Leslie Parker is a dance artist, performer, director, maker, improviser and educator holding a BFA from Temple University in Choreography and Modern dance technique and a MFA from Hollins University in partnership with the Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, The Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts and The Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company in Frankfurt, Germany. Leslie is a 2017 Bessie award winner and a Jerome Hill Foundation Artist Fellow 2019 -2021. She has a rigorous research and practice in dance forms derived of the African Diaspora. She designed “Moving Dialogue for Non-Violence” using dance art as a platform for Broadway Women’s House Shelter in Brooklyn, New York and at The Family Place in Saint Paul, MN. She is currently a member of the collective, Skeleton Architecture based in New York. Her director credits include co-director and choreographer for IHOTB MayDay Tree of Life Ceremony; choreographer for Jimmy & Lorraine: A Musing by Talvin Wilks; and Ping Chong and Talvin Wilks for Collidescope 4.0.

Additional credits include, crystal, smoke n’spirit(s) presented by Momentum: New Dance Works at Frey Theater St. Catherine’s University; Crossroads/Gateways pt 2. at the Walker Art Center’s Choreographer’s evening; Bone Womyn Traces in Black at Hollins University (Roanoke, VA) and at Southern Theatre; Ripen: Forbidden Truth In da Flesh Pt.2 at Pillsbury House Theatre “Mama Laurie’s Late Nite Series”; Center for Performance Research's Fall Movement Series (NY, NY); and New York Live Arts. Parker choreographed an original work, In Search of Colors, as faculty for University Dance Theater (UDT) at U of MN Theatre and Dance dept. Currently, Leslie Parker Dance Project, is in residence for Spring 2021 at Pillsbury House Theater and Pangea World Theater.

Fellowship Statement

I am a dance artist, performer, dance maker, educator and improviser, trained in and experimenting with an aesthetic rooted in the Black experience. I make dances that explore spirituality, identity and social justice to spark questions and conversations with and between people.  As an improviser, I invite observers to a real-time exchange through movement, sound, space and the body. Described by choreographer Bill T. Jones as “haunting,” former Director of Quixote Foundation, June Wilson describes the experience of “watching Parker’s work is like being a voyeur; the intimacy and emotional energy of her movement makes you want to look away and yet it’s impossible to stop watching.”

Photo courtesy of Leslie Parker.