Tess Voelker was born in 1997 in San Francisco. She began with jazz, then trained in ballet from age 11. After graduating in 2015 from Walnut Hill School for the Arts in Boston, she trained at Joffrey Ballet Chicago while spending her weekends studying improv methods with the contemporary dance company Cocodaco. In 2016, she moved to Germany to join Ballett Dortmund for a year before joining Nederlands Dans Theater II in 2017 and then the main company, NDT I, in 2020. Since then, Tess has focused on more collaborative pursuits which has led her to become a solo artist starting July 2023.

At Origen she danced in «O'Clock» (2023) by Juliano Nunes.