Kimberly Bartosik
Lecturer of Dance
Choreographer, performer, educator, essayist Kimberly Bartosik creates viscerally provocative, ferociously intimate choreographic projects that are built upon the development of a virtuosic movement language, rigorous conceptual explorations, and the creation of highly theatricalized environments. Her work, which is deeply informed by literature and cinema, dramatically illuminates the ephemeral nature of performance.
Kimberly is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow in Choreography. She is a 2020 Virginia B. Toulmin Women Leaders in Dance Fellow at Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU where she will create The Encounter, a project for 12-15 year old dancers aspiring toward careers in ballet. I hunger for you, was commissioned and presented by BAM Next Wave Festival 2018 and LUMBERYARD Center for Film & Performing Arts, through an inaugural year BAM/LUMBERYARD partnership. She was a 2017-20 New York Live Arts Live Feed Residency Artist, where she premiered through the mirror of their eyes in March 2020. Her 2020 quarantine project, The Game, was commissioned by the Onassis Foundation and presented as part of Fusebox Festival. In NYC Kimberly’s work has also been commissioned and presented by American Realness, FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival, Abrons Art Center, Gibney, Danspace Project, The Kitchen, La Mama, and BEAT Festival. Kimberly has toured to Supersense: Festival of the Ecstatic (Melbourne, Australia), Wexner Arts Center, Dance Place, American Dance Festival, The Yard, MASS MoCA/Jacob’s Pillow, The Flynn, Bates Dance Festival, Church, Columbia College , Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, Mount Tremper Arts, Festival Rencontres Chorégraphique Internationales de Seine-Saint Denis, Artdanthe Festival, and others. Kimberly is currently collaborating with Visual Artist Matthew Ritchie to create The First Argument, a performance project involving Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Gaming. In 2021 she will create a new work in partnership with Torn Space Theater and Lafayette High School for children of refugee immigrants.
Kimberly is a 2019-20 Harkness Dance Center Artist-in-Residence @ the 92nd St Y and a 2019 Exploring the Metropolis (EtM) recipient with Composer Sivan Jacobovitz. In 2017 she received a National Dance Project (NDP) Production & Touring Grant and Community Engagement Fund awards, supported by the New England Foundation for the Arts. Kimberly is a 2010 and 2017 MAP Fund grantee. She has also received support from the Jerome Foundation; FUSED (French-US Exchange in Dance), a program of the New England Foundation for the Arts in partnership with The Cultural Services of the French Embassy and the French American Cultural Exchange; Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, USArtists International; Creative Arts Initiative (CAI); New York Foundation for the Arts, Building Up Infrastructure Levels for Dance (BUILD); American Dance Abroad; New Music USA, Live Music for Dance; and Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Grants to Artists and Emergency Grants.
In 2017 Kimberly was a Dancing Laboratory Residency Artist at the National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron and a Bogliasco Foundation Fellow. She is a 2019 and 2015 Merce Cunningham Fellow; a 2016 Gibney Dance DiP Residence Artist; and a recipient of an ART, a Capacity-Building grant through Pentacle. In 2018, Kimberly made her curatorial debut as part of DoublePlus at Gibney.
Kimberly has been in creative residence at New York Live Arts, Live Feed and Studio Series; Marble House Project; National Choreographic Center at Akron/NCCAkron; Centre Chorégraphique National-Ballet de Lorraine; LUMBERYARD Center for Film & Performing Arts; Gibney Dance Center’s DiP Residency; Centre Chorégraphique National de Franche-Comté à Belfort, France; Governor’s Island through Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Swing Space Program; Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University; Joyce Soho Artist Residency Program; University of Buffalo, LaGuardia Performing Arts Center; Jacob’s Pillow; Kaatsbaan International Dance Center; Mount Tremper Arts; White Oak Plantation; and Movement Research.
Kimberly was a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company for 9 years and received a Bessie Award for Exceptional Artistry in his work. She received her BFA in Dance from North Carolina School of the Arts, and MA in 20th Century Art and Art Criticism from The Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Research of the New School University. Kimberly has been a guest artist/faculty at Hollins University, Princeton University, The Juilliard School, Rutgers University, Bates College, The Playground, University of North Carolina School for the Arts, Arizona State University’s Hergberger Institute for Design and the Arts, Colorado College, and University of Buffalo. She currently teaches at SUNY/Purchase Conservatory of Dance and the Merce Cunningham Trust. www.daela.org
More About Me
As a choreographer, I create viscerally provocative, ferociously intimate choreographic projects that are built upon the development of a virtuosic movement language, rigorous conceptual explorations, the creation of highly theatricalized environments, and a belief that artistic practice can deepen our understanding of the world around us. Significantly informed by literature and cinema, my work dramatically illuminates the ephemeral nature of performance.
Through my process, I carve out a space for criticism and compassion while tenderly and violently etching away at some deeply distressing threads of our society. Embracing the physical and emotional extremes of the performers, their bodies become vessels through which ideas, emotion, context, and content flow directly into the audience body. Through this imprint, I invite the audience to think, feel, and reflect on their place within their complicated existence, encouraging their role as active witness.
My process focuses on rigorous physical research with virtuosic performers towards achieving intense energetic states, which, pushed to an extreme, result in a breaking down of form, leaving the body in a raw, deeply human state. This play with power and vulnerability has become the core of my process and is a conduit to the audience’s perception of violence within themselves and their greater communities.
Recently, I have been building casts of diverse ages, with a focus on young, untrained performers, as well as further encouraging the visceral experience of the audience by inviting them onstage in select circumstances. Their presence is not as performers, but as representatives of the greater world, encountered within a performance arena, creating a complete dissolution of performer/audience boundary.
Research Interests
MA, Liberal Studies, The Graduate Faculty of Social and Political Research, New School University, NYC
BFA, Dance, North Carolina School of the Arts, Winston-Salem, NC
Publications
2020 Give Artists a Home!, Dance Magazine feature article, November
2020 Beyond the project and into the world, a radical proposal for a new arts funding model, publication pending
2019 Merce Cunningham: Dancing with my ghosts, Black Mountain Studies Journal, Volume 10
2015 Robert Swinston in Conversation with Kimberly Bartosik, Critical Correspondence
2013 “Conversations about a decade: Kimberly Bartosik interviews figures in the performing arts world.” Brooklyn Commune Research paper
2007, 01, 00 technogenderbody, BST: Body, Space & Technology + Movement Research Performance Journal #31 and #21
2006 Who is Tino Seghal?, Movement Research Performance Journal #30
2003 “Ode to a Body in 4 Parts with Remnants,” canon Magazine (winner 3rd prize in “Politics of Language” essay contest) , Movement Research Journal #27 (online). A personal essay reflecting on ways in which an artist’s lingual palette differs from that of an academic
2003 “A New ‘Dancers Compact’ Takes Small Steps Toward Sane Working Conditions for Independent Dancers,”, Village Voice. An essay discussing a non-union “contract” for independent dance companies
2002 “Critical Hunger,” Movement Research Journal #25. An essay discussing the history of dance criticism in relation to art criticism
Exhibitions / Performances
2021 Torn Space Theater commission in partnership with Torn Space and Lafayette International High School for immigrant refugee children
2020 Collaboration with Visual Artist Matthew Ritchie, creating a work that involves Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Gaming in conjunction with live performances
2020 through the mirror of their eyes, European premiere, Bratislava in Movement Festival, October
2020 The Game, commissioned as part of Enter, Onassis Foundation U.S.
2020 The Encounter, Toulmin Fellowship Women Leaders in Dance, Center for Ballet & The Arts @ NYU (postponed, fall 2020- spring 21)
2020 through the mirror of their eyes, World Premiere, New York Live Arts, as part of Live Arts’ Live Feed Residency program, March 4-7
2019-21 I hunger for you, Tours to: The Yard @ Martha’s Vineyard; SuperSense Festival of the Ecstatic (Melbourne, Australia); Bates College (ME); Church (ME); Flynn Space (VT); Dance Center @ Columbia College (Il); Black Mountain College & Museum + Arts Center, (NC).
2019 Fanta!, Dance Now @ Joe’s Pub, September 6
2019 through the mirror of their eyes, work-in-progress showing, Friday’s @ Noon series, 92nd St. Y, May 10
2018 I hunger for you, NYC premiere, Brooklyn Academy of Music, BAM Next Wave Festival, BAM Fisher, October 31-November 3
2018 I hunger for you, World Premiere, LUMBERYARD Center for Film & Performing Arts, October 12-13
2018 I hunger for you, work-in-progress performance, New York Live Arts Live Artery, Jan; Live Feed Studio Series, April
2018 Étroits sont les Vaisseaux, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH, February 15-18
2017 Ecsteriority4 (Part 2), Tours to: American Dance Festival, Durham, NC; Dance Place, Washington, DC
2017 Étroits sont les Vaisseaux, American Realness Festival
2016 Étroits sont les Vaisseaux, Premiere, Gibney Dance Agnes Varis Performance Lab
2015 Ecsteriority4 (Part 2), MASS MoCA, co-presented with Jacob’s Pillow; The Yard, Martha’s Vineyard, ME
2015 Ecsteriority4 (Part 2), World Premiere, Abrons Art Center, NYC
2014 Ecsteriority4 (Part 2), In-progress presentation, Centre Chorégraphique National de Franche-Comté à Belfort, France
2014 You are my heat and glare, U.S. Premiere, Commissioned and presented by New York Live Arts
2013 You are my heat and glare, European Premiere, Festival Rencontres Chorégraphiques Internationales Seine-Saint Denis (France)
Select Commissions 2002-2013:
i like penises: a little something in 24 acts, FIAF/Crossing the Line Festival with Dance Space Project(2011)
Ecsteriority3, French Embassy in NYC, FIAF/Crossing the Line Festival (2011)
The Materiality of Impermanence, Dance Theater Workshop (2010)
Ecsteriority1&2, Dance Space Project (2008)
Ecsteriority1, The Kitchen (2007)
home in the neon heat, Dance Space Project (2006)
i sat down on the bank the grass was damp i got my feet wet, Dance Space Project (2004)
The Mechanics of Fluids, Dance Theater Workshop (2002)