Site Specific Work

And Then Now

And Then, Now is an immersive performative walk exploring the significance of reliance–whether in each other, the environment, or our collective humanity. Choreographed by Jody Oberfelder, in collaboration with Glass Clouds Ensemble, participants will journey through Green-Wood’s springtime landscape to experience moments of music, dance, and reflective conversation. This interactive site-specific work is inspired by the Cemetery itself, a historic site where the echoes of the past can have tangible connections to and impact on our present.

Walking to Present

Walking to Present can be adapted and made site specific in new locations each time. This is an embodied guided tour with pop up site-inspired dances. Each step is a chance for embodied research, as we guide new ways of looking, hearing, feeling the ground, and our traces within the context of ongoing history. We encourage the audiences’ spontaneous participation, both in thought and actions. We performed an excerpt at the Victoria & Albert Museum April 23, 2022 in London, and in Brooklyn through the Brooklyn Public Library BPL Presents series. A new iteration took place in May of 2023, at Olympiapark in the DANCE Munich Festival. We researched new historical sites across America, especially monuments, and devised dances that gave audiences a chance to feel where they are in time and history and perform with our cast of eight dancers.

Splash Dance

Splash Dance can be performed in any fountain or or plaza. In our first iteration, performed at the Victoria & Albert Museum as part of their esteemed performance festival, JOP inscribed the fountain John Madejski Garden fountain pool in the center of the courtyard.  JOP and guest dancers from the UK performed a site-inspired excerpt from the larger work Walking to Present. This is a dance that is  both reverent and irreverent. Music: Ethel, Smetana, Missy Mazzoli. Dancers: Rohan Dhupar, Christopher Matthews, Jody Oberfelder, Maya Orchin, Kate Page, Andrew Sanger, and Maya Takeda. A recording of the premiere is online at the following link.

Life Traveler

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.

Rube G

Rube G. – The Consequence of Action is a physically charged, immersive, and audience participatory dance. The springboard and inspiration for this piece is a Rube Goldberg Machine. We’ll be looking at all angles of how things work as a connective unit, thereby connecting all of us. The piece can be performed on a proscenium stage, with some audience members onstage with us. However we do enjoy performing it in an open space, with 40-80 stools threaded in a giant “S”

Music by Frank London and Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Costumes by Claire Fleury. Performed by Paulina Meneses, Ashley Merker, Jody Oberfelder and Grace Yi-Li Tong