For Presenters and Curators
About The Company
Jody Oberfelder Projects creates site-specific immersive experiences for audiences, using dance as the connecting language. Based in New York City since 1988, JOP uses movement as a forum for interactivity, contemplation of ideas, and personal connection. Jody Oberfelder Projects is committed to making dance accessible to people from all walks of life, through reaching diverse communities and performing in unique venues.
About Jody
Jody Oberfelder is a New York based director, choreographer, and filmmaker. She creates art which aims to illuminate life. Whether stage, film, site or installation, her works expand how one experiences dance. Her works often provide audiences with experiences of intimate engagement whether in a vast space or guiding journeys through theatrical environments, historical habitats, bridges, train stations, or ordinary places
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Works Available for Touring
AND THEN, NOW
Conceived/Directed by: Jody Oberfelder
Live Musicians: Glass Clouds Ensemble
(Violinist Raina Arnett and Noemie Chermali and Soprano Marisa Karchin)
Dance Performers: Andi Farley Shimota, Michael Greenberg, Mariah Anton-Arters, Justin Lynch, Jody Oberfelder
And Then, Now, is an immersive performative walk commissioned by Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. This work continues my investigations into aspects of the body and life. The intent is to inscribe places with robust encounters that punctuate our reliance on each other, the environment, and our shared humanity. In this invigorating, site inspired work in a place where the past feels tangible and the stories limitless, I hope people, via physical, musical and sensorial modalities, leave the piece feeling more connections to those who have lived and to our present life.
LIFE TRAVELER
Conceived/Directed by: Jody Oberfelder
Cast: up to 8 performers
Life Traveler is an interactive piece that can be performed on any bridge. Imagine crossing a bridge and seeing a dancer walking with two vintage suitcases. Are you dreaming? In this one-on-one interactive piece, that haw been performed in Munich, London, Düsseldorf, Minneapolis, Amsterdam, NYC, Philadelphia, London, Berlin, and Frankfurt, we offer a chance to pause and reflect on presence while traversing a bridge--an invitation to contemplate the present moment, age, history, and journey.
Walking to Present
Conceived/Directed by Jody Oberfelder
Cast: up to 8 dancers
Walking to Present is a site-specific piece conceived as an embodied "guided tour” with “stations” -- stopping points for conversation/active embodiment/dancing. We site-specifically guide participants on a walk, asking questions about history, our place in it, and how we move through it. Our interactions leave physical and perceptual imprints that can be adapted for each site. The piece was commissioned by DANCE München Festival to be performed on a Trümmerberg (literally a trauma mountain—at Olympiapark, which was built upon rubble from World War II.) We experience movement as a critical interface with space and time. On this journey, each step is a chance for embodied research, as we guide new ways of looking, hearing, feeling the ground, and our traces. This piece can be adapted to any historical site, urban or rural, or the interior of a museum.
Splash Dance
Choreography: Jody Oberfelder
Performers: Rohan Dhupar, Christopher Matthews, Jody Oberfelder, Maya Orchin , Kate Page, Andrew Sanger , Maya Takeda
Costumes: Katrin Schnabl
Music: Smetena
Splash Dance can be performed in any fountain or plaza. This iteration was performed at the Victoria and Albert Museum in the John Madejski Garden on April 23, 2022. Part of the V & A's Performing Arts Festival, Splash Dance inscribes the pool in the center of the courtyard with a dance both reverent and irreverent. Splash Dance is a joyous evocation of humanity’s timeless fluidity. Prior to the performative action of the piece, we mingled with people and asked simply “Do you think we make a ripple in time?” Then, migrating into the fountain pool, eight dancers move in a joyous and energetic celebratory dance of life and regeneration, so important in these hard-edged times.
Rube G. - The Consequence of Action
Conceived and directed by Jody Oberfelder
In collaboration with dancers: Ashley Merker, Paulina Meneses, and Grace Yi-Li Tong
Music: Frank London and JS Bach's Goldberg Variations played by Isabelle O'Connell
Costumes: Claire Fleury
Rube Goldberg, an American cartoonist and inventor known for the Rube Goldberg machine; a chain reaction–type machine intentionally designed to perform a simple task in an indirect and impractically overly complicated way with a set of reactions working in succession to trigger one event after another until the final event is complete. Using prompts for actions like swish, bounce, slide, swing, pop, spin, and others, the film became the larger catalyst for Rube G. – The Consequence of Action, bringing its concepts and momentum onto the stage for an ensemble of four dancers. The live work engages audiences by creating a theatrical movement-based site-specific work indoors, with actions from audience participation adding in new triggers for new movements and new connections throughout the evening.
Other Offerings
An Evening of Film!
Jody Oberfelder has been creating films since 1989! Her award winning films (see film page) have been shown internationally. We offer an evening of showing these films, accompanied by a workshop in film making for performers. This thumbnail video is of the recent film “Earthly Beings”, by Jody Oberfelder.