Set in Motion

Get ready to move! Join GenWex, the Wexner Center’s young patrons initiative, and several professional dancers for a movement-based workshop on contemporary dance. Each dancer will introduce their unique style, and then teach participants a short choreographed piece with inspiration ranging from everyday motions like breathing to architecture and silence. Your guides will include Kimberly Bartosik, whose Étroits sont les vaisseaux (2016) will be performed at the Wex Feb 15–18. Don’t miss this opportunity to experience her work and practice firsthand!

Participants can expect to complete the workshop with new insight into contemporary dance—and new moves—in a fun, relaxed setting. Participants at any experience level are welcome. Please be prepared to dance and wear comfortable clothing that allows for movement. Street shoes are not permitted in the event space; socks or bare feet are encouraged.

Meet the workshop guides:

Josh Anderson began his dance training studying ballroom styles, earning the title of National Champion Latin Dancer in 1999. In the years since, he has choreographed, produced, and performed in contemporary dance programs at such events as the Philadelphia Fringe Festival and the Fly Honey Show in Chicago. Recently, he has collaborated with directors on “screendances” (dance film shorts) that have been presented at international dance film festivals including Choreoscope in Barcelona and the Northwest Screendance Exposition in Eugene, Oregon. Influenced by theater and spoken word, Anderson believes words and movement are both modes of expression that, when used together, can best help us contextualize and understand the world.

Deeply informed by literature and cinema, Kimberly Bartosik’s Bessie Award–winning choreography involves complex plays on space, time, and audience perspective that illuminate the ephemeral nature of performance. Bartosik has not only performed with renowned dance companies, but also choreographed programs that have been commissioned at prestigious venues throughout the US, including BAM Next Wave, New York Live Arts, and MASS MoCA/Jacob’s Pillow. She has received numerous artist residencies and dance fellowships, from New York Live Arts Live Feed, the National Center for Choreography at the University of Akron, and the Bogliasco Foundation, among others. Over the course of her career so far, Bartosik has sought to develop a virtuosic movement language, rigorous conceptual explorations, and highly theatricalized environments.

Kat Sauma received her BFA from Ohio State and is now a Graduate Fellow in Dance at the university. Her multifaceted research in movement and improvisation entails musical landscapes, energetic space, light and technology, and textural sensation. Sauma has performed in theaters, museums, clubs, and warehouses in venues from Columbus to New York and Tallinn, Estonia. She has produced evening-length works as well as dance films and has performed with esteemed choreographers such as Bebe Miller, Noa Zuk and Ohad Fishof, and Edward Taketa.

Michelle Sipes is currently pursuing an MFA in dance at Ohio State while holding a graduate associateship at the Wexner Center in grant and proposal services. Over five seasons with Inlet Dance Theatre in Cleveland, Sipes has performed and led masterclasses throughout Ohio and at conferences and festivals across the country. As a teacher, creator, and performer, she seeks to connect with others in ways that deepen the human experience, build community, and stimulate the artistic voice within us all.