Interviews from Yale University Radio WYBCX
Jmy James Kidd
Jmy James Kidd makes dances, textiles and community spaces. She is the founder of Pieter Performance Space in Los Angeles, CA. Choreographic commissions include REDCAT, The Kitchen, Made in LA 2014, The Broad, The Getty, Pacific Standard Time 2013. Residencies include Massachusetts Institute of Technology, BOFFO, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. She is visioning a Music and Dance Temple to be built somewhere sometime in the next 10 years. She frequently collaborates with her wife, musician Tara Jane ONeil (musical collaborator) Insta: @jameskidd_studio.
Perin Hailey McNelis is a dancer and botanist based in Patagonia, Arizona. Perin holds a BFA in dance from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Perin started working with James Kidd in 2012 as a dancer in the Sunland Dancers group and as the PR manager for Pieter Performance Space.
Perin has performed at the Skirball Cultural Center, Machine Project's Mystery theater, the Hammer Museum's Made in LA biennial, the Getty Museum, the Broad Museum and various galleries. Perin returned to her home in Arizona in 2015 to pursue interests in regionally specific ethnobotany and ecological work in the borderlands. Perin joined the Borderlands Restoration Network horticulture team in 2015 and now is the Assistant Manager for the Native Plant Materials program where she manages the seed lab and coordinates art+ecology programming. Perin is passionate about somatic practices, activism and geography - particularly in the form of land stewardship.
Books mentioned in the interview were: The Wild Kindness and A Pattern Language.
video still from BRINK. 2019, Created and performed by Nickels Sunshine, Jmy James Kidd and Dezmon OMega Fair. Video Directed by Brian Getnick 2019. Costumes by Jmy James Kidd. Sound Score by Dezmon Omega Fair.
Current work, iphone video still from rehearsal October 2020 in Landers, CA titled "Believers" Jmy James Kidd (dancer/choreographer), Perin Hailey McNelis (dancer/collaborator), Tara Jane ONeil (musical collaborator)