The Body-Brain-Gut of the Matter: Jody Oberfelder on Neuroscience and Movement

Choreographer and dancer Jody Oberfelder discusses her work, and how she uses her pieces to immerse the audience in the body: the heart, the gut, and the brain, and explores the connections between neuroscience and movement.

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Meet This Episode's Guest

Jody Oberfelder

Jody Oberfelder is a director, choreographer, and filmmaker. Her newest work, the final installation in a series of body-centric multimedia explorations, Madame Ovary commits to examine the role biology and anatomy play in defining identity through a humanistic and thoughtful lens. Madame Ovary premieres May 15-19, 2019 at the Flea Theater. Her immersive work 4Chambers (2013), a piece about the heart, was performed in an historic home on Governors Island and in a former hospital. The Brain Piece (2017) was a choreographed experience: a union of movement, film, neuroscience and sound, giving audiences an interactive and intuitive opportunity to engage with their minds in motion. Oberfelder has been a guest teacher at Bryn Mawr University, Temple University, University of Hawaii, New York University, Middlebury College, Wayne State University, Moravian College, and Alfred University. She has been awarded a Joyce Theater Residency, a New York Foundation for the Arts BUILD Grant, and funding from NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Her company, Jody Oberfelder Projects (JOP), has performed internationally at Museu dos Biskeínhos (Braga, Portugal), NoD (Prague), Gallus Theater, Guelph Dance Festival (Canada), Centre National de la Danse in Paris, Die Werkstatt in Dusseldorf, The Pusan National Theater in Korea, The 20th Annual International Festival of Modern Dance in Seoul, and The Belgrade Dance Festival (with performances at The Belgrade State Theater in Serbia and the State Theater of Montenegro in Podorica). In the United States, she has presented her work at New York Live Arts, Abrons Arts Center, The Flea Theater, Dixon Place, Schimmel Theater, The Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, Jacob’s Pillow, MASS MoCA, Washington College, and The Yard in Martha's Vineyard.

As dance filmmaker, Oberfelder has created ten films: Dance of the Neurons, Come Sit Stay, Head First, Duet, Chance Encounters, LineAge, Rapt, Dizzy Memoir, Dots, and Snew. These films have been shown at Dance Films Association’s Long Legs Short Films Festival and The Dance on Camera Festival, Cinedans (Amsterdam), San Francisco Dance Film Festival, Cannes Short Film Festival, Dance Camera West, The Fargo Film Festival, Worlding the Brain Symposium, The London Dance Film Festival FRAME, Imagine Science Film Festival, DCTV, and VideodanceBA (Buenos Aires). Oberfelder also has choreographed commercials for Prada, Guerlain Perfume (with Hillary Swank), and Danskin.

Photo by Wowe Photography

The Brain Piece, presented June 28-July 1, at New York Live Arts, is part installation and part proscenium performance, designed to allow audiences to have an intimate experience with their own minds and bodies. Only 72 audience members at a time are invited, yielding a personalized and engaging experience. Performed by Oberfelder with Mary Madsen, Pierre Guilbault, and Hannah Wendel, along with 10 "dancer docents”, The Brain Piece evokes tangible and interactive experiences, where dance, music, visual art, film, and words enliven the inner life of the brain through overlapping perceptual domains. With set design by Juergen Riehm (with Penelope Phy and Tine Kindermann), lighting design by Kate Bashore, and film by Eric Siegel and Oberfelder, her new work invites the audience to be part of an immersive cerebral and sensorial installation, leading spectators through various spaces, each dedicated to one aspect of the brain. Entering the intellectual and sensorial world of The Brain Piece, the audience has access to a heightened subjective experience of the brain. The piece celebrates the brain’s neuroplasticity, the ability to form connections. “My new work illuminates the “dance” that continuously takes place in our minds,” states Oberfelder. “By watching and participating in the piece, the audience will experience their brains moving, dancing, working and playing, and understand dance as a language that goes directly to the brain.”

Visit Jody online and hear more about her work at https://www.jodyoberfelder.com/