Jessica Lemire
Jessica Lemire: My name is Jessica and I am a dancer. This sentence however, doesn’t easily roll off my tongue. Having two left feet, I never thought that I would call myself a dancer. Further, I never thought I would share this fumbling, awkward, and often-uncomfortable growth process so visibly, by way of my PhD candidacy. I am a Human Geography student at the University of Newcastle, Australia. My focus is on Indigenous Australian and African American dance. Being a dancer, for me, wasn’t through any formal training. My mother danced, and so did her mother. Dancing is in my blood; a mix of African American, Cherokee and French; dancing is my ancestry. Though I grew up in Australia, dancing is the lifeboat that carries me across oceans and the in-betweens to connect me to my ancestors.