Young Audience Program
The Encounter Dance Workshop for Teens

Led by Kimberly Bartosik and Burr Johnson


Thursday, October 20, 2022
9:30am: Grades 7-8
11:30am: Grades 9-12
FIAF Skyroom

School Groups Only • Grades 7–12



The Encounter Workshop for Teens combines physical play with imaginative exploration, culling from themes, ideas, and the process of the creation of The Encounter performance projects. The workshop begins with participants learning a series of 4 gestures which are filtered throughout all of The Encounter projects. Working in a circular format, students will step in time with each other, while doing the gestures, navigating speed through breath and the sound of their footsteps.

The workshop also includes the creation of a “dream sequence” where, standing or sitting still, participants use their imagination to “see” a past or future dream of themselves that they have lost or aspire to be.

Workshop leaders include Kimberly Bartosik, choreographer and director of The Encounter, and featured cast member, Burr Johnson. This workshop is developed specifically for non-dancers: prior dance or movement training is not necessary! Original music from the Crossing The Line Festival performance of The Encounter will be used during the workshop.

Committed to creating long-lasting experiences for students, FIAF will provide educators with a free study guide with detailed content about the workshop as well as pre- and post-event activities.

Kimberly Bartosik

Bessie Award winning and Guggenheim Fellow choreographer, performer, educator, and writer Kimberly Bartosik creates viscerally provocative, ferociously intimate choreographic projects that critically, tenderly, and violently etch away at deeply distressing threads of our society.

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    • Bartosik is a 2021 recipient of the Doris Duke Foundation Performing Artist Recovery Fund in the New York Community Trust a 2020-21 Virginia B. Toulmin Women Leaders in Dance Fellow at Center for Ballet and the Arts (CBA) at NYU. She is a 2020 Bessie Award Honoree for Outstanding Performance and Outstanding Performer (Burr Johnson) for through the mirror of their eyes (New York Live Arts). Her work has been commissioned and presented by BAM Next Wave Festival, Torn Space Theater, New York Live Arts, FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival, LUMBERYARD, American Realness, Abrons Art Center, and others. She has toured to Supersense: Festival of the Ecstatic (Australia), Bratislava in Movement, Wexner Arts Center, Dance Place, American Dance Festival, 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 has also received awards from National Dance Project (NDP) Production & Touring Grant and Community Engagement Fund from NEFA; MAP Fund, Jerome Foundation; FUSED (French-US Exchange in Dance); USArtists International; Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Grants to Artists and Emergency Grants; American Dance Abroad; and others. She is a 2022 United States Artists Fellowship nominee.

      In summer 2021 Bartosik seeded The Encounter, an intergenerational project for professionals, pre-professionals and non-professionals, with a focus on teens, being created with communities around the world. 2022 Encounter projects include The Encounter: Buffalo, a partnership with Torn Space Theater (Buffalo), for local performers ages 17-64; and The Encounter: Italia featuring 5 Italian female performers as part of Women Made, a project of the Italian Ministry of Culture in partnership with Jacob’s Pillow and American Dance Abroad.

      A member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company for 9 years, Bartosik received a Bessie Award for Exceptional Artistry in his work. She currently teaches at The Ailey School, SUNY/Purchase Conservatory of Dance, and the Merce Cunningham Trust (MCT). She is working with the MCT to develop training programs for youth in under-resourced communities and has spearheaded a partnership between the MCT and the NYC DOE to bring Cunningham practice into NYC public high schools.