Jesse Hewit is an American performance and dance artist, currently based in San Francisco.
Jesse’s work is an attempt to synthesize unlikely contexts into a singular experience that unsettles dominant ideas about power, narrative, safety, and beauty.
He attended NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where he studied with Annie B Parson, Steve Wangh, Raina Von Waldenburg, Karen Finley, KJ Holmes, and Mary Overlie. In 2005, Jesse moved from New York to San Francisco to pursue graduate study in cross-disciplinary sociology, and upon graduating in 2007, began making work under the moniker Strong Behavior. Since 2007, five longer works and many shorter works have been created, and over time, Jesse has collaborated on the making of multiple works with Keith Hennessy, and with Sara Shelton Mann, among others. He has also, taught, written about, and curated dance and performance practices extensively up and down the U.S. West Coast and throughout Western Europe.
Jesse’s work has been supported by residencies from CounterPulse, Headlands Center for the Arts, Z Space, and Ponderosa Tanzland, as well as grants and awards from Theatre Bay Area’s CA$H Grant, The Zellerbach Family Foundation, The Kenneth Rainin Foundation, The New Stages for Dance Initiative, MAP Fund, and many amazing individual donors. Recent Honors include a 2010 San Francisco Bay Guardian Award for performance and a 2014 Isadora Duncan Dance Award nomination for Individual Performance.
