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Gesel R. Mason
she/her
Austin, Texas | the traditional and ancestral homelands of the Tonkawa, Lipan Apache, Comanche, Coahuitlecan, Jumanos, Sana tribes
Aptly described by The Washington Post as “a storyteller at heart, with a penchant for the theatrical,” Gesel R. Mason is a choreographer, performer, educator, and artist scholar who believes in the power of art to cultivate compassion, dialogue, and social transformation. She is Artistic Director of Gesel Mason Performance Projects and Professor of Dance at the University of Texas at Austin.
Mason’s work spans performance, scholarship, and archiving, engaging dance as a means to question assumptions, challenge systems of inequity, and reimagine possibilities for connection and care. Committed to supporting and celebrating African American artists and communities, she curated and performed NO BOUNDARIES: Dancing the Visions of Contemporary Black Choreographers for more than two decades. The project honors the legacies of ten choreographers including Kyle Abraham, Rennie Harris, Dianne McIntyre, Donald McKayle, Bebe Miller, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, and now continues as a pioneering digital archive co-directed with Rebecca Salzer (University of Alabama) with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Her current multi-year project, Yes, And, asks: “Who would you be, and what would you do, if as a Black woman you had nothing to worry about?” Supported by the National Performance Network and New England Foundation for the Arts, the work premiered at Dance Place (Washington, DC) and the Fusebox Festival (Austin, TX), and continues to evolve with communities across the U.S. and the Caribbean.
A 2019 Rauschenberg Artist-in-Residence, Mason’s choreography has been presented at the Kennedy Center, American Dance Festival, Bates Dance Festival, and beyond.
