Dance
Current work
I’m interested in ways we make connections through movement.
How can we relate to others? What can we learn about ourselves? How can we find care, joy, and pleasure? How can we undo harm?
I primarily work in Western contemporary, postmodern, and modern dance traditions, with a strong emphasis on improvisation. As a teacher, I especially love moving with people who have never moved in these ways before, or who are revisiting their relationship with embodied practice.
My current work focuses on the relationship between care, movement, and community. Given the structural constraints on care in our capitalist society, how can we use embodied practice to imagine what care could be? What is our dream for a world in which we could care for each other and ourselves in abundance? How can our movement guide us toward that?
As part of my research, I’m leading an open, no-cost creative practice workshop at the Seymour Center to explore these questions. If you’d like to get involved, please contact me.
Dance Bio
Erica Janko is a dance artist and educator based in Carrboro, North Carolina.
Her first evening-length work, the performers, premiered to a sold-out house at the 2016 Philadelphia Fringe Festival.
In DC, Erica was a company member with Contradiction Dance Theatre for their 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 seasons, during which she performed in works by Kelly King and MissJessica Denson and helped facilitate movement workshops across the city. Erica directed a collaborative community performance that spanned three-quarters of a mile on the National Mall as part of Contradiction’s “Dance About DC” series. In DC, Erica also performed in works by Heather Sultz/Keyhole Residencies and May Kessler.
In the Durham area, Erica has danced in Alyssa Noble and Chris Strauss’s RECITAL and performed as a community mover in Bill T. Jones’s What Problem. She has taught classes at the Carrboro ArtsCenter and the Seymour Center. Erica is currently in rehearsals for an upcoming piece by Mauri Connors.
Erica holds a minor in dance from Swarthmore College, where she was a co-recipient of the Hally Jo Stein Award in Dance and earned highest honors for her choreography thesis. She has also trained at ImPulsTanz Vienna International Dance Festival, the American Dance Festival Dance Professionals Workshop (with Liz Lerman and Leah Cox), Florida Dance Festival, and the West Coast Civic Ballet, among others.