Platform 2010 Danspace Project March 11-13

Down to Gorky Park:

During December 10-13 I traveled to Moscow to attend The Russian Contemporary Dance Platform. This project is funded, in part, by Dance Theater Workshop’s Suitcase Fund as part of the East/Central Europe Cultural Partnerships Program, with support from the Trust for Mutual Understanding.

Contact

Jen Rosenblit and the BottomHeavies
709 Henry St. 4L
Brooklyn New York 11231
jrosenblit@gmail.com


choreography...performance...education..extreme organization and spatial design...project based works...



Making Performance Workshop:
Before the Movement

Starting with our knowledge of maps, quantitative information and visual layout, we will make performance. Before the movement happens or even narrative or theme, we will create maps. What is on this map, does it speak to land masses, borders, abstract pattern, design, population, personal history? How can someone else read this map and what information is conveyed or withheld based on visual information? We will make maps, trade maps, draw on top of preexisting maps and begin to move away from the very documentation of the map. We will move toward a more physical state in the body. We will become the travelers and instead of solely imitating or replicating our maps with spatial patterns, we will embody personal geographies as a way to begin to make dance and performance. We will think critically about how much of ourselves exists within the work and make critical decisions based on what the work calls for.

I am currently developing a new class concept/structure geared more toward the intimacy of live performance, rather than the process of making the performance. I will be teaching as part of CLASSCLASSCLASS Spring 2010. Look out for me in March!

A dissapearing History

When Them, Premiere March 11-13 2010
Danspace Project @ St. Mark's Church


CloseClose Part, 2009
Everlast and So Badly, 2009
Maybe Sprout Wings, 2008
That Sick Sound, 2007
Underbelly and Superfly Afterthoughts, 2007
The Wood and Pearl Sequence, 2006
Curb., 2005


Excerpt from That Sick Sound
Movement Research at the Judson Church
Music by Jules Gimbrone/Aria Orion

BottomHeavy Productions was born in New York City in 2005 when 300 business cards were printed saying it was so. Jen Rosenblit has cultivated an aesthetic that navigates the space between fleeting tragedies and bizarre humor through small dance works for the stage.
The BottomHeavies are a weathered ensemble of performers who carry rural notions to urban time frames and as part of our politics, constantly depart from sentimentality and preciousness. We are absurd in the most tender of ways. We are concerned with the potential of an image, rather than the image itself. Rather than transitions that aid in understanding a linear schedule, we explore how one thing tolerates the next.
We have shown work at Dixon Place, Danspace at St. Mark's Church, Hampshire College, Bowdion College, Movement Research at the Judson Church, AUNTS, Joyce SoHo, Galapagos, Triskelion Arts, Susan Hess Center for Modern Dance and Dance Theater Workshop. The BottomHeavies were a 2009 recipient of Dance Theater Workshop's Fresh Tracks residency and Jen Rosenblit is currently on the artist panel for The 2010 Fresh Tracks series. Jen is a teaching artist and has been to Bowdoin College in Maine, UMass Amherst and Denmark facilitating dance and performance. The BottomHeavies are dedicated to a sincere research in performance aesthetics.



Everlast and So Badly, Hampshire College oct.08




I am currently making my newest work WHEN THEM which will premier in march 11-13 2010 at Danspace Project at ST. Mark's Church as part of Juliette Mapp's platform.