About

Wesleigh Gates (they/them) is a performance maker and scholar newly based in Los Angeles. Their research sits at the intersection of performance studies and critical geography, attending to the embodied experience of navigating urban space and questioning how constructions of race, gender and sexuality interface with neoliberal governance and the logics of capitalism to choreograph our movements through the city. In performance, they deploy queer, choreographic, and participatory strategies to create structures of connection and care that imagine and realize collective spaces. Wesleigh’s work as a creator and director has been seen in New York, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Boston, and Prague, and has been supported by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the Frank-Ratchye Fund for Art at the Frontier. They have been published by Gulf Coast Journal, PARtake: The Journal of Performance as Research, and Contemporary Performance, and were writer-in-residence at the 2019 zürich moves! festival. With Jamison Edgar, Wesleigh is co-editor of Leaking Vessels, an alternative platform for writing by visual and performance artists, forthcoming 2022 from 53rd State Press. MFA, Carnegie Mellon University.