Somatically driven, Jonathan Meyer builds idiosyncratic movement palettes as crafts plying the waters of strange lands that can delight, baffle, and open new vistas. A gymnast in high school, Jonathan Meyer discovered dance at Oberlin College with Nusha Martynuk and Ann Cooper Albright. After a capoeira immersion in Brazil with Maestre Medicina, they completed a Cunningham-focused program at UNC Greensboro. Meyer has danced with The High Risk Group, Pierre-Paul Savoie, Asimina Chremos, and The Seldoms. In addition to dance, Meyer has worked with at-risk youth in wilderness therapy programs in Utah teaching primitive skills, and is a Certified Practitioner of Body-Mind Centering®. In 2002 Meyer created Khecari in Taos, New Mexico. In 2006, they moved to Chicago, and shortly thereafter began their intensive collaboration and partnership with Julia Rae Antonick, which inculcated Meyer to the value of critique, rigor, and fierce compassion in artmaking. Meyer and Antonick co-direct Khecari,presenting their choreographic collaborations as well as their individual work. Meyer has been a CDF Lab Artist and RDDI participant, a Meier Achievement Award winner, and an artist in residence at Djerassi, Ragdale, Hambidge, Abigail, The Kohler Art Center, Links Hall, The Chicago Cultural Center, and The Chicago Park District.

a radical embracing of somatic personhood

all people (human and non-) are of equal worth
(equity: moving towards equality may need unequal means)
all are vital to the greater ecosystem we all share
beauty means seeing one loved or lovable
all people are lovable and therefore all are beautiful

body is vital

we are here to be bodies together
in vulnerability and power
in shared space
in shared experience

art is vital

we are here to make and share art
(aesthetics: how values show up in the work)
to expand our collective sense of the possible
to create worlds, detailed and nuanced, with rigor
that finely focus attention
(sloughing assumptions, the quotidian, our normative burdens)
on the abstract, non-linear, non-narrative
so as to empower audience agency

crafting safe(r)/brave(r) spaces and experiences

to invite those entering in with informed consent
to plunge into the painful as well as the joyous
so as to offer pathways out of patterns that no longer serve
and strengthen our intersubjective bonds

we mean all to feel welcome and wanted at our work

not all individuals will have an interest in our art
but disinterest or dislike should be individually determined
(where it is demographically determined, we have failed)

reclaim “morality”

it is just this:
making choices
based on compassion and love

Photo (credit: Dan Merlo)