Our Mission

general magic...

is a creative collective, directed by choreographer Jessica Jobaris, that nurtures risk, mystery, absurdity, sensation of the body, and emancipation through imagination. Her mission is to raise the importance of empathy for modern audiences and theatre, initiating fearless communication with each other and our ancestors (in both earthly biological forms and unearthly spiritual forms.)

Using everything between the hysteria of pop-culture to the austerity of ancient rituals, Jessica Jobaris & general magic inquires:

How do we interact with life and each other; out of freedom, love or fear? How is this embodied in our relationship with our tempral sentient bodies?

For Jessica, the play of opposing forces/duality, elements of chance and intentional chaos bring discovery, whether on stage, performing in nature, or on a city bench. Her use of film/animation, text, sound design, movement, props, and natural elements create a bewildering web of humor and voodoo.

general magic plainly put is the magic of the mundane. Its the first breath in the morning,
Its the possibility that the no big deal things are truly what keeps us going.

Portrait

Visuals

The Philosophy of Work

Jessica Jobaris & general magic works to make conscious the Universal within the Individual; diligently researching and reconstructing understandings of the relationships we create with objects and each other, from the surface of skin to spirit. Performance is not always what is important; sometimes it is just the act of doing, or becoming. Her works have been seen on lampposts as graffiti tag, under piles of dirt in fields of abandoned farms and tucked in sand dunes, city parks, train stations, schools, hangar workshops, and the usual black box theatre.

Jessica examines the crossing of each other’s frontiers through interaction: Audience to performer, performer to life, life to the Supernatural world; to find consciously where we are fragile & then again powerful.

The core of Jessica's original works are shaped thru the means of a playfully spiritual approach; using aspects of ceremonies, rites of passage, personal ritual, shamanism, bodywork, meditation, inebriation, dance training, pain, music, improvisation, humor... anything that allows us to listen deeply and investigate our limitations and intuition.

Jessica ardently believes in collaborating with her casts (general magic), performing & producing, in addition to collaborating on all sound/costume/film/animation aspects of the work.

She currently lives in Seattle, studies in San Francisco, Berlin, and the mountains.

Jessica Jobaris

Contact

We are umbrella'd by 501(c)3, so all donations are tax deductible.

Where?

  • Facebook

Short Bio

Jessica Jobaris is a performer, choreographer, and instructor, and has worked with renowned companies Lingo dance theater, Scott/Powell Performance, Maureen Whiting Company, Bryon Carr Performance (NYC), and SaltHorse.

From 2004-2009, Jessica was Co-Artistic Director of CorpusCorpus Movement Association, a multi-media performance art company, funded by city, state and corporate sponsors.

From 2008-2009, she lived in Berlin, Germany, working with choreographers Kirsten Burger (for MTV), Jess Curtis for the Transmission Symmetry Project, visual artist Eloise de Hauteclocque, choreographer/body artist Felix Ruckert, and Maria Scaroni.

Her love of experimental performance & process has taken her to film, study, perform and/or choreograph in Vienna, Berlin, Italy, Amsterdam, Vancouver, and has received several choreographic residencies and commissions throughout the U.S.

She is movement director for Freehold's Engaged Theater Tour, and a yoga instructor at Lotus Yoga in Columbia City, Yoga Tree in Fremont, and teaches Improvisation for Performance Presence regularly at Velocity Dance Center. She lives in a continuum of gratitude to her teachers and fellow artists.