Heidi Latsky: GIMP
Heidi Latsky has had a long, illustrious career, from her early days in Montreal to becoming principal dancer with Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane to creating her own New York-based contemporary company, Heidi Latsky Dance.
With her dynamic physicality and her intelligent approach to moving the body through space, Latsky’s choreography can be simultaneously poetic, sensual, violent, and athletic, running the gamut of emotions through her impeccable sense of what is true and real. Her company, HDL, premiered in 2001 with the piece, Just Watch!, to a sold out theater. Her 2004-05 season was performed at La MaMa ETC with a new work, Club Riot, and then in 2006 she debuted From the Limb and disjointed along with the solos, Five Open Mouths and Woman At An Exhibition. In that same year through her work with the bi-lateral amputee dancer, Lisa Bufano, she began working on GIMP using disabled and non-disabled dancers.
GIMP premiered at the North Fourth/VSA Arts of New Mexico in Albuquerque in 2008, at the Abrons Arts Center in 2009, and at the Dublin Dance Festival and elsewhere. The GIMP Project grew to include performances, residencies and outreach activities to educate the public in celebrating dancers in all different forms, rather than just the typical physical stereotype. By integrating disabled movers with the non-disabled, Latsky has created a genre of dance that is inclusive and loving as it strives for the highest form of artistic expression. In her words:
“I’ve always envisioned a society in which: all people are recognized as viable and valuable; difference is upheld, not feared; increased understanding and communication take the place of isolation, alienation and lack of contact; people do not detach from their bodies because of external judgments and conventional standards they have internalized; people are encouraged to “own” and value their bodies; and a high standard of excellence is achieved through sustained work and focus.”
HLD has toured throughout the United States and Europe, performing in some of the most prestigious venues in the world. Latsky has made over 15 pieces for her company, as well as new work for commissions from the Cannes International Dance Festival, American Dance Festival, the Joyce Theater, the 92nd Street Y, and more. She has created pieces for solo artists such as Li Chiao Ping, Gus Solomons Jr. , and Janet Lily, and as of 2010 has been the Artist in Residence at the Jewish Community Center in NYC where she continues to make new work.
Latsky has choreographed for the stage and film, and has created an integrated and organic teaching technique called the Latsky Method that activates the innate corporal intelligence through use of breath and body placement. She has been involved in many teaching residencies, including at Skidmore College, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Bryn Mawr University, and more. She is also on the Artist Advisory Board of the Danspace Project, a member of Dancer’s Forum and Society for Arts in Healthcare, and has been the recipient of fellowships and awards for her work in dance.
A prolific artist, Heidi Latsky is one of contemporary dance’s treasures, moving boundaries through her sense of exploration, curiosity, and her mission to include and integrate ideas and forms that have been formerly left on the sidelines.
