JONATHAN MEYER
ARTISTIC STATEMENT
You will be traveling to a strange place. It will be disconcerting; we mean to dislodge you from the familiar. But we will oversee all your travel arrangements and provide you with the tools you need to negotiate this baffling, beautiful, and eerily familiar realm. Because in strange lands you remember things you thought you’d forgotten. Because on journeys you discover hidden strengths. Because as a child you assembled strange and magical kingdoms the loss of which your adult self may grieve. To this vast unknown, bring courage, bring attention. However wildly the dark winds of this wilderness may blow, we will attend to you. There will be the flood of warmth in the wake of fear; there will be the pulsing thrill of discovery; there will be the sudden presence of that shuddering wonder that resides still in your cells. It is there in the resonance between the body seen and the body witnessing. It is there in the lived liquidity of the dance performance, each one’s body their ultimate source of authority: free to feel, to know, and to choose.
BIO
Somatically driven, Jonathan Meyer builds idiosyncratic movement palettes as crafts plying the waters of strange lands that can delight, baffle, and open new vistas. A gymnast in high school, Jonathan Meyer discovered dance at Oberlin College with Nusha Martynuk and Ann Cooper Albright. After a capoeira immersion in Brazil with Maestre Medicina, they completed a Cunningham-focused program at UNC Greensboro. Meyer has danced with The High Risk Group, Pierre-Paul Savoie, Asimina Chremos, and The Seldoms. In addition to dance, Meyer has worked with at-risk youth in wilderness therapy programs in Utah teaching primitive skills, and is a Certified Practitioner of Body-Mind Centering®. In 2002 Meyer created Khecari in Taos, New Mexico. In 2006, they moved to Chicago, and shortly thereafter began their intensive collaboration and partnership with Julia Rae Antonick, which inculcated Meyer to the value of critique, rigor, and fierce compassion in artmaking. Meyer and Antonick co-direct Khecari, presenting their choreographic collaborations as well as their individual work. Meyer has been a CDF Lab Artist and RDDI participant, a Meier Achievement Award winner, and an artist in residence at Djerassi, Ragdale, Hambidge, Abigail, The Kohler Art Center, Links Hall, The Chicago Cultural Center, and The Chicago Park District.
