The Encounter: Buffalo

Acclaimed choreographer, dancer, director and writer Kimberly Bartosik develops a new 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)
Tickets: $30 General, $15 Student/Artist/Senior

Get Tickets for 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.

The Encounter: Buffalo

Choreography and Direction by Kimberly Bartosik

Creative Assistance by Burr Johnson

Original sound by Frankie Napolski

Design concept by Kimberly Bartosik in collaboration with Torn Space Theater

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

This performance is made possible with support from NYS DanceForce and Torn Space Theater’s lead funders Cullen Foundation, NYSCA, Erie County, Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation, Stenclik Family Charitable Foundation, Creative Arts Initiative, the June Farrington Fund, M&T Bank, and REDC.