Jessica Lynch-Oliver, MFA

Jessica Lynch-Oliver, MFA, is an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary choreographer, performing artist, educator, and activist. Jessica Lynch-Oliver is currently the new Assistant Professor in Dance at Brenau University. She received her Master of Fine Arts Degree in Dance at Mason Gross School of The Arts, Rutgers University. Attending Professional Performing Arts School, in affiliation with The Ailey School, she then moved on to receive her BFA degree in Performance and Choreography at The College at Brockport. She has studied in Kingston, Jamaica at the Edna Manley School of Visual and Performing Arts, where she studied African and Jamaican folk dance. Lynch has choreographed several works that have been performed at SUNY Brockport, America College Dance Association, Edna Manley School, The Apollo Theater, The Walt Whitman Theater, and Rutgers University.

As a woman of color of African American and Native American descent, she has shaped her work as an artist and choreographer around the issue of race, gender, social justice, and community engagement. Her thesis and research work, titled “ReVeil” performed in 2021, utilized the Africanist movement aesthetic and incorporated both a collaborative and immersive approach to deliver embodied movements based on the dancers’ lived experiences. She served as a Part-Time Lecturer at Rutgers University from 2019-2022, where she taught Modern, Jazz, African Diasporic Movement Practices, and online Dance Appreciation courses. Her teaching philosophy utilizes a fusion of Africanist Aesthetic practices and theories. Jessica’s main objective is to present challenges within a safe and positive teaching/learning environment, offer students opportunities for new perspectives, design lessons and courses that foreground student-led/self-discoveries, and express my dedication and commitment to their learning as a leader and educator in this field. Her interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approach in both her classroom as well as her creative practice will provide artists with new methods of thinking that will create self-reflective individuals that will be dedicated to critical inquiry across all disciplines.