Jennifer Essex Director | Choreographer | Performer

About

Jennifer is a UK based, Canadian born, director, choreographer and performer. She specialises in work that is interactive, strikingly visual, joyful and collaborative. Recent work has focused on large scale participatory projects with community at their heart.

Need a quirky dance for your music video? An experienced movement director for your film? An expert in interaction? A performance that brings people together?

How Long Is A Piece Of String? (2022) is an interactive dance work for children and families. It incorporates midi technology so audiences can create music by holding hands with a friend.

HOME (2024), is a mass participation project with TeesDance. Over 3,000 participants from across Middlesbrough took part.

Selected Work

Artistic Director, Fully Booked Theatre

How Long Is a Piece of String (2022)

Fully Booked Theatre creates interactive theatre for children which joyfully plops the worlds of dance and poetry into the mixer and whizzes the two together. Our works have been performed at The Royal Opera House, Theatre Hullabaloo, Salisbury International Arts Festival, Stockton International Riverside Festival, and Greenbelt Festival. Jennifer has created three works for the company, Space Rebel Princess (2017), Once Upon a Wall (2019), and How Long Is A Piece Of String? (2021).

Senior Lecturer in Media and Performance, Teesside University

Jennifer teaches across a wide portfolio of television, film, and animation courses. Research projects include collaborative AHRC funded research on the impacts of social inequality on young people's health and wellbeing.

Artistic Director for HOME, a mass dance celebration in Albert Park with TeesDance

HOME (2024)

Artistic Director for HOME, a mass participation project that engaged 3,432 participants from across Middlesbrough to produce a 45-minute promenade piece that examined what the notion of HOME meant to these different communities.

Movement Director for Elysium Theatre

Movement direction for The Island (2024), A Doll's House (2023), Macbeth, (2022) and A Viking Christmas (2019)

Dancer and aerialist with Levantes Dance Theatre

Performing High Tea with a Twist at festivals across the UK

Performer and devisor with Tmesis Theatre

Happy Hour (2016)

Physical theatre performer in Memoria (Liverpool, Physical Fest), Beyond Belief (Unity Theatre/National tour), Happy Hour (Unity Theatre/National tour) and That’s Amore (Unity Theatre/National tour), and in the film Neat and Tidy, written by Ella Greenhill and directed by Elinor Randle

Commissioned filmmaker for Nightfall by Stellar Projects.

Directed Space Rebel Princess and the Great Big Bear from the Beyond, a comedy short for children and families that invites them on a star-gazing adventure with Space Rebel Princess and her beloved grandfather.

Movement Director, Opera North

Worked with Opera North Young Creatives as the Movement director for their winter production. The group looked at lullabies from across the world, inspired by songs from northern based refugees, linking with the theme of displacement in Martinů’s opera, The Greek Passion.

Choreographer and Director, REPLICAS

REPLICAS used the text messages of real couples in love to create imagined dance duets. The live dance work incorporated technology so audience received text message in real time during the performance. Supported by Arts Council England, Dance City, Mima, Teesside University, SIRF, Middlesbrough Council, and Pavilion Dance. Premiered at Stockton International Riverside Festival and Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art summer 2016.

Performer, Honda Steppin Commercial, Dir Kim Gehrig, Choreography by Supple Nam

Precision walker for Honda advert with choreographer Supple Nam

Choreographer for Silent Sticks [exhibition] by Corin Sworn for the Max Mara Art Prize for Women at the Whitechapel Gallery

Director and choreographer, Joan [film]. Commissioned by Where the Heart is through a residency with Age Concern Central Lancashire

20-week residency exploring dementia and concepts of home.

Choreographer Once A Man [film], Illicitus Productions

Once A Man (2013)

Choreographer for waltz scene in the film Once A Man Dir. Asim Abbasi

Performer and choreographer, FootBall [stop motion film] Dir. Marcus Tomlinson for Hermes

Football (2011)

Dancer [television, ITV]

Ballroom dancer in Murder on the Homefront, an ITV mini-series choreographed by Francesca Jaynes.

Choreographer [film] Two Dancers, Dir, James Gardner

Two Dancer (2012)

Choreographed Waltz and Ballet sequences for lead actors and dance double

Dancer, [film] Les Misérables, Working Title, Dir. Tom Hooper, choreography by Liam Steel.

Dancer [film], Anna Karenina, Working Title, Dir. Joe Wright, choreography by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui

Director, London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London

Created and directed an original production, Traveller and Unraveller for the London College of Fashion at the Cochrane Theatre.

Dance Captain, Ben Hur Live! Art Concerts, International Arena Tour

Performed and rehearsal directed International arena tour of Ben Hur Live! choreographed by Liam Steel

Dancer, TRIP dance company

Diving Girl (2003)

Performed in film and stage works for choreographer Karen Kuzak

REPLICAS (2016), is an interactive outdoor performance. It uses text messages from couples at various stages in their relationships as inspiration for dance duets, exploring how people communicate digitally. Raw text messages, videos and photos are sent to audience members while they are encountering live performance work, creating a complex relationship between digital and live presences.

“Alongside her bold theatrical language [Jennifer Essex] has a real and rare eye for detail and subtleties.”

- Kim Brandstrup, award-winning choreographer

"How Long is a Piece of String? by Fully Booked Theatre is a triumph of non-verbal children's dance-theatre. The show has a clear identity which is reflected in its wonderful marketing and iconic costume and set design. It has been easy to get sell-out audiences."

Danny Pedler, Director of Rural Touring

Need a choreographer for your music video? A movement director for your film? An artistic director for your large scale community project? A consultant to help implement technology to create innovative participatory projects? A mentor for your DYCP? A performer with over 2 decades of experience? An expert in interaction? An aerialist with a love of cranes? A creative researcher? Concept development for your commercial? A friend to talk about big ideas with? A performance that brings people together?