One year ago, in the early morning hours of Sunday, October 27th, my dad took his last breath. It still doesn't feel real. I still can't believe he's gone. I feel his loss everyday like a part of me is missing. But in his honor and memory, I share the words I spoke at his [...]
Author: jen graham
movement journal | february 12, 2025
https://youtu.be/bVfrG9QOflk?si=khOpcmcMXw7QQgL5 [unedited] For us, as human beings, the one connecting thread, the one through-line of it all, is the human form, our human form, our bodies. The conduit through which each of us senses and experiences – the world outside of us and the world inside of us. The receiver through which each of us [...]
Saturday, February 8, 2025 | In response to the new administration’s plans for The Kennedy Center
The Work of Art is to expose truths – often hard truths. To embody and embolden hidden realities – undeniable realities – of our cultures, our histories, our injustices, our resistances, our prevailing strengths, our joys, our excitements, and our celebrations - the realities of what it is to exist on this planet in the [...]
movement journal | january 22, 2025
https://youtu.be/AN3wqu0vlCQ [unedited] For years now, I have been trying to untrain myself. But I didn’t realize at first that that’s what I was doing. This coming September marks my 40th year of “trained” dancing. Of course, we know those first years aren’t necessarily training. But they are. They’re the early stages of immersion. They’re indoctrination. [...]
movement journal | january 14, 2025
https://youtu.be/314WsVzh9wk [unedited] My body gets confused so easily now. Things will be connecting and flowing and working together to facilitate and support and then suddenly there’s some glitch in the system. Something tries to operate independently or organize in some other way and then the whole of me gets lost, confused, muddled. I have to [...]
movement journal | january 13, 2025
https://youtu.be/tdEnz39EYEM [unedited] And we’re back. And I’m starting to feel… better? Better than what? Better than I was. Different. Anew? Refreshed, somehow. No matter. Truly, no matter. It all ebbs and flows. It all shifts and changes. And now I’m breathing and feeling again, but in a new way. And I may find myself feeling [...]
But I have also learned…
https://videopress.com/v/A6uSjOZm?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=true "Reclaimed" from ambiguous gaps, 2018 Over the course of my life as a woman, I have been constantly and continuously told, taught, and treated as if the way that I look, my visible, physical body, is an offering to the world. That my face and demeanor be pleasing. That my physicality be both beautiful [...]
everything and nothing, all at once

the light has changed what once was no longer is and what could be is now everything and nothing all at once there is nothing but this moment the turning leaves the cooling breeze and the sun a new place in the sky
Monday, April 20, 2020 | It comes in waves…
I can't help but think about the physical loss we are all experiencing & just how vastly different many of our coping strategies are. Some of us are sharing & posting more on social media. Some have dug deeply into our work. Some have spent our days making those previously rare phone calls, texts & [...]
Finding my way back…
https://videopress.com/v/Q1A9Gf8s?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=true Until last week it had been months, maybe even over a year, since I had danced. And I don't mean demonstrating something for a class or putting some choreography together for a recital, but rather being truly, deeply inside of my own body with the intention of exploring and creating something of substance, of [...]
