October 15, 2021 at 1:30 PM

UNC Asheville Highsmith Union (Blue Ridge Room) + Zoom

Presented as part of the Faith in Arts Institute

Guggenheim Fellow and Bessie Award recipient Kimberly Bartosik will stream clips and discuss the process around the creation of I hunger for you, her choreographic work focusing on the need for faith and the collective desire for transformation. Created for a cast of five professional performers and one child, in I hunger for you, deeply internalized forces of faith, violence, life force, and compassion pulse through bodies that exist in a mesmerizing, starkly beautiful, often dangerous world. Defined by light and its absence, the work looks deeply into the heart of the impulse to lose oneself in ecstasy, desire, and searching, riding an edge of barely controlled abandon and vibrating stillness.

I hunger for you premiered in NYC at BAM Next Wave 2018 and toured to 6 cities, including Melbourne, Australia. The final tour, scheduled May 2020 as part of Faith in Arts Institute in partnership with Black Mountain College Museum & Design Center, was cancelled due to Covid-19.

For more info, please visit: https://www.daela.org/i-hunger-for-you and https://vimeo.com/301314008

Following the screening and discussion, Dance Scholar/Choreographer Christopher Rasheem Macmillan joins Kimberly in a rich conversation around their shared passion for questioning, through artistic practice, embodied pathways towards faith within a critical and compassionate understanding of our contemporary moment.

Open to all | FREE

Kimberly Bartosik’s participation was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Choreographer, performer, educator, essayist Kimberly Bartosik creates viscerally provocative, ferociously intimate choreographic projects that are built upon the development of a virtuosic movement language, rigorous conceptual explorations, and the creation of highly theatricalized environments. Her work dramatically illuminates the ephemeral nature of performance while critically, tenderly, and violently etching away at deeply distressing threads of our society.

​I hunger for you was commissioned and presented during BAM Next Wave Festival 2018 following World Premiere performances at LUMBERYARD Center for Film and Performing Arts, as part of an inaugural year BAM/LUMBERYARD partnership.

Created for a cast of five professional performers and one child, the 52-minute work focuses on the need for faith and the collective desire for transformation. In I hunger for you, deeply internalized forces of faith, violence, life force, and compassion pulse through bodies that exist in a mesmerizing, starkly beautiful, often dangerous world. In a world defined by light and its absence, the work looks deeply into the heart of the impulse to lose oneself in ecstasy, ritual, desire, and searching, riding an edge of barely controlled abandon and vibrating stillness.

Christopher-Rasheem McMillan is a performance related artist and scholar. He has a joint appointment between Dance and Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa. McMillan received his BA from Hampshire College (2007), his MFA in Experimental Choreography from the Laban Conservatoire, London (2011), and his PhD in Theology and Religious Studies from King’s College, London (2017).

His interests concern choreography in an expanded field, something that he has approached through experimental practices and creative processes in multiplicity of formats and expressions. He uses video, performance, photography and oral storytelling to explore themes of race, memory, queer desire, religion, personal and public mythology.