Jesse Zaritt
Jesse Zaritt is a choreographer, performer, and educator whose work activates drawing as dancing—an embodied, visual practice linked to dreaming and drafting futures.
Biography
Zaritt's choreography and teaching explore how contemplative, excessive, and resistive dance practices can transform the politics of movement and its role in shaping social change. From 2008 to 2022, his acclaimed solo works engaged Jewish ritual and identity through a queer lens, disrupting normative paradigms of belonging, religion, gender, and sexuality.
Zaritt has performed internationally in Taiwan, Uruguay, Germany, Korea, Japan, Mexico, and across the U.S., and collaborated with artists including Shen Wei, Netta Yerushalmy, and Faye Driscoll. He served as Associate Professor at the University of the Arts until 2024 and continues in creative dialogue with choreographer Sara Shelton Mann. Zaritt was a visiting faculty member in the BFA in Dance Lab and Low-Residency MFA in Dance program at Bennington for the 2024-2025 academic year. He joined as the Co-Artistic & Associate Director and Artist in Residence in the BFA in Dance program at Bennington in Fall 2025.
Photo credit: Robbie Sweeney