About Joy

Joy Davis is a dance artist and educator steeped in the practices of Countertechnique®, improvisation, and performance. She began studying Countertechnique® with founder Anouk van Dijk in 2005, was certified as a Teacher in 2012 and recently became the first Senior Teacher in the US in August 2021. She teaches in the US and Canada including workshops at Gibney Dance, Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation, Lion’s Jaw Dance + Performance Festival in Boston, American Dance Festival, One Body One Career Countertechnique® Intensive hosted by Springboard Danse Montréal, and will join Bates Dance Festival in 2022. Founded in 2006, joyproject creates collaborative dance theater performance which evokes contemplation, humor, and elegant design along with curation and community engagement. She was a Chicago Dancemakers Forum Greenhouse Artist, Choreographic Resident at the Workspace for Choreographers, Choreographer’s Lab Artist with New Dialect (Nashville), NeXt Choreographer for Urbanity Dance (Boston), and was recently awarded the Next Steps grant from The Boston Foundation. She collaborates with partner Eric Mullis, performing at UrBan Guild Kyoto, Fact/SF Summer Dance Festival San Francisco, Goodyear Arts in Charlotte, and RAD Fest in Kalamazoo, MI. Joy and Alexander Davis, The Davis Sisters, were awarded a 2018 Schonberg [Boston] Fellowship residency at The Yard to develop and perform a new work; were named inaugural Choreography Residency recipients at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, and are touring New England in 2019 – 2020 through a new initiative called New England Dance on Tour. They were Boston Center for the Arts’ Run of the Mills artists, and piloted a digital variety show in summer 2020 called Summer Sundays with the Sisters, and are regularly presented by Dance|Now NYC and Boston. Joy received an MFA in Choreography and Performance from Smith College, and has since taught as Visiting Faculty at Smith College and Wesleyan University; as Visiting Lecturer at Harvard University in Theater, Dance & Media during fall 2016 and spring 2020. Currently: Associate Professor of Dance at Boston Conservatory at Berklee and Visiting Faculty at University of North Carolina, Charlotte.