants with Multiple Sclerosis, stroke, and Parksinon’s Disease. In college, I also began working for a nonprofit called Movement Exchange, from whom I organized and taught classes in underserved communities throughout the U.S. and Panama. These experiences introduced me to dance as a means of advancing social justice.

When the pandemic hit, I found myself spending the start of my career teaching in virtual classrooms and socially-distant studios to pay the bills. It is at this point that I found a passion for pedagogy and educational leadership and began teaching for the University of Utah School of Dance and Ballet West. In November 2021, Ballet West promoted me to full-time faculty as their first salaried non-ballet artist on staff in their almost 60-year history.

There are many aspects of community engagement through the arts that I find both personally purposeful and also important for any community. Artistic community engagement can be used as a method to advance public arts accessibility, human connection, social justice, and cultural understanding.

To utilize dance as a means of raising awareness and funds, I sometimes present work whose proceeds go toward a specific cause. A few of the recent causes for which I have organized benefit classes or presented choreography include #StopAsianHate, Black Lives Matter, and aid for Ukrainian refugees.

I also find dance to be an incredibly powerful tool for cultural connection. I make a point of taking classes and experiencing dance whenever I travel. Movement can express and communicate feelings, traditions, and values without a need for language.

I now integrate these principles (accessibility, social justice, and culture) daily into my work as a dance artist. As an educator, I am working on encouraging my students to create art surrounding causes they personally care about, by modeling that in my own career."

@jessicabaynes_

TEDx Talk: How Integrating Ballet Into Physical Therapy Enhances Recovery from TEDx Salt Lake City 2019 Conference. Available on YouTube and TED.com.

Website: JessicaBaynes.com