Kimberly Bartosik / daela
bLUr
Work in progress showing
Sun | July 28 | 7:30PM
Memorial Commons
Free and open to the public
Watching a loved one overdose haunts you in a way that will never leave your own body. bLUr is a deeply visceral and purposefully raw choreographic project which explores that haunting and attempts to put into movement and emotional language the violent cravings and war-like forces pulsing through a body that is drawn to substance abuse. The project resists overt narratives around our culture’s current opioid epidemic, but, as in all my work, proposes the body as the most potent site from which to grapple with a deeply distressing element in our society in the hopes of better understanding.
Created specifically for Burr Johnson, Joanna Kotze, Donovan Reed* and Hannah Straney, bLUr is about urgent interventions, tender and brutal rescues, and the blurry line between them. Original Sound Design by Sivan Jacobovitz and Lighting Design by Roderick Murray. bLUr is scheduled to premiere in the U.S. and Europe in 2025.
* The cast for the work in progress showing on July 28 features Burr Johnson, Joanna Kotze, Jacoby Pruitt, and Hannah Straney
Choreographer, writer, educator Kimberly Bartosik creates viscerally provocative, ferociously intimate choreographic projects that critically, tenderly, and violently etch away at deeply distressing threads of our society. Her work has been commissioned by BAM Next Wave Festival, FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival, ADF, Torn Space Theater, New York Live Arts, LUMBERYARD, American Realness, and others. She has toured to Supersense: Festival of the Ecstatic (Australia), Bratislava in Movement (Slovakia), Wexner Arts Center, Dance Place, ADF, The Yard, MASS MoCA/Jacob’s Pillow, FlynnSpace, Bates Dance Festival, Columbia College, CCN de Franche-Comté à Belfort, Festival Rencontres Chorégraphique Internationales de Seine-Saint Denis, Artdanthe Festival, and others.
Bartosik is a recipient of the Doris Duke Foundation Performing Artist Recovery Fund in the New York Community Trust and the Virginia B. Toulmin Women Leaders in Dance Fellowship at Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU. Other awards include National Dance Project (NDP) Production & Touring Grant and Community Engagement Fund; MAP Fund; Jerome Foundation; FUSED (French-US Exchange in Dance); USArtists International; Foundation for Contemporary Arts; American Dance Abroad; and others. She was a 2023 Sybil Shearer Fellow at The Ragdale Foundation.
Her ongoing project The Encounter comprises a series of works being created with communities around the world merging non-professional, pre-professional, and professional performers. She and Burr Johnson will be leading a one week intensive for BDF students based on The Encounter in 2024. Learn more here.
Bartosik is a 2020 Bessie Award Honoree for Outstanding Production and Outstanding Performer (Burr Johnson) for through the mirror of their eyes (New York Live Arts). She also received a Bessie Award for Exceptional Artistry for her 9 years of dancing in the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Bartosik is the BFA Advisor for Seniors for The Ailey School/Fordham Program and teaches at SUNY/Purchase Conservatory of Dance, the Merce Cunningham Trust (MCT), and DeWitt-Clinton High School (Bronx, NY) where she spearheaded a partnership between the MCT and the NYC DOE to bring Cunningham practice into NYC public high schools.
