Jenni Cockrell Oldham

Jenni Cockrell Oldham received her Master of Arts in Dance with a Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies from the University of North Carolina Greensboro in December of 2002.  She has been a member of Asheville Contemporary Dance Theatre since January 2003 and is a founding member of Moving Women.

During graduate school, Jenni’s thesis investigated female Butoh artists, which led her to be interested in the areas of both modern dance and Butoh.  She attended the American Dance Festival during the summers of 2001 and 2002 and attended the Bates Dance Festival in 2004 and 2005.  Jenni’s Butoh training includes intensives with SU-EN, Diego Piñon, and Hiroko Tamano.

Teaching is an important part of Jenni’s creative life as well.  She teaches modern dance at New Studio of Dance and has taught dance improvisation, Butoh inspired classes and workshops, and workshops using dance/movement to explore body image and self-esteem issues.  Jenni has also been a guest artist at the University of North Carolina Asheville, and teaches Pilates and yoga for the YMCA.  

Jenni has performed various styles of dance theater in many different settings, ranging from outdoor venues to large theatres such as Diana Wortham.  She performed in David Dorfman’s community based work Familiar Movements Family Project, and has been in a multitude of ACDT works including Looking for Frida, Obsession, Casa de Bernarda Alba, The Loves of Tina Modotti and Convent of the Devil.  She also performs in ACDT’s children’s theater works such as Puss in Boots and The Legend of Chocolate. Jenni has toured with the company in Holguin, Cuba and Merida, Mexico.

Jenni has choreographed and performed in her own modern and Butoh works as well, such as Strange Daughters and Red Girl Garden.  She has been featured in Julie Becton-Gillum’s Butoh solo K’eng-San-Ku.  Collaboratively, Jenni has worked with Kathy Myers and Erin Braasch on Veil of a Fractured Moon, and with Kathy Myers on Nu Shu Orchid.  Both pieces were created and performed for the Asheville Fringe Arts Festival in 2006 and 2007 respectively.  Jenni has been a creator/performer in the Asheville Fringe Arts Festival every year since its creation in 2003. 

Through her choreography, Jenni primarily explores issues and challenges presented to women in every day life, as well as the question of what it means to be human in all of its quirkiness and rawness.  In 2002, she won the Sally Schindel Cone Award for excellence in Women’s Studies for her solo Lover Carved of Bone.  Currently, Jenni continues striving to create unique works, using dance as a laboratory to investigate the quintessentially human in her own way.


 

  “I cannot do without the other; I cannot become myself without the other; I must find myself in the other, finding the other in me.”(Mikhail Bakhton)