Jaqueline de Melo Silva
was born in Coimbra, Portugal and grew up in North Carolina. Jaqui received their first technical dance training as in adolescent with Ballet and Contemporary influences through the lens of competitive performance. They studied Art, Design, and performed in the Winterguard(2013) at Western Carolina University, and holds a B.A. in Interior Design(2016). Jaqui has been studying, researching, and experimenting with Contact Improvisation since 2018 and joined a cohort of artists for a 6 month intensive residency at Oberlin College from January through July of 2022. They continue to attend intensives and workshops with a focus on improvisational dance and movement. Their artwork engages with Contact Improvisation performances, ranging from duets to group ensembles. They co-plan and organize artist led residencies and facilitates Contact Improvisation jams, workshops, and classes. Their artwork explores the intersection of multidisciplinary forms.
Their creative work and life explores the boundaries of movement as alchemy, transforming energy and creating dance / visual art through a process of movement exploration, analysis and multidisciplinary influences. As a dancer, mover, and performer their personal practice is rooted in the experiential crossroads of physical connection and collaboration between bodies in motion. As a writer and poet, their works are typically free verse, heavy in imagery, and deeply personal.
Jaqui is committed to cultivating sensation, presence, spontaneity, playfulness and curiosity in their creative work. Through performance, facilitation, teaching workshops and classes, they invite fellow movers of all experience levels to co-create dynamic, intimate and investigative movement experiences. Jaqui is fascinated by the endless possibilities for creative self-expression that arise when we allow ourselves to move and be moved by one another. With reverence for the transformative power of dance and embodiment, they strive to create spaces that invite us all to be fully present, vulnerable, and alive together.
As a traveling multidisciplinary / interdisciplinary artist, Jaqui frequently exists at the intersection of many different communities. Currently Jaqui is residing in Central Ohio.