JACOB JONAS THE COMPANY WITH SPECIAL GUEST, SARA MEARNS

Jacob Jonas The Company (JJTC) is a Los Angeles–based creative studio and contemporary dance company that expands the possibilities of movement through interdisciplinary collaboration, film, and community engagement. The company is at the intersection of dance, science, architecture, music, and media, bringing together artists, thinkers, and institutions to explore new ways movement can connect people and ideas.

Rooted in Los Angeles’ culture of experimentation, JJTC’s movement language blends street movement, acrobatics, and contemporary ballet with improvisation and somatic exploration. The company’s work moves fluidly between theater, public space, and digital platforms, reaching audiences both locally and globally. Through this hybrid approach, JJTC aims to expand the visibility of dance and engage audiences who may not traditionally encounter contemporary performance.

JJTC has been presented across North America at venues including the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Hollywood Bowl, Jacob’s Pillow, and The Music Center in Los Angeles. The company has served as Company in Residence at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts and the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts.

Central to JJTC’s creative practice is collaboration. The company has worked with a wide range of artists, scientists, designers, and cultural leaders including the late Sir Ken Robinson, Donald Byrd, Daniel Ezralow, and Tessa Matthias. JJTC has also created projects with internationally recognized artists and brands including Kanye West, Alejandro Iñárritu, SZA, Tame Impala, Vanessa Beecroft, Gap, Nike, and Sony.

In 2021, JJTC launched Films.Dance, a global platform dedicated to dance film that has produced more than forty original works featuring over 375 artists across 26 countries. The series connects artists from diverse disciplines and cultural backgrounds, bringing dance into conversation with music, fashion, architecture, and film. Films.Dance has been featured in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and IGNANT, received Vimeo Staff Pick recognition, and reached a global audience of over one million viewers.

The company also produced #CamerasandDancers, an international project bringing dancers, photographers, architects, and cultural institutions together to create collaborative work in iconic spaces. Events have taken place with institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, de Young Museum, and the Swiss National Museum, as well as leading dance companies and architectural firms around the world.

Beyond performance, JJTC invests deeply in community engagement and education through workshops, public programming, and its movement methodology known as The System, a practice that integrates movement, improvisation, and somatic awareness as tools for creativity and healing.

Through live performance, film, and global collaborations, Jacob Jonas The Company continues to push the boundaries of how dance can exist in the contemporary world - bridging disciplines, communities, and cultures while expanding the role of movement in art and society.

Jacob Jonas (American, B. 1992) Raised by concrete and the Pacific Ocean. A product of divorce. An outlier in academia, displaced and repositioned into special education. Forced away from the traditional path. Movement became identity. A company, a family for belonging. A blank canvas, home. Overcoming illness, understanding health. The work is medicine. Nature, a necessity.

Born in Santa Monica, Jacob Jonas began his journey as a street performer, skateboarding along the Venice Beach Boardwalk. At 13, he joined The Calypso Tumblers, legends of acrobatics and street theater, under the directorship of Raymond Bartlett from Saint Kitts. Touring internationally to busker festivals, Jonas absorbed the discipline of the streets and the art of performance.

At 21, Jonas co-founded Jacob Jonas The Company with partner Jill Wilson and lighting designer Will Adashek, a nonprofit rooted in the intersection of dance, science, and community. By 24, he became the youngest artist to present work at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. His career has since traversed institutions and landmarks, including Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, Hollywood Bowl, The Getty Museum, The Music Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and more. To date, Jacob has created over 50 original works. 

Jonas’s work challenges boundaries, living at the confluence of somatic innovation, architecture, and environmental consciousness. His technique, The System, is a fusion of movement, therapy, and creation, designed as a pathway for healing and expression. As a stage four cancer survivor, Jonas draws on personal resilience to explore the body as both a site of conflict and renewal.

A disruptor by nature, Jonas has collaborated with a spectrum of visionary artists and brands, from Kanye West to Elton John, Rosalía, SZA, SIA, Vanessa Beecroft, and Alejandro Iñárritu. His projects include the globally acclaimed films.dance, a series of over 45 short films uniting artists from 25 countries, and #CamerasandDancers, a monthly Instameet bridging dance, photography, and architecture with institutions like The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Zaha Hadid Architects.

Jacob Jonas’s art exists in dualities: rooted in rebellion and disruption, yet celebrated in the canon of contemporary culture. His work is raw yet refined, intimate yet universal, a testament to the transformative power of movement, nature, and collaboration.

Photo: Josh Rose

Sara Mearns (dancer) is from Columbia, SC, and has been a principal dancer at New York City Ballet since 2008. She has originated roles in works by Justin Peck, Kyle Abraham, Alexei Ratmansky, Pam Tanowitz, Bobbi Jene Smith, Christopher Wheeldon, Guillaume Côté and Beth Gill, among others. Guest performer: Paul Taylor Dance Company, The Cunningham Centennial Celebration, Jodi Melnick Dance, Bill T. Jones/Lee Ming Wei and Wang Ramirez, as well as Dances of Isadora Duncan at Lincoln Center. At NYCC, she starred in Matthew Bourne’s The Red Shoes, I Married An Angel (Encores!) and Twyla Now, as well as multiple Fall for Dance Festivals. Mearns performed A Piece of Work, a full evening of five world premieres at The Joyce Theater (2022), was awarded a Bessie Award for Outstanding Performer (2018), the Dance Magazine Award (2019) and an honorary doctorate from University of South Carolina (2019). Mearns recently made her debut as Juliet in Alexei Ratmansky’s production of Romeo and Juliet with The National Ballet of Canada.

Photo: Erin Baiano