Photo credit Maria Baranova
Choreographer, performer, educator, writer 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 2024 New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project Production Grant (NDP) recipient; a 2025 New York State Council on the Arts/NYSCA Support for Artists Award grantee with support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; and a Harkness Foundation for Dance Project Grant recipient. Other recent awards include: the Doris Duke Foundation Performing Artist Recovery Fund in the New York Community Trust; Bessie Award Honoree for Outstanding Production and Outstanding Performer (Burr Johnson); Sybil Shearer Fellowship at the Ragdale Foundation; Guggenheim Fellowship in Choreography; Virginia B. Toulmin Women Leaders in Dance Fellowship at Center for Ballet and the Arts (CBA) at NYU. She was an inaugural participant in the 2024 International Choreographers Retreat, organized by Montréal Danse and c.a.t.a.m.o.n Dance Group.
Bartosik’s work has been commissioned and presented by BAM Next Wave Festival, Torn Space Theater, New York Live Arts, FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival, American Dance Festival, LUMBERYARD, American Realness, Abrons Art Center, Gibney, Danspace Project, The Kitchen, La Mama, and BEAT Festival. She has toured to Supersense: Festival of the Ecstatic (Melbourne, Australia), Bratislava in Movement Festival (Slovakia), Wexner Arts Center, Dance Place, American Dance Festival, The Yard, MASS MoCA/Jacob’s Pillow, FlynnSpace, Bates Dance Festival, Columbia College, Centre Chorégraphique National de Franche-Comté à Belfort, Festival Rencontres Chorégraphique Internationales de Seine-Saint Denis, Artdanthe Festival, Church, Mount Tremper Arts, and others.
Bartosik has also received awards from National Dance Project (NDP) Production & Touring Grant and Community Engagement Fund from New England Foundation for the Arts; MAP Fund, 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; Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Grants to Artists and Emergency Grants; Creative Arts Initiative (CAI); New York Foundation for the Arts, Building Up Infrastructure Levels for Dance (BUILD); American Dance Abroad; and New Music USA, Live Music for Dance. Bartosik was a 2022 United States Artists Fellowship nominee. Her Encounter projects have received prestigious funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; New England States Touring program of the New England Foundation for the Arts; the Nathan M. Clark Foundation; and New York State Council on the Arts.
Her ongoing project, The Encounter, comprises a series of intergenerational physical theater works for professionals, pre-professionals, and non-professionals being created with local participants in communities around the world. To date, projects include: The Encounter: Buffalo (2022), a partnership with Torn Space Theater; The Encounter: Italia (2022) featuring dancers in Italy supported by the Italian Ministry of Culture in partnership with Jacob’s Pillow and American Dance Abroad; The Encounter: NYC (2022), presented as part of French Institute/Alliance Francaise/FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival; The Encounter: Akron (2023), a partnership with NCCAkron and Rubbercity Theater; The Encounter: Rockland (2023), a partnership with The Strand Theater in Rockland, ME; and The Encounter: Providence (2024), a partnership with Motion State Arts in Providence, RI. Bartosik has also hosted The Encounter workshops around the world, most recently at Bates Dance Festival and University of NC at Wilmington.
Bartosik has been in creative residence at the Ragdale Foundation; New York Live Arts, Live Feed and Studio Series; Torn Space Theater; 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; Governor’s Island through Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Swing Space Program; Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University; University of Buffalo; LaGuardia Performing Arts Center; Jacob’s Pillow; Kaatsbaan International Dance Center; Mount Tremper Arts; White Oak Plantation; and Movement Research. Bartosik has been a Choreographic Mentor as part of the Ailey School’s New Directions Choreography Lab and Ballet Hispanico Instituto Coreografico Award. She was a Bogliasco Foundation Fellow and a 2023, 2019 and 2015 Merce Cunningham Fellow. Bartosik was a recipient of an ART, a Capacity-Building grant through Pentacle. In 2018, she made her curatorial debut as part of DoublePlus at Gibney.
Bartosik’s 2020 digital quarantine project, The Game, was commissioned by the Onassis Foundation and presented as part of Fusebox Festival. Her collaboration with Visual Artist Matthew Ritchie, You will see more stars, a multi-iteration work merging Augmented Reality into the live performance arena, received a 2020 Works & Process @ the Guggenheim Virtual Commission. Her critical writing has been published widely, including articles featured in Dance Magazine.
A member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company for 9 years, Bartosik 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. Bartosik has been a guest artist/faculty at SUNY/Purchase Conservatory of Dance, The Ailey School, Sarah Lawrence College, Princeton University, The Juilliard School, Hollins University, Rutgers University, Bates College, The Playground, University of North Carolina School for the Arts, Arizona State University’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, Colorado College, and University of Buffalo. She is currently an Advisor for The Ailey School/Fordham BFA Program and teaches at SUNY/Purchase, the Merce Cunningham Trust (MCT), and DeWitt-Clinton HS in the Bronx where she spearheaded a partnership between the MCT and the NYC DOE to bring Cunningham practice into under resourced NYC public high schools.