In 1999, I created Gesel Mason Performance Projects (GMPP) as a medium for my creative work. GMPP is a project based dance company that seeks to create meaningful, relevant, and compelling art events as a way to encourage compassion and inquiry. As a choreographer, I utilize dance, theater, and storytelling to bring visibility to voices unheard, situations neglected, or perspectives considered taboo. Experimentation, risk, and investigation are a part of my creative process. Vulnerability, humor, and visceral physicality are hallmarks of my work. The Washington Post commented, “Gesel Mason understands how to move her audience to tears and laughter. Though trained as a dancer, it's her talents for blending video, text and movement that make her company, Gesel Mason Performance Projects, so engaging to watch.”

I believe that art has the power to create compassionate and thoughtful human beings. As a choreographer, performer, arts facilitator, producer, presenter, and director, I use dance and performance as a vehicle to shift perspectives and examine the human condition. What do we share or keep secret? How do we live, love, and persevere? What can we learn from each other, despite our differences? Dance is the lens though which I interrogate the self and the world. Whether it’s about Sally Hemings and her relationship with Thomas Jefferson as his enslaved mistress, interrogating the definition of “Black Dance,” or illuminating conversations around women’s sexual desire, my work seeks to stimulate dialogue, reveal the invisible, and catalyze transformation, no matter how slight.

Numerous venues and festivals have presented GMPP including American Dance Festival; Museum of Contemporary Art Denver; Joyce SoHo; 651 Arts; Bates Dance Festival; Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center; University of Albany; SUNY Potsdam; South Dallas Cultural Center; Painted Bride; Dance Place; the International Contemporary Dance Conference and Performance Festival in Bytom, Poland; DanceAfrica; and the International Association of Blacks in Dance.