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Vanessa Justice is a choreographer and performer living in New York City. She has staged works in and been commissioned by venues in US cities, NYC, and abroad.* In 2008, my copy world premiered in Salzburg, Austria, and toured to Poland and Germany. She was awarded a 2009 Joyce SoHo Artist Residency, and has recently been an Artist-in-Residence at the Liguria Study Center (Bogliasco Fellowship), the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance, Movement Research, and The Corporation of Yaddo. Ms. Justice was a Graduate Fellow of The Ohio State University, where she earned an MFA in Choreography in 2003. She received the 2001 Graduate Research Award from the Congress on Research in Dance (CORD) for her research on how choreography challenges normative beliefs about the body. Supported by a Watson Fellowship, she spent a year studying and performing in Taiwan, Indonesia, India, and Germany. She graduated from Pomona College (BA magna cum laude Religious Studies/Philosophy) after which she danced professionally for Hannah Kahn (1999).

Ms. Justice's background includes postmodern dance, modern dance, ballet and somatic practices. In addition to studying Western forms, she has lived and danced in non-Western cultures such as India, Nepal, Taiwan, Java and Hawaii. Neither rebelling against nor staying inside a pre-existing form, she makes work in relationship to dance history, history of representation and imagination, movement research, and culture.

Ms. Justice has taught courses at Long Island University (Brooklyn Campus), SEAD (Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance), The Ohio State University, and the University of Hawaii. She teaches contemporary technique, composition, experiential anatomy, improvisation, ballet, and pilates. She also maintains a private practice teaching Pilates.

*Venues in NYC include Joyce SoHo, Dance New Amsterdam, Danspace Project at St. Mark's Church (Academy Dances), BRIC, Movement Research at the Judson Church, and Kumble Theater for the Performing Arts. Other venues: The Republic Theater (Salzburg, Austria), Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Theater (Denver, CO), Sullivant Theater (The Ohio State University), Leeward College (Honolulu, HI), University of Hawai'i, University of Utah, Wesleyan University (Middleton, CT), Pomona College (Claremont, CA). Specific works have been supported by Movement Research (assisted by the Leonard and Sophie Davis Fund), OSU's Alumni Grants for Graduate Research and Scholarship, and OSU's Critical Difference for Women Grant.

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