Everybody’s Fantasy is a co-production with Arsenic – Centre d’art scénique contemporain (CH), Tanznacht Berlin (DE), TanzQuartier Vienna (AT).


A performance work after Gertrude Stein’s 1937 Everybody’s Autobiography which is after The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, written by Stein in 1933 in the guise of an autobiography. Considering the biographical, the life-lived as as an accessible format for others to enter, visit or witness with care and understanding, this work looks toward what would happen, what we could anticipate happening again and the fantasy that rests just beside. If gathering or the commons are something of the past, the work cultivates a perfume of “rehearsals for paradise” where gathering is not bound to inclusion or exclusion. We consider that place is where no one belongs but where many can exist. The work imagines a kind of temporary-holding in place of ownership, a way to take responsibility and take care inclusive of the ability to walk away, to depart, to end, to let a thing exist beyond our grasp, beyond our collection and maintenance of it. The work follows desire knowing that it is not bound to sense or sensibility


Concept, Text, Performance: Jen Rosenblit

Sound Design and Performance: Gerald Kurdian

Sound Design and Performance: Li Tavor

Costume: Saša Kovačević

Recorded Vocals: Simone Aughterlony

Light Design: Enrico D. Wey

Early Dramaturgical care: Merel Heering

Lazy Susan/Rotating Stage design: Jonas Maria Droste

Production and Administration: Culture on a Budget 


Supported by the NATIONALES PERFORMANCE NETZ (NPN) Coproduction Fund for Dance, which is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media of Germany. Residency support by Danse & Dramaturgie, an initiative by Théâtre Sévelin 36, in association with Dampfzentrale Bern, Tanzhaus Zürich, TU-Théâtre de l'Usine, ROXY Birsfelden, with the financial support of Pro Helvetia and SSA Société Suisse des Auteurs 

November 2018 Premiere Sophiensaele, DE with a co-production of The Chocolate Factory Theatre, NYC.


Parts of things are in the painful process of becoming whole things themselves. I’m Gonna Need Another One troubles the authentic or singular self by elevating the inevitability of things falling apart. The work situates itself within the proximity of twelve green foam blocks as they leave dusty traces, eventually crumble and disappear in form. Rosenblit stands in as Performer, Herself, as well as multiple figures which speak to problems for the preparation for future strategies and ways of organizing how we come to know where and who we are. From a Sous Chef, to Chiron: the Greek God of pain known for the acknowledgment of the wound on his animal leg, a Wheat Farmer, a Soldier, Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, and a Compulsive Re-arranger of Furniture, the figures orient and reorient the work as we get lost in the multiplicity of this solo body, performing a strategy of endurance based on distraction. A picnic occurs, a small wheat field gets cultivated and for one moment, this imitation land obscures the figure of the body. A monologue takes us through profiles of the figures and finally opens up to include a short pause to speak about things that we like. We are left with a floating map without landmarks, an illegible city plan, suggesting that being lost is a valid location. 


CONCEPT, TEXT, PERFORMANCE Jen Rosenblit 

LIGHT AND TECHNICAL DIRECTION Yoshi Geottgens

SOUND DESIGN AND LIVE PERFORMANCE Gerald Kurdian 

DRAMATURGIE Kuchar & Co / Adham Hafez and Adam Kucharski, Jay Scheib

RESEARCH AND PHOTOGRAPHY Simon Courchel

ASSISTENT: Lulu Obermayer 

CHESS FLOOR Christopher Füllemann 

APRON Quinn Czejkowski

METAL WORK Abigail Lloyd / Pine Pine Studio

GERMAN TRANSLATION Julia Schell / für Kunst und Komma

FRENCH TRANSLATION Lucile Dupraz

PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT MiCA / Katharina Meyer and Raisa Kröger

 

A production by Jen Rosenblit. Funded by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds. In cooperation with The Chocolate Factory Theater and Sophiensaele, with support from Atelier Mondial. 

March 2017 NYC Premiere, The Kitchen


Piles of crushed peanuts shells, shaved grass, a grim reaper and an imaginary bull fight all inside the constant maintenance of a plastic covered space. Swivel Spot is concerned with preservation. It is clear that something is gone, haunting the area are the remains, a skeleton of logic from something that no longer applies. Still, these things don’t just go away. We hover in this spot, an area likened to a dump, a graveyard for parts or a 

recycling shed. Each encounter offers what feels monumental without reason; a leaking, a cracking open, momentary ramming, a passageway as if with the right amount of petting, we might arrive in that afterlife or submit to that underworld. We are three because two would be too few and together, we separately approach aloneness.


Concept: Jen Rosenblit Performance and Creation: Jen Rosenblit and Geo Wyeth Sound: Geo Wyeth Lighting: Nica Ross Dramaturgy: Joshua Lubin-Levy Production and Performance Support: alexia welch Multipurpose Tool and Podium Fabrication: Abigail Lloyd Jacket: Quinn Czejkowski Lighting Assistant: Andrew Hunt Management / Producer: Alexandra Rosenberg

January 2017 Berlin Premiere District, A commission and co-production by HAU Hebbel am Ufer.


The fundamentals are there. There is a window only it won’t be accessible in quite the same way or we simply won’t see the view through it in this configuration. 

There are doors still, of course, and they sit in the walls for the most part. The walls no longer just support the structure but enact their own participation. We will do the thing we always do of adjusting across the room, bringing all parts with us. The fit is good somehow, no matter the quantity or persuasion. 

Don’t worry, we will still fuck over there in the corner. Although it might be called something else entirely, we will potentially foster other resemblances of lovemaking that might be now known as feeding, bathing or recycling. The roof is still the roof. It functions as it did only we imagine seeing small apertures, spots of deterioration where the light seeps through and takes volume. It is no longer important if this light is artificial or natural. 


Inside the room, dungeon-esque encounters and ordinary domestic lingering exercise a politic that comes with care taking, danger and amnesia. Aughterlony and Rosenblit alongside Gutierrez and Self on sound, maintain a complicated relationship to order that encourages cracks and leaks inside architectures for gathering. A free-standing wall, a roaming kitchen island and decaying bodies are part of a disruptive ecology that asks for constant adjustment. Wall fixtures like hooks, rope, chain, and clamps offer possibilities of adjusting. A chair gets bound, a ladder, bones, witches on site, skins, zest of grapefruit at room temperature. The fixtures hold no opinion for who or what clings to them. Rhythmic sorcery drives the effort despite the un-governability of ingredients. Is this a construction site or a cooking show? There remains a curiosity of how each thing fits. Everything fits but at what cost? The room offers an expanded horizon, no longer obliged to rid oneself of the things that supposedly suspend and delay progress. 


Concept/ Performance: Simone Aughterlony, Jen Rosenblit Composition / Soundbody: Miguel Gutierrez, Colin Self Guest Performer: Sheena McGrandles (Berlin premiere) Light Installation: Florian Bach Music Kitchen Sculpture: Nik Emch Dramaturgical advice: Jorge León, Joshua Lubin-Levy, Anna Mülter, Saša Bozic Technical Director: Marie Prédour Production Assistent: Dagmar Bock Production Management: Sina Kießling Administration: Karin Erdmann Diffusion: Alexandra Wellensiek Early Sound Research: Tami T Production: Verein für allgemeines Wohl Co-production: Gessnerallee Zürich, Arsenic - Lausanne Supported by: City of Zurich, Canton of Zurich Fachstelle Kultur und Pro Helvetia - Swiss Cultural Foundation, Tanzhaus Zurich, ImpulsTanz Wien, Ernst Göhner Stiftung, Fête de la Danse - Genev, Tanzhaus Zurich, George and Jenny Bloch Foundation Created in the frame of "Utopian Realities", a co-production of HAU Hebbel am Ufer and Haus der Kulturen der Welt as part of "100 Years of Now", curated by HAU Hebbel am Ufer. Funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.

April 2016 NYC Premiere, Invisible Dog Art Center co-presented with New York Live Arts Clap Hands is a mating call, an over-crowded solo, looking to hail, disappear, disguise, displace, reveal and track the disappearance of the body. Each body navigates the problem of the solo. Sometimes slipping into the convention of the soloist on the way to tracing the remnants of shifting content, the multiplicity of the group complicates a narrative of intimacy that is not limited to pattern, ritual or husbandry. A large stack of fuchsia felt installs the space, asking for its own presence. Through textural sculpting of the material into forms resembling human bodies, a still-life emerges and demands a kind of flamboyance that might not be offered by the performing bodies themselves. Can these sculptural puppets transfer a sense of reality to shift the solo figure(s) out of demand? Can we locate intimacy within these non-human forms? Clap Hands is concerned with the politics of coming together as we maintain autonomy. Various constellations of desire flood the room, decentralizing what can be perceived as presence or the remains of an absence, noting the impossibility of the solo. Something is lost or forgotten, but we continue with the burden of carrying on. We wonder how we can synthesize the singular body, what that body might look like and how we consolidate its skeleton of logic through our individual labors. How do we continually locate ourselves and what is it to deal with the haunting nature of remaining alone? Clapping hands is a phenomenon we do together, to celebrate, mark or culminate. Clap Hands is something we have to sit alone with, to recall being together. Concept: Jen Rosenblit Performers: Effie Bowen, Andy Kobilka, Jen Rosenblit Performance and production support: alexia welch Sound: Admanda Kobilka Lighting: Elliott Jenetopulos Early research support: Addys Gonzalez Management/Producer: Alexandra Rosenberg

May 2014 NYC Premiere, The Kitchen a Natural dance is concerned with ways of structuring bodies as they fall out of relation aesthetically and spiritually while still locating ways of being together. This work continues a process of tangential thinking that leads to choreographic thought that is both energetic and designed, where a contemplative theatricality begins to encourage a disruptive kinship. This work locates logic outside of a normative lens, looking to an improvisatory system for disrupting behavior while still ushering in the glory of absurdity, timing, meaning, sequence, divinity and the political. Concept: Jen Rosenblit Performers: Addys Gonzalez, Justin Cabrillos, Effie Bowen, Hilary Clark and Jen Rosenblit Lighting: Elliott Jenetopulos Costumes and Sound: Jen Rosenblit Set construction: Sam Roeck. Producer/Management: Meredith Boggia

February 2012 NYC Premiere, New York Live Arts In Mouth is a duet that considers the union, binding, marriage yet rests inside of a sense of patronage. Through a process of tangential thinking and decision making, the structure looks to deem even the unworthy as righteous. A curtain closes almost all the way, we begin a slow motion peep show for the few who can still see sitting in the center. One steps out to watch the other, or to let you watch more clearly. The curtains open and they have moved on. We stumble into things and let them go. We find these two bodies fallen in a dark forest, devastated and roaming. Concept: Jen Rosenblit Performers: Jen Rosenblit and Addys Gonzalez Costumes and Sound: Jen Rosenblit Lighting: Elliott Jenetopulos