Member Spotlight

JESSIE

Levey

by Chara Huckins, daCi USA Member Liaison

Jessie Levey grew up in New York City, with a dancer mother who took her along to dance rehearsals and performances. Her mom toured a lot when Jessie was young. Jessie’s first formal dance classes were at Margaret Craske’s Manhattan School of Dance, followed by the 92nd Street Y and then the Merce Cunningham and Ruth Currier Studios. She attended Walden High School where the arts were part of the school curriculum, allowing her to dance four days a week during the school day, in addition to her after-school classes. She started teaching dance while still in high school, working as an assistant teacher for younger students. After high school she attended Sarah Lawrence College where she earned a BA in Liberal Arts with a Concentration in Dance.

After college, she danced with a number of downtown dance companies in New York. She particularly loved the five years she spent working with choreographer Dani Nikas and the process of diving deeply into the meaning of the work. Later, she and her husband made a big decision to move out of New York City to the country. They decided on West Park, a small town 80 miles north of New York City in the Hudson Valley. In describing this transition Jessie said, “you have to live your life, and not let it slip by.”

Twenty years ago, she did just that by buying a house with a separate building on the property. This became Barefoot Dance Center. She started by offering creative and modern dance classes, later adding choreography, dances of the African diaspora, ballet, and yoga. The program now includes two youth performance groups. She addresses the challenge of providing wide-ranging dance perspectives and experiences by bringing in guest artists and choreographers. Another challenge is trying to maintain student numbers in a small town. This was especially true during the Covid pandemic where she had to find new ways to engage her students.

Jessie decided to continue her learning trajectory and went back to school, at the same time her kids were in college. She received an, MFA in dance from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2017. When asked to reflect on her path, Jessie says that her “love for dance comes from a magical sense of flow that happens when your mind and body connect. It is akin to a spiritual connection.”

She also noted that women tend to underestimate their accomplishments. Starting a school and holding fast to her core educational beliefs is an accomplishment. She wants children to learn in healthy ways, and considers every child who passes through her dance studio an artist from the moment they arrive. She is proud to be able to say, “My students feel prepared when they go to college dance programs because they have had the technical and performance background and the creative piece. They know how to improvise, they know how to choreograph and they know how to think compositionally.”

Jessie discovered daCi through Anna Mansbridge, director of Kaleidoscope Dance Company in Seattle and longtime daCi member. She and Anna created a collaborative dance work over Zoom near the beginning of the Covid pandemic, joining their two youth companies. An account of their fruitful collaboration is on the Barefoot Dance Center website here.

Meanwhile, Jessie is thinking about going to the National Gathering this summer, and is definitely hoping to get more involved in daCi and connect with like-minded dance educators.