FEATURES
1st Place Moving Image - Live Action for UIC 2023 Image of Research Competition
Jenna's winning clip from her “Community Voices for Community Change in McKinley Park” documentary features two McKinley Park residents, Kate Eakin and Jessica Fong, describing the changing industrial development landscape in their neighborhood.
“My research is rooted in community-led planning processes, progressive economic development and grassroots expressions,” Pollack writes. “As part of the studio’s design of three cutting-edge public infrastructure and civic realm projects, I aimed to creatively capture the voice of residents to drive the process rather than those of the students or potential developers. . . Ultimately, producing a documentary was one of the strategies I employed to reflect back to residents the beauty, complexity and diversity of voices that drive this work.”
View more about the winners on the Image of Research website.
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Photo: Sally Cohn
"To create the untitled work in progress, Ms. Pollack and her collaborators have been poring over nearly 50 years worth of archives, going back to the Yard’s 1972 founding by dancer-choreographer Patricia Nanon. 'It felt potent and responsible and of utility to the organization in a way that I’m interested in operating within the dance ecosystem, to honor the campus (and) its history through my practice,' Ms Pollack said."
The Vineyard Gazette: Moving to the History of the Yard
by Louisa Hufstader, 26 August 2021
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Photo: Victoria by Kris Nevaeh; Jenna by Secret Bureau of Art + Design
The Boston Globe: The Boston Center for the Arts returns with live dance performances
by Kyung Mi Lee, 16 June 2021
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"Complex, multi-disciplinary, and ultimately breathtaking"
Living Art: Hubbard Street Pro's Immersive Performance at the Logan Center
by Ellen Wiese, 3 April 2020
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Harvard Business School Online's 2019 Rebranding Campaign, highlighted alumnus
Grace and Grit Enabled this Dancer to Build a Business in the Performing Arts
Click the below publications to read more exclusive interviews with Jenna about her
HBS Online experience:
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Photo: Saulius Ke
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YardWork Prompts
Scan, Select, Re-enchant, Animate
August 2020
Originally slated as the Boston Schonberg Residency Fellow in our Yard Arts season, Jenna Pollack is our next YardWork artist. Extending the framework from Jenna’s ongoing collaborative process, we invite you to reimagine the mundane items found in your own home.
At the core of Jenna’s work is collaboration and process. The intersection of her artistic and institutional teams is explicit, allowing the process to explore the poetics of politics and the purpose of play. It scaffolds relationships as groundwork, not patchwork, for creativity, centering the drive toward a more sustainable arts ecosystem.
With sustainable design engineer Dr. Benjamin Linder, they have prototyped wooden figures that operate as both characters and landscapes. Their research explores the construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction of physical and emotional states to consider: what actions are within our control? What do we lose through inaction, and what happens when that is outrun out by the inertia of our previous choices? Nine months after meeting at the Olin College of Engineering, the dancer collaborators were invited into the research and into the studio, beginning the physical language-building between them and the dancers.
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"Is it possible that the secret of independence is collaboration? That the key to freedom is interdependance and trust? Yeah, it’s possible, and that’s just one example of the perspective you find in a conversation with Jenna Pollack."
"A podcast dedicated to the various struggles of actors, writers, directors, designers, dancers, musicians, composers and playwrights, welcomes dancer Jenna Pollack."
"In this episode, Jenna talks about growing up in a creative household, being an inclusive leader and combining different styles to develop a unique choreography."
"the promenade" for Urbanity Dance Company
"Is it possible that the secret of independence is collaboration? That the key to freedom is interdependance and trust? Yeah, it’s possible, and that’s just one example of the perspective you find in a conversation with Jenna Pollack."
"A podcast dedicated to the various struggles of actors, writers, directors, designers, dancers, musicians, composers and playwrights, welcomes dancer Jenna Pollack. In this episode, Pollack speaks about redefining value systems for yourself, growing up in a family of artists, understanding the business side of the arts and her experiences dancing in Europe."
"In this episode, Jenna talks about growing up in a creative household, being an inclusive leader and combining different styles to develop a unique choreography."
REVIEWS
Bridge Repertory Theater
'Dark Room'
Starred as Francesca Woodman
Directed by Olivia D'Ambrosio
Movement by Doppelgänger Dance Collective
ran July - August, 2018
"Jenna Pollack as the girl uses modern dance to caress the social bruise of depression. Her work on Doppelgänger Dance Collective’s choreography quakes the senses.”
- The New England Theater Geek
“. . . Pollack's lithe movements compel us to watch her even as her character blends into her surroundings like a fly on the wall.”
Photo: Andrew Brilliant
PUBLICATIONS
Mise en Abyme: International Journal of Comparative Literature and Arts
Vol. IV, Issue 1
January/June 2017
‘Underground Performance: 20th-Century Theatre Defined by Political Emergency and Marginalization’