Jamie Grace Davis — Movement Research & Performance
A site for dance, improvisation, and the live art practice of Jamie Grace Davis — choreo-geographer, somatic practitioner, and movement researcher working at the edge of the visual and the kinetic.
Dynamic Range
At the core of improvisation is a single, radical act: responding to what is actually here.
Dynamic Range is the practice of that — the cultivated capacity to meet the moment as it shifts, to alter course without losing ground. When the path changes, when conditions change, when everything changes — how do we move? How quickly can we find a new direction without bracing, without freeze, or collapse?
In a time of profound and ongoing disruption, this is not metaphor. It is a physical, embodied inquiry into resilience — not as endurance, but as active, alive responsiveness. The body that knows how to redirect is the body that knows how to remain.
The painting is the performance.
The performance is the painting.
It's all music and we're never not dancing
Practice
Jamie Grace Davis is a visual artist, movement researcher, and somatic practitioner with over twenty years of professional practice. A third-generation Bay Area artist, she studied at Otis College of Art + Design and went on to found the Ex Nihilo collective, a platform for interdisciplinary work at the intersection of visual art, performance, and somatic inquiry.
Her practice spans large-scale paintings, site-specific installations, performance, and movement research — unified under the concept of "choreo-geography": the study of how bodies navigate space, time, and each other, and how that navigation constitutes its own kind of mark-making.
Improvisation is the through-line. Not as technique but as art historical position — a commitment to the unrepeatable present as the site of creative intelligence.
Performance History
Bi-annual participation in Arte Expuesto, 2024–2026.
Site-specific performance work rooted in landscape, place-as-score, and the choreography of natural systems.
Collaborative performance with Lauren Bon and Metabolic Studio, working at the intersection of ecological systems and live art.
Movement research and workshop facilitation in Thailand, exploring somatic improvisation across cultural and geographic contexts.
Improvisation-based performance in the Sonoran Desert landscape with Desert Movement Arts. One of three National Water Dance pieces created through this collaboration.
A performance created for blind and seeing audiences together — an investigation of how different perceptual registers share the same space and time.
The originating thesis body of work from Otis College of Art + Design: Prescience and the Art of Knowing Before Knowing.
An international exhibition and performance body of work spanning 13+ exhibitions across Paris, Cairo, Monterrey, Oslo, Berlin, and beyond.
2015
"Saudade" — performed at Cité des Arts for The Coming Waves, Paris, France
"Chains" and "Lifeline" — Residual Objects: I Still Miss You Every Day, Darrington, England
"My Lunch with Hannah" — Same River Twice, Salon Café Tech, Paris, France
2016
"To Catch a Memory" — The Nickel Show, New York City
"Performance for No One" — New York City
Scene performance for Jen DeNike, Queen of Narwhals — Bombay Beach, California
2017
"Hour Glass Conversations" — Bombay Beach, California
"The Tempest" — Masami Teraoka's Pussy Riot Theatre
"Limerance" — UKS, Oslo, Norway
"La Sabylla" — Ex Nihilo residency, Greve in Chianti, Italy
2018
"Prescience" — Berlin, Germany
"The Long Walk" — Berlin – Thessaloniki
"3 Graces" — Antheon-Pantheon, Thessaloniki, Greece
"Cave Stay" — Mt. Olympus
2019
"The Coming Waves Retrieved" — Tel Aviv
"Les Voyageurs" (or Seekers) — Cairo, Egypt
"So Close You Can't See It" — Entrance Cube, Bombay Beach, California
2020
"Broad Daylight" — Desert Movement Arts, Palm Springs
2023
"Where We Leave Off" — Bombay Beach, California
Movement Lineage
Every movement practice carries ancestry. These are the lineages that inform the work — teachers, methods, and bodies of knowledge that continue to shape how Jamie moves, teaches, and researches.
Scott Kuhagen
A somatic movement practice rooted in the body's molecular intelligence. Jamie has been certified to teach Molecular Movement since 2013.
Constance Clare-Newman
Ongoing collaborative inquiry with Alexander Technique teacher and somatic practitioner Constance Clare-Newman, co-founder of Desert Movement Arts.
Various lineages
The art of negotiating shared weight, momentum, and space — a foundational practice in the field of improvisation as performance.
Somatic & movement lineage
A choreographic practice: bodies arranged in space and time to reveal the hidden orders of systems. Jamie approaches constellations as movement research.
Offerings
Molecular Movement is a somatic practice developed by Scott Kuhagen that works with the body's own intelligence at the most elemental level — below the habits and compensations of everyday movement, into the fluid, alive, responsive nature of tissue and cell.
Jamie has been certified to teach Molecular Movement since 2013 and offers sessions for individuals, movers, artists, and anyone curious about the intelligence of their own body.
90 min
One-on-one session exploring your body's molecular intelligence. Available in person and remotely.
Drop-in
Ongoing group sessions open to movers of all backgrounds. Contact for current schedule.
Intensive format
Half-day and full-day workshops available for studios, schools, and arts organizations.
Contact
For inquiries about sessions, workshops, collaborations, or performances, reach out directly.