Jessie Laurita-Spanglet

Jessie Laurita-Spanglet is a dance-maker, collaborator, organizer, and educator whose work stems from her deeply embodied study of contemporary dance and improvisational practices. As a performer and collaborative dance-maker, Jessie has enjoyed working with many wonderful artists, most recently including Tristen Koepke, Matthew Cumbie, Christina Soriano, and Heart Stück Bernie. For the past decade, Jessie’s research, practice, and organizational efforts have focused on dance and health. In this capacity, Jessie is part of a NeuroArts lab at Wake Forest University, where she has served as an interventionist, education coordinator, and teacher-trainer for the team’s work on researching and promoting the effects of dance for people with neurodegenerative diseases. More locally, Jessie serves as a member of the Maine Arts and Health board that produced a series of virtual arts and health roundtables and Maine’s first in-person arts and health conference; she serves on Maine Council of Aging’s Creative Aging advisory council; and she teaches community movement classes in libraries, support groups, retirement communities, and hospitals throughout the state. Jessie holds an MFA in dance from the University of Maryland, and a BFA from the North Carolina School of the Arts. Jessie was named a 2024 National Arts Strategies Creative Community Fellow: New England, and used her Fellowship to work towards an arts-based social prescribing program for Maine communities. Jessie is the director of USM’s annual Winter Dance Concert and is currently co-organizing an arts-based social prescribing pilot program for USM students struggling with social isolation and depression.