About
Julie Phelps is a choreographer and creative producer.
I intentionally translate myself across multiple public roles because I value hybridity as an offset for dogmatics and polemics, maintaining mutable specialization in my creative work. I consistently engage the economy (as structure, system, notion) and queer (as tactic, aesthetic, question) as a lens for perception, communication, and action. I began first working onstage, in theater and speech when I was 14. Dance became the cornerstone of my practice in 2008 when she began studying with Sara Shelton Mann in San Francisco and then fell in with a loose community of people making performances in and around Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory. My stage work is often framed within improvised dance, state-based work, and improvised spoken word/storytelling. I simply find working onstage with the participation of an intimate audience a deeply cathartic experience. I’ve been part of hundreds of devised/collaborative contemporary live art projects, either as performer or producer. Notably, I am the artistic & executive director of CounterPulse, a transdisciplinary arthouse seated on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone land now known as San Francisco. I also co-instigated what became the collectively improvised failure dance Turbulence (a dance about the economy) with Keith Hennessy which toured the US and Europe 2012 to 2017. Currently, I am collaborating with Marc Kate on an improvised work at the intersection of experimental music and experimental dance (CounterPulse 2020) and Ruairí Ó’Donnabháin on DICK, a project looking at the methodology of metaphor (premiere in Ireland June 2021). I was hosting regular all night music/dance events with T.V.O.D before the pandemic.
To co-create body-based communities is integral to my creative practice and personal activism.
[image description: A head shot of Phelps. Her hair is short, waving, and sandy blonde. She’s wearing a button-up, blue collared shirt and a square lapis lazuli pendent. She has bright blue eyes and pinkish/peach skin.]
Select Awards
2020 Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Deepening Practices Award $89k for continued development of CounterPulse’s Combustible residency for dance and creative tech artists to collaboration
Phyllis C. Wattis Legacy Grant $25k for CounterPulse’s legacy of community support in the dance field
2019 Hewlett Foundation Organizational Development-Equity, Inclusion & Diversity $50k for CounterPulse to conduct fielding leading research and development of inter-organizational equity assessments and planning tools in the arts and culture sector
2019 Walter & Elise Haas Fund Award $45k to intersect CounterPulse’s community development practices with Joanna Haigood’s site specific performance making practices.
2019 Better District 6 Award as CounterPulse for being a honorable steward of the Tenderloin neighborhood and broder District 6 area
2017 YBCA 100 recognized as Julie E. Phelps for her personal role in acquiring, renovating and holding in an innovative arts and cultural land trust for arts and cultural use 80 Turk St. in San Francisco, California.
2017 CONTRACT Magazine Inspiration Award with Jensen Architects recognizing CounterPulse as having ‘social responsibility in the design’ with the intent to improve the quality of life for people in need.
2011 Zellerbach Award $7,500 for Too Much!
2010 Bay Area Goldie as part of Jesse Hewit’s company Strong Behavior
Select Partners & Affiliations
Community Arts Stabilization Trust (SF, CA)
Art Stations Foundation (PL)
Movement Research (NYC, USA)
Global Practice Sharing (NYC, USA)
Tenderloin Community Benefit District (SF, CA)
Tenderloin Museum (SF, CA)
Skywatchers (SF, CA)
Dalt Hotel, Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation (SF, USA)
Kinetech Arts (SF, CA)
SFMOMA OPEN SPACE (SF, USA)
Circo Zero (SF, CA)
OX (SF, CA)
Jess Curtis/Gravity Inc. (SF, CA)
The African Contemporary Arts Consortium (NYC, USA)
swissnex (SF, CA)
zürich moves! festival (CH)
Swiss Consulate General SF (SF, CA)
Swedish Arts Council
The Irish Arts Council
Irish Consult General of San Francisco (SF, USA)
University of Chichester (UK)
Consulting
If you are interested in working with me I do periodically take on consultant or project-based work in the following area:
Fundraising and grant writing
Contemporary arts curation and commissions
Community and neighborhood development
Strategic Socialization design and special events
Impact and Inspirational communications
Theory of change creation/planning
Artist/low-income rates available. Contact me at juliephelps.arts@gmail.com or check out these open calls
[image description: A head shot of Phelps. Her hair is chin-length, waving, and sandy blonde. She’s wearing a black blazer, with scoop-neck black spotted white linen shirt, and a necklace of large, orange, citrine beads.
Friends
A few of my most frequent collaborators and teachers.
[image description: Performance shot of Phelps in Jesse Hewit/Strong Behavior’s “Tell Them That You Saw Me” at CounterPulse in 2010. She’s wearing a short, white, fitted dress and is leaning over and grasping the bottom of the dress with her hands forcefully. Her mouth if wide open, teeth bared with pink lipstick. Her eyes are squinted and her forehead is tense. Her hair is pulled back and she’s wearing a white and gold beaded necklace.