The New York Dance and Performance Awards recently announced Lela Aisha Jones as one of four nominees for the 2017 Outstanding Emerging Choreographer Award. The Juried Bessie Award and Outstanding Emerging Choreographer Award will be presented at a press conference next week along with the announcement of nominees for five other categories.
“I am so very grateful for my family and all those who have walked this artist road with me—exchanging love, lessons, grace, and power,” Jones said. “I am grateful for those moments that did not go my way because they truly incited growth.”
A movement performance artist who intertwines personal history, diasporic movement, and social commentary, Jones is a proud Tallahassee, Florida native currently based in Philadelphia. As the founder of her creative home, FlyGround, the foundation of Jones’ artistic work is the individual and collective lived experiences of blackness as archived in and excavated from the body through dance.
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