The Encounter: Buffalo

Acclaimed choreographer, dancer, director and writer Kimberly Bartosik develops a dance piece in collaboration with Buffalo residents and the Torn Space design team as part of an artist residency supported by NYS Dance Force.

Dates: Fridays – Sundays May 13-22, 2022, 7:30pm
Location: 612 Fillmore Ave. Buffalo, NY (Adam Mickiewicz Library & Dramatic Circle)

Choreography and Direction by Kimberly Bartosik

About The Encounter: Buffalo

The Encounter: Buffalo, created by choreographer/director Kimberly Bartosik in partnership with Torn Space Theater, is a live work of physical theater featuring 9 local performers, ages 17-64. It exists within Bartosik’s larger project, The Encounter, which she is creating with communities around the world, merging professional, pre-professional, and non-professional performers. 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, as we dig our lives out of the pandemics of this age. The burgeoning result is a 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: Buffalo marks the first project within this series to premiere.

Director’s note:

I am deeply grateful for my superb cast and the extraordinary Torn Space Theater team. You have absolutely transformed and deepened my work, pushing it into artistic arenas I’ve never encountered. Special thanks to Dan Shanahan and Melissa Meola for introducing me to this phenomenal community and for providing essential support and guidance of my artistic vision. To Frankie Napolski for expanding my understanding of the possibility of design in profound ways. To Carly Weiser for being the most brilliant Stage Manager (and everything else) I’ve ever worked with! To Marisa and Holly for helping get the piece out onto the world. Thank you Margaret Kaiser and the NYS Dance Force for believing in the potential and power of this unique exchange. To Bronwyn Keenan and the Arts Collaboratory of University at Buffalo. And thank you to this very special city and Torn Space Theater itself for its electrifying and inspiring energy!

About Kimberly Bartosik: Choreographer, performer, educator, essayist Kimberly Bartosik creates viscerally provocative, ferociously intimate choreographic projects that dramatically illuminate the ephemeral nature of performance while critically, tenderly, and violently etching away at deeply distressing threads of our society. Bartosik is a 2020 Bessie Award Honoree for Outstanding Performance & Outstanding Performer (Burr Johnson) for her work, through the mirror of their eyes (New York Live Arts). She is a 2021 recipient of a Doris Duke Foundation Performing Artist Recovery Fund in the New York Community Trust; a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship in Choreography; and a 2020 Virginia B. Toulmin Women Leaders in Dance Fellowship at Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU. Bartosik’s work has been commissioned and presented by BAM Next Wave Festival, New York Live Arts, LUMBERYARD, American Realness, FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival, Abrons Art Center, Danspace Project, The Kitchen, La Mama, and others. She has toured to Supersense: Festival of the Ecstatic (Melbourne, 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, and others.

Select awards include National Dance Project (NDP) Production & Touring Grant and Community Engagement Fund; MAP Fund; Jerome Foundation; FUSED (French-US Exchange in Dance); Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, USArtists International; Creative Arts Initiative (CAI); New Music USA, Live Music for Dance; and Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Grants to Artists and Emergency Grants.

A member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company for 9 years, Bartosik received a Bessie Award for Exceptional Artistry in his work. For more information on Kimberly’s work, please visit: www.daela.org or follow us @kimberlybartosik_daela

Collaborative Team

Creative Assistance by Burr Johnson

Original sound and lighting by Frankie Napolski

Design concept by Kimberly Bartosik in collaboration with Torn Space Theater

Production Team

Production/Stage Manager – Carly Weiser

Box Office Manager – Anna Seidl

Technical Team

Technical Directors – Tony Rajewski, Matt DaVita

Technicians – Daniel Toner, Andrew Zuccari

Performers

Brianna Battista

Basosila Bolende

Charlie Finan

Nikiya Garza

Mariangela Mercurio

Umme Moon

Kalub Thompson

Priscilla Young-Anker

Andrew Zuccari

Special Thanks: The Adam Mickiewicz Library and Dramatic Circle.

Select text from Werckmeister Hamonies by Béla Tarr