J’SUN HOWARD is a Chicago-based dancemaker and writer whose work centers intimacy as a practice, one grounded in care, presence, and sustained attention. He understands this work as a practice of freedom, one that unfolds through relation rather than escape. Across performance, text, and visual composition, he creates spaces where Black and Brown men can gather in tenderness, risk, and relational play. Rather than spectacle, his work asks for listening. Rather than resolution, it offers shared breath.
Howard’s performances often unfold as quiet negotiations: between softness and strength, restraint and desire, vulnerability and endurance. He is interested in how bodies hold and are held: by one another, by history, and by the conditions of the present moment. His practice insists on generosity as a choreographic principle, and on affection as a form of political and social inquiry. Alongside his choreographic work, Howard writes essays, reflections, and poetic texts that extend these same questions into language.
Recent projects include Total Beings | Burning Hearts, Sissies: Something Perfect Between Ourselves, and The Righteous Beauty of the Things Never Accounted For, works that explore relational presence through improvisation, spoken text, and collaborative movement structures.
Howard’s performances have been presented widely in Chicago, nationally, and internationally. Chicago presentations include Links Hall, Ruth Page Center for the Arts, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, and Defibrillator Performance Gallery. Nationally, his work has been shown at Patrick’s Cabaret in Minneapolis, Danspace Project and the Center for Performance Research in New York City, and the Detroit Dance City Festival. Internationally, his work has been presented at the 2025 Osaka Expo, Happy African Festival at Dance Box Kobe, the New Dance Festival in Daejeon, South Korea, M1 Singapore Fringe Festival, and through the World Dance Alliance’s International Young Choreographers’ Project in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
In addition to performance, Howard’s practice extends into teaching, writing, and mentorship. His interdisciplinary approach often blurs the boundaries between choreography, poetry, and visual thinking, emphasizing process as a site of learning and community-building.
Howard holds an MFA in Dance and a graduate certificate in World Performance Studies from the University of Michigan. His work continues to evolve through long-term collaborations, cultural exchange, and sustained inquiry into how we remain present with one another, especially in times of uncertainty and unraveling.
He lives and works in Chicago, engaging locally while maintaining an active international practice.
This practice might be understood as 慈尊 (Jison)—a reverence for compassion held between bodies.