Openhaus Athletics was founded in 2017 to create spaces where people could come together to experience destination dance performances, workshops, and retreats. The company has evolved over the years, growing new programs and offering arts management services for community projects focused on environmental awareness, land-based healing, spatial justice, and cultural exchange. Openhaus Athletics is dedicated to creating inclusive spaces for all bodies, minds and spirits. We believe in the power of direct action and are excited to continue this work in new ways. Join us on the journey!
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Founder Jes DeVille is an Afro-Latiné artist, educator, and administrator working across mediums to explore relational literacy through dance-theatre and environmental design. A NYC native based in the Bay Area since 2008, DeVille has for nearly two decades created works that challenge dominant narratives around race, gender, sexuality, and the ways communities engage their local landscapes. Informed by their ancestry and surrealism, DeVille’s work critically examines systems of power while celebrating the unity, beauty and resilience of diasporic peoples. Drawing on familial stories of migration and their experiences as a Queer person of color, their work investigates the living histories of body and land. Their creative pedagogy and daily rituals herald performing arts as a liberatory practice for all.
Jes is a member of the American Circus Alliance, with previous works presented on stage and screen at the Apollo Theater, Fox Theater Oakland, for PBS and MTV among others; Also providing all-ages learning journeys at colleges, community centers, senior homes, and schools nationwide. DeVille is grateful to be uplifted as a regenerative artist within Design Science Studio’s inaugural cohort and as an annual visiting artist at University of California, Irvine. In 2021 they were named Updraft AIR by vertical-dance company Bandaloop. They continue to weave an interdisciplinary dance practice with each collaboration. In their free time Jes enjoys gardening, adventuring with family, swimming beneath waterfalls, and dreaming up wild futures.