Initiated with a mix of teens from The Ailey School and professional dancers, The Encounter blossomed from the celebratory energy and gratitude of choreographer and former member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company Kimberly Bartosik and her return to the studio post-quarantine.
The work is an encounter with oneself, pulling from what we are currently carrying in our bodies–grief, hope, fear, desire, newfound power– and pairs it with our dreams in this moment of reconciliation with time. Working with communities around the world merging professional, pre-professional, and non-professional performers, The Encounter is an intergenerational cross-geographic, global conversation about the ferocious power of the body as a form of communication and the potency of movement as a connective language.
The Encounter will be presented for the first time in NYC as part of Crossing the Line Festival, featuring performers and designers from NYC and Torn Space Theater in Buffalo.
The performance on Fri, Oct 7 will be followed by a conversation with Kimberly Bartosik, moderated by Joe Melillo.
50 minutes
Cast & Creative Team
Choreography and direction by Kimberly Bartosik
Performed by Kimberly Bartosik, Claude “CJ” Johnson*, Burr Johnson, Joanna Kotze, Ryan Pliss, Kalub Thompson, Mac Twining
With young performers River Bartosik-Murray, Logan Farmer, Ellington Hurd
Original sound design by Sivan Jacobovitz and Frankie Napolski, arranged by Kimberly Bartosik
Lighting design by Roderick Murray
Costume design Jess Wegrzn
Creative producer: Carlos Diaz Stoop
Rehearsal & administrative assistant: Lexie Thrash
Stage manager: Carly Weiser
Dramaturgical support by Dan Shanahan and Melissa Meola
*Claude “CJ” Johnson appears through the courtesy of A.I.M by Kyle Abraham
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.
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