2023 Mission Hill Arts Festival: Jalen Bunch

JALEN BUNCH – Dance Performance

– WORLD PREMIERE of “Finding Joy: A Celebration in Dance”

“Jalen Bunch are a talented, engaged, and innovative emerging artist who have chosen dance as their primary creative medium to influence their audience.”

Jalen Bunch (They/Them) are a multi-disciplinary Black, queer, non-binary, artist from New York, currently studying to receive their B.F.A. in Musical Theatre from the Boston Conservatory at the Berklee School of Music. .

They have been exploring the arts since age 10 in various community and regional theaters, and notable stages like Radio City Music Hall, opening for the Christmas Spectacular, and Carnegie Hall, singing alongside the rock band Foreigner. In 2020, they received a Certificate of Artistic Achievement from Dance Up! a national platform for emerging teen choreographers for their work with the Trinity Dance Company. The award was given in recognition of the dance’s theme, development, composition, invention, and performance of their original work “The Giving Tree”. They are most known for their role as Lucas/Demogorgon in the original off-Broadway cast of Stranger Sings!, The Parody Musical. Most recently, they directed The Vagina Monologues with their dear friend, Eli Douglas, in collaboration with V (formerly Eve Ensler) and the V-Day Team, at the Boston Conservatory.

For their performance at the Mission Hill Arts Festival, Bunch has welcomed the challenge to depict exuberance through movement. Bunch invites their audience to ask themselves where they find joy and how do we find our own?

Bunch desire to be a modernizing artist brought them to partner with Instruments of Things, the pioneer creators of the SOMI-1, a wearable sensor that transforms movement into sound in real-time. Bunch’s performance will unfold a unique and exceptional day of exuberance and dance like no other!
In the words of Bunch:
“For many people all over the world, the emergence of COVID-19 stole the exuberance from our lives. It separated families and friends, took away loved ones and brought a shadow of grief and loss on a global scale. However, we, humans, did what we do best: survive. We found a reason to smile and come together and laugh and dance— even if it had to be 6 feet apart. Finding Joy is a celebration of triumph and survival. It is about laughing together, crying together and sharing together.”