"like a crazy dream you just can't shake. At the center of it all, there's a furious little heart that pumps equal parts vitriol and grace."- Karen Campbell, The Boston Globe
In the work of Zoe Juniper, the body is neither subject nor instrument, but a permeable site through which the world quietly passes. Her practice unfolds across open terrains—shorelines, grasses, exposed ground—where movement is not imposed upon the landscape, but drawn out of it. Gesture emerges as a form of attunement: a listening made visible. Limbs extend into atmosphere, register pressure, yield, recalibrate. What appears composed is in fact contingent, shaped by the subtle agencies of air, gravity, distance—forces that do not declare themselves, yet inscribe every motion.
Her dance resists sequence and culmination. It gathers in states rather than phrases—held only insofar as they can remain legible before dispersing again into the field from which they arise. Form becomes temporary coherence, a fleeting articulation within a larger continuum of change. Across the work, the body does not perform for the environment; it is continuously rewritten by it—its presence thinning, thickening, dissolving—until what remains is not choreography, but a condition: a body briefly made visible within the weather of the world.
A figure drawn taut against the horizon—
not placed within the field, but attuned to it.
In Eleven, Zoe Juniper composes with air, with distance, with the quiet pressure of ground beneath an extended line. The body becomes a kind of instrument—calibrated, listening—its limbs registering the subtle insistence of gravity, the slight drift of atmosphere.
Balance is not achieved; it is courted.
The gesture does not resolve; it lingers in suspension, a held note thinning into space.
What remains is neither movement nor stillness, but a condition—
a fleeting concord between body and world, already dissolving as it appears.
The critically acclaimed the devil… combines Scofield’s disciplined physical distortion of classical technique with Shuey’s distilled visual design to create a heightened sense of reality. Supported by Morgan Henderson’s hypnotic, original score incorporating live sound design by Kamran Sadeghi, and lighting by Jessica Trundy, the devil…. creates a world shaped by accumulating, external forces as the company delves into a haunting physical space shaped by brutality and grace. The Stranger has called it “a beastly ballet, both harrowing and gorgeous.” -Brendan Killey. the devil… includes a ghost like corps de ballet of ten local pre-professional dancers auditioned and rehearsed in each city, including students at University of Washington, Walnut Hill School for the Arts in Boston, and Barnard in New York.
About the Zoe | Juniper:
2015 Guggenheim Fellow Zoe Scofield is a dance and visual artist based in Seattle Washington since 2002. Born and raised in Gainesville GA, Zoe began ballet at a young age, instilling in her a deep love and interest in structure, discipline and performances’ ability to create a transformative experience. Zoe attended Walnut Hill School for the Arts, an arts high school in Boston MA, receiving a Monticello Choreography Fellowship and graduating with high honors in dance. Afterwards, she danced with Prometheus Dance in Boston and Atlas Moves, directed by Bill James in Toronto Canada. Zoe earned an MFA in Dance from the University of the Arts as part of their inaugural class.
In 2005 Zoe began working with video and visual artist Juniper Shuey on video, photographic and dance collaborations shown in visual art galleries, museums and theaters. They have been commissioned and presented by national and international arts centers such as, On the Boards, PICA, Trafo House of Art, Dance Theater Workshop, Bates Dance Festival, NYLA, Spoleto Festival, Jacob’s Pillow, Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Body Festival (New Zealand), Yerba Buena Center, Columbia College Chicago, DiverseWorks, The Frye Art Museum, the MET Museum, NY Philharmonic and many more. They have taught workshops and given lectures on dance, photography, collaboration and installation throughout the US and internationally.
Throughout her career Zoe has been awarded residences, awards and grants from 4Culture, Alpert Award, Artist Trust, Case Van Rij, City Arts Magazine, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, The Glenn H. Kawasaki Foundation, a Lifetime Achievement Fellowship and President's Award from University of the Arts, The MacDowell Colony, MAD Air, MAP Fund, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, National Performance Network, New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, On the Boards, Princess Grace Foundation, Seattle Foundation, Seattle Magazine, Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, The Guggenheim Foundation, The Mellon Foundation, The Stranger Genius Award, Trust for Mutual Understanding, Velocity Dance Center, among others. Zoe has taught at Velocity Dance Center, Mark Morris Dance Center, Gibney Dance Center, Walnut Hill School for the Arts, Boston Conservatory, Columbia College, University of Utah, University of Colorado at Boulder, and served as a guest panelist for Dance Critics Association, PICA’s Educating Dance Audiences, gloATL Tanz Farm, and Cornish College of the Arts. Zoe and Juniper are the co-founders of Lo-Fi Annual Arts Festival and What We Talk About… an in-process feedback session for artists of all disciplines. Zoe created FORM/S in 2018, a creative workshop for artists to teach working professionals and pre-professionals in the visual and performing arts.
