About CJ
Image is a headshot of CJ, white non-binary person with short dark brown hair, brown round glasses, and dark brown lipstick looking into the camera with a soft, closed-mouth smile. They are wearing a jean button up shirt and a black blazer shown from the shoulders up.
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SAWTOOTH dancers Review:
"[CJ Jasen] displays a sensibility that’s intriguingly
off-centered and roomy. Discover this artist."
Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody
A.O. Movement Collective Review:
"[CJ Jasen] sings, very well.
...[CJ] turns the song 'Piece of My Heart' into an exhibition piece of passive aggression. She starts it with urgent sincerity and then develops that manipulatively."
The New York Times
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Lenapehoking, 2024
CJ (they/them) is a dancer & singer/vocalizing performance human. CJ has been Philadelphia-based since 2018, and currently co-steers a collective called Queerobics West Philly, a dance-based accessible community class and performance project that was awarded a 2023 Teaching Grant from The Movement Foundation, and a 2024 grant from TRANSFORM Business. CJ is an accessible event listings coordinator and organizer with the clean air mutual aid org, Philly Breathes. They are a lead organizer of the new 2024 Mutual Air Festival (story on the Festival in the Philadelphia Inquirer linked here), an accessible community care festival and art show that raises funds for clean air mutual aid.
CJ has performed in cities across the US, and joined a commercial dance company on tour in Niagara Falls. They studied with such artists as Meredith Monk, Akira Kasai, and Carolee Schneemann before making their own performance things in NYC.
In NYC, CJ has worked as a dancer, singer, and collaborator with Oren Barnoy, the A.O. Movement Collective, and can be seen dancing in Schneemann's 2010 Judson Church retrospective archived at the New York Public Library.
SAWTOOTH dancers, CJ's NYC-based dance troupe who created work until 2016, received funding and support from Brooklyn Arts Council, The Field's Artward Bound Residency in the Catskills, 92nd Street Y Space Grant, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. CJ was a 2014 Artist-in-Residence in Réveillon, South Normandy, France.