Shayla-Vie Jenkins is a performer, maker, educator, poetry lover, writer, and mama, grateful for a life in dance. Her creative research explores the intersection of Blackness and somatic presence, with her choreographic works embodying performance as a ritual act of mourning and catharsis. From 2005 to 2016, Jenkins was a member of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, during which time the company received Bessie Awards for Chapel/Chapter (2007) and D-Man in the Waters (2013). She continues to teach for the company and to restage its repertory at universities and dance festivals across the country. Her performance career also includes work with Bebe Miller, Moriah Evans, Faye Driscoll, Okwui Okpokwasili, Susan Marshall, and Yara Travieso, among others. Jenkins appeared in the Merce Cunningham Trust’s Night of 100 Solos: A Centennial Event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and has danced in reconstructions of works by José Limón, Yvonne Rainer, and David Gordon. In 2025, she received the Viola Farber Award for Performance from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. In 2023, Jenkins was awarded a Pew Center for Arts & Heritage Project Grant for her site-specific work On Buried Ground, which honors the lives of freed and enslaved congregants at the historic Christ Church of Philadelphia. The work premiered at the 2024 Philadelphia Fringe Festival. She holds an MFA in Choreography and Performance from Smith College and a BFA from the Ailey/Fordham program. Jenkins served as an Assistant Professor at the University of the Arts from 2018 until its closure and currently serves as Co-Artistic and Associate Director of the BFA Dance Lab at Bennington College.