Jan Bartoszek
Chicago, IL
Dance
Jan Bartoszek is an American choreographer. As the founder and artistic director of Hedwig Dances, the Chicago-based contemporary dance company, she has choreographed over 70 dances that critics have described as “intelligent, accomplished, moving” (Chicago Tribune) and “poignantly human” (Chicago Reader). Bartoszek has presented her work in Chicago’s vibrant theaters, national performance venues such as the Aspen Institute and Joyce SoHo, and internationally in Cuba, Germany, Honduras, Mexico, Brazil, and Canada. Through her interdisciplinary dance work, she has fostered a spirit of collaboration with other artists - merging choreography, objects, media, text, and music to create dances that resonate with complexity and depth.
Jan Bartoszek has received choreographic fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Illinois Arts Council Agency (8), and was one of 12 Illinois choreographers selected to participate in NEFA’s Regional Dance Development Initiative (RDDI) with the Chicago Dancemakers Forum in 2016. In 2018, Hedwig Dances, under Bartoszek’s leadership, developed a partnership with the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation (BDF) and the Institute of Design (ID) at the Illinois Institute of Technology to create "Futura" as part of the Bauhaus Centenary Celebration. In 2022, the BDF commissioned her to create another Bauhaus-inspired dance, "Meta I Mor I Phos – a triadic fiction"--- a sequel to Oskar Schlemmer’s iconic constructivist dance, "Triadic Ballet"---for its 100th anniversary. "Meta I Mor I Phos" premiered at the Bauhaus Dessau Museum in Dessau, Germany in September 2022.
Hedwig Dances received a 2014 MacArthur Foundation International Connections Fund grant and National Performance Network Creation Fund and Forth Fund grants for Jan Bartoszek to develop and tour "Trade Winds," a dance collaboration with the Havana-based DanzAbierta. Hedwig Dances has twice performed Bartoszek’s work in exclusive performances at Joyce SoHo in New York City (2006 and 2009). She has also toured her work to Tangente in Montreal.
Bartoszek’s dance credits include work for theater (Steppenwolf, Northlight, Live Bait, and Court theaters as well as choreographing and assisting in work by directed by Ping Chong), and opera (Dead Birds: A War Ritual with American Ritual Theater Company composer William Harper and director D.W. Moffet). She has choreographed four dance shows specifically designed for young audiences: "Dances of Many Lands I + II," "How to Make a Dance," and "American History Through Dance." These shows have been performed across the Midwest in schools, museums, and cultural centers. She has led five dance tours to Cuba (2012-2015 and 2019) and three to Germany (2014, 2019, 2022).
As a dancer, Jan Bartoszek toured nationally and internationally with Ping Chong & Company performing in BAM’s Next Wave Festival; Montreal’s Festival TransAmeriques; and at the Teatro Goldoni for the Venice Carnivale Festival. With the Charlie Vernon Performance Company, she performed at the American Dance Festival, Dance Theater Workshop (NYC), Portland Center for the Arts, (Portland, OR), and the Walker Arts Center (Minneapolis), among many other national and international venues. Bartoszek has served on the Advisory Board of the Arts & Business Council of Chicago, the Board of the Chicago Dance Coalition, and dance panels for the Illinois Arts Council Agency, the Oregon Arts Commission, and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. She has served as adjunct faculty in dance at Northwestern University as well as at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Roosevelt University, the University of Chicago, and at MoMing Dance & Arts Center, where she presented annual performances of her choreography and served on the faculty for 14 years.
From January 1992 to December 2011, Jan Bartoszek, along with Hedwig Dances’ company, established a partnership with the Chicago Cultural Center, under the administration of Chicago Commissioner of Cultural Affairs Lois Weisberg. As the Dance Company-In-Residence at the Chicago Cultural Center (CCC), Hedwig Dances developed an outstanding program of dance performance and education. The Cultural Center residency served as a laboratory for the development of new dance work and a showcase for Bartoszek’s award-winning choreography. During her company’s tenure at the Chicago Cultural Center, she actively inspired and led new program development, mentorship (Hedwig Next Generation Project, Hedwig Dance Lab and Dance Bridge), and a School of Dance; along with presenting and producing dance performances in the Cultural Center’s architecturally historic spaces. Over 30,000 people attended 250+ performance events, and Hedwig Dances offered 600+ classes and workshops taught by 35+ nationally and internationally recognized dance artists to more than 8,500 students. Her leadership garnered her a Ruth Page Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Dance Community for “keeping the spirit and vision of MoMing alive through her work at the Chicago Cultural Center, serving as an educator, mentor, presenter, administrator, and promoter of dance in the city with inspirational excellence.”
In 2008, Jan Bartoszek received a Chicago Dancemakers Forum Dance Lab Award to research and create a dance film. During her lab artist year, she researched and viewed dance films at New York City’s Dance Films Association (DFA), attended DFA’s annual dance film festival, and brought then-DFA director Deirdre Towers to Chicago to teach a master class in filmmaking for dance artists. Bartoszek also participated in the Netherlands Dance Films Festival in Amsterdam. Since her lab artist year, she has choreographed and produced two dances made for the camera and a dance documentary. She choreographed, directed, and produced her Emmy-nominated "Arch of Repose," a poetic, dream-like dance film with cinematographer Daniel Kullman and producer Nicolas DeGrazia of the film production company Bitter Jester Studios (BJS). Together with BJS, Bartoszek produced Touch Cuba, a behind-the-scenes documentary about Cuban dance. She has also worked with filmmaker Chris Olsen of Kai Harding productions to choreograph a film entitled "Two" as part of The Artsiders Raw Series (#2). From 2007 to 2010, she established and co-curated an annual dance film series at the Chicago Cultural Center with Sarah Best, and she has served as a panelist for Chicago Dancemakers Forum’s Body + Camera Festival.