Arts Centre Melbourne Presents I HUNGER FOR YOU By Kimberly Bartosik/daela

Former dancer for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Kimberly Bartosik, brings her impulsive and impactful work I hunger for you to Australia for the very first time on Friday 23 August as part of Supersense: Festival of the Ecstatic.

Suspended in a stark yet mesmerising world defined by light and its absence, I hunger for you creates a space where internalised forces of faith pulse through each dancer's body which in turn, restlessly, tenderly, and violently confront one another.

Emanating from Bartosik's personal experience with charismatic spirituality, the work delves deeply into the heart of losing one's self in ecstasy, ritual, and desire, riding an edge of barely controlled abandon and vibrating stillness.

Developed from ideas of faith, violence, compassion and life force, I hunger for you has been able to transpose these thinkings into a work that speaks to an ecstatic, resilient experience through instinctive and primal rhythms, and a deep level of precision.

"Working in close collaboration with my exquisite cast and extraordinary designers, I hunger for you spilled out of us over the period of a year with incredible force. We found ourselves enmeshed in sweaty, intense practices based on personal reflections excavating a kind of pulse from the body.

We're sourcing - from the subterranean recesses of our bodies - the deeply human desire to connect with each other, with a divine force, with something outside, with something within ourselves. It doesn't matter where we look. What matters is that, at some point in this fleeting existence, we look, pull, take, give, and feel hunger," says Bartosik.

In recent years, Bartosik has been hailed as one of the most adventurous and exciting dance makers working today.

Supersense: Festival of the Ecstatic, created by Arts Centre Melbourne, with Australian New York-based performer and curator Sophia Brous, is a hypnotic collision of music, performance, dance and theatre from 23 - 25 August 2019. The third iteration of the intoxicating exploration of ecstatic performance is the most bold, distinctive and cross-disciplinary yet. Featuring icons of music, theatre, dance and performance ritual from five continents, Supersense is presented over three days in the underground labyrinth of Arts Centre Melbourne.