Jacob Jonas stages his first post-cancer performance at BroadStage

“The work is about healing,” choreographer and cancer survivor Jacob Jonas said.

We’re sitting against the brick wall of a building with the sun beating down, a few feet from the entrance to the Los Angeles Ballet studio in Sawtelle, where dancers in Jonas’ eponymous company practice for “Keeping Score,” a trilogy by Jonas premiering next week at the BroadStage in Santa Monica. They finish rehearsal by stretching and running through choreography. Music blasts.

Minutes prior, dancers scattered across the studio, looking at their phones as they tried to pick up dance steps from a video. Incense burned at the front near Jonas’ work station. Dancer Alyse Rockett tossed her phone on the seat next to me, revealing the material for which the troupe has been preparing.

The three works in “Keeping Score,” titled “Product of Divorce,” “Nature Sounds While the IV Drips” and “Restart,” document Jonas’ evolving relationship to illness following his 2022 diagnosis of Stage 4 lymphoma. The trilogy marks Jonas’ first post-cancer piece, and Jonas reflects on how his environment affected his life before, during and after cancer.

Coinciding with his recently published memoir, “Cemented Beauty,” which includes journal entries and photos from his journey through chemotherapy, Jonas, 33, considers “Keeping Score” the final purge of a chapter that altered his understanding of life, relationships and nature.

As a recent rehearsal transitioned into a run of “Nature Sounds While the IV Drips,” seven dancers separated into two lines. The piece has eight sections, representing eight rounds of chemotherapy. A new performer enters each round. They begin moving, quickly shifting from one pose to the next and slamming their hands and bodies against the ground to create an audible rhythm that cuts through the sounds of rain and wind coming from the speakers — like IV drips.

“Cancer is really beautiful,” Jonas said. “There’s a lot of trauma, and there’s a lot of pain, but there’s also a lot of family and beauty along the way. It’s profound to be able to revisit the deepest parts of yourself and humanity in that struggle, and try to make sense of it and organize it in the process of making work.”

Jonas’ lymphoma developed as a side effect of the medication he was taking for Crohn’s disease. Looking back, he believes his illness is deeper than that — tied to his psychology and early childhood experiences. “Keeping Score” is inspired by Bessel van der Kolk’s book, “The Body Keeps the Score,” which details how trauma manifests in the body through illness. Jonas reflects this thought process in his choreography by unpacking his experience as a child of divorce.

“I think the reason I have disease in my body, in some part, is because of the stresses, traumas and pains that are stored in my body, in large part because of the environment that I was raised in growing up,” he said.

“Keeping Score” culminates work developed from three years of workshop material. It began in the summer of 2023 during a residency with Orsolina28 Art Foundation in Italy. Jonas went into remission that April and immediately dove into his creative process, setting “Restart” alongside a previously developed piece titled “Mind Cry.”

“Restart” investigates soil and the cycles of Earth’s ecosystems to reflect on what it means to begin again post-cancer. Over the years of creation, Jonas learned to embrace loneliness, something he grew accustomed to during treatment, and the act of continuing.

Jacob Jonas works with members of his eponymous dance company. His newest trilogy, premiering at BroadStage, explores his cancer diagnosis and recovery.

(Brian Feinzimer / For The Times)

“In watching waves crash in the ocean, it never stops,” Jonas said. “The tides shift, the force of the waves changes, but it always continues. I look at my relationship to my work the same. It’s always just continuing to happen, and if I wanted to stop or run away, the stresses of life wouldn’t stop.”

In recent years, Jonas developed a movement language called “The System” that aims to release pain and trauma in the body through physical expression and an attempt to release energy into the universe. This results in percussive sounds of body parts clapping against one another and the ground. The System is inspired by randomness within nature and the somatic elements of breakdancing, which Jonas grew up doing in Venice Beach. His practice can be intentionally repetitive, reflecting the monotony of cancer treatment, and inspires viewers to meditate with the movement.

His dancers find inspiration in the patterns.

“I move from a feelings type of place, but in this environment, you have to forget feelings sometimes,” Rockett said. “I feel like heavy machinery, where you just have to press the button and the machine comes on. It challenges me to arrive and go and not rely so much on my feelings.”

“I didn’t do something like that before,” dancer Marco Palomino added. “You [usually] have to find the feeling within the movement; [here] the movement creates the feeling.”

Back in the rehearsal room, Jonas focuses on laying out the structure before he stitches the pieces together into a cohesive trilogy. This is one rehearsal of many as the troupe plans to meet for eight hours, five days a week, leading up to the final show.

Jacob Jonas with members of his dance company, as well as his dog. The troupe is performing a new trilogy at BroadStage in Santa Monica.

(Brian Feinzimer / For The Times)

“This process is refreshing because we’ve come very prepared with a lot of systems and techniques and group behaviors,” dancer Emma Rosenzweig-Bock said.

Jonas’ cancer experience impacted his relationships and his sense of what movement can communicate, separating his life into before and after illness.

In 2020 Jonas received backlash for an Instagram post he made in solidarity with Black Americans following the murder of George Floyd, amid growing Black Lives Matter protests. A picture he posted of a Black dancer being supported by a white police officer was considered by some to have missed the mark. That was a difficult moment for Jonas, who says the harsh response involved untrue statements about his character and intentions, “I have always stood for community,” he says.

Today Jonas feels grounded and at peace. He watches as his dancers parse through a section in the studio, repeating a phrase until they are in unison. Standing in a line, they fall into syncopated steps, slowly coming together for a single breath and hunch. He explained that cancer doesn’t just affect the one person going through treatment, but everyone around them. “Keeping Score” is an act of exposing the deepest and darkest sides of him for all to see.

“Everyone is in pain, and everyone needs love,” Jonas said. “I think it’s really that simple. The more we protect our vulnerabilities, the less access we have to connect. I think the more we share what’s really going on, even if it’s uncomfortable for those listening, it gives us all a deeper understanding.”

The upcoming Broad performances are a homecoming of sorts. Jonas grew up on 11th Street in Santa Monica near the BroadStage, and always skated close to the theater. He received his cancer treatments at the UCLA Santa Monica Medical Center. This geographical footprint is important to him as he punctuates this chapter.

Jonas looks around, taking in every detail of the trees, sky and gravel. Dancers periodically interrupt our chat, waving and hugging Jonas as they leave. The sun slowly moves against our skin. At the end of the interview, he smiles and closes his eyes.

Following a moment of silence, listening to the wind and rustling leaves, he says, “The sun is healing us.”