JASON AKIRA SOMMA

Jason is a practicing director, photographer, and choreographer based in the NYC. Merging his two backgrounds as a visual artists and choreographer he has been experimenting on ways of transcending dance from the ephemeral state on stage to the walls of galleries. His film work has been featured on the Sundance Channel, Independent Film Channel, PBS, NY Dance Film Festival, MTV Europe, American Dance Festival, Dance Theatre Workshop (NYC), Seoul (Korea) Film Festival, SPEX Magazine (Germany), Cinedans Festival (Amsterdam) and in the Performatica Festival (Mexico). His photography and film work have also been featured in The Deitch Project (SoHo), P.S. 1 (MoMA), Robert Altman Gallery, Chrysler Museum of Art (Norfolk, Va.), and the Anderson Gallery (Richmond, Va.) His photography work has also been featured in numerous periodicals and magazines in the U.S. and Europe to include the New York Times, Dance Magazine, Dance Europe Magazine, Village Voice, Time Out NY, and LA Times to name a few. Jason has been commissioned by the BBC Bigscreens Moves festival in the UK and was a guest artist at the Center of Contemporary Art (CCA) in Glasgow. Jason was also the first American to receive the Rolex Arts Initiative for Dance and has been working under the mentorship of Jiri Kylian over the past 2 years. He recently collaborated with Jiri Kylian on a dance piece commemorating the Nederlands Dans Theatre’s 50th anniversary and will be collaborating on two new works with Jiri in the coming year. His recent live dance piece “Frances Wessells, a Portrait of 91 Years” just premiered at the Saddler Wells Theatre in London and will be touring the European circuit. He has recently set work on the Lyon Opera Ballet, and has been invited to be a guest artist at the Robert Wilson Watermill Foundation to showcase the very first free-floating-interactive-holographic-film-installation. He will also be collaborating with Robert Wilson by choreographing and directing 5 short films to be shown at the Guggenheim Museum. When not performing or creating Jason has given numerous lectures internationally at universities on “Arts and Science/Performance and New Technology.” He has had the unique opportunity to be a guest consultant for the University of Glasgow in the Neuroscience department for a research study focusing on how the perception of movement affects brain imaging and transcranial magnet stimulation.