Jo Parkes is a freelance dance artist and educator (DE/UK). She works in co-creative participative dance, creating installations, events, performances, creative encounters and videos. She is founder and artistic director of Mobile Dance e.V. which works on socially engaged projects, often in communities where access to arts is limited. From 2014 - 2021 she led (with special educator Barbara Weidner) the project JUNCTION, working every week with people living  in 5 accommodation centres for refugees in Berlin and artistic directing the quarterly dance parties at Uferstudios. Jo guest lectures, speaks and leads workshops internationally. From 2019 - 2021, Jo was on the board of Aktion Tanz. From 2021 - 2022 she was guest professor at HZT, Berlin. She is currently associated artist at Aktion Tanz.

 

In 1995, Jo received a Fulbright scholarship to complete her Master of Fine Arts in Choreography at UCLA. She has a first class degree in English Literature and Modern Languages from Oxford University. Jo's,ost recent work, 'The Walking Project' receivd an IKARUS award (DE) for innovative responses to participaotry work in the pandemic. The piece 'On Tradition: the young generation' was invited to the Youth Dance Theatre Meeting in 2017. She won the Bonnie Bird New Choreography Award (UK ) in 2002, Kinder zum Olymp (with the project Postcards from Berlin) in 2009 and a scholarship from the Berlin Senate in 2016. In 2019, Jo was awared an honorary prize for outstanding development in dance by the jury for the German Dance Prize.