The human experience in motion. This is BJP.
A steadfast dance artist of the human experience, and known to her friends and the world of performing arts and beyond as BJP, Britta Joy Peterson upholds the principle of simplicity that reveals underlying complexity not only in her work, but in herself.
In addition to being a seasoned performer, BJP choreographs, designs, and collaborates on original contemporary dance works. Originally from Minnesota, she excelled as an artist in the Minneapolis community from a young age. Today an independent choreographer and performer highly regarded by her peers, BJP serves as the Director of Dance at American University in Washington, DC.
That’s not all, either. Since 2015, BJP has been collaborating successfully with the creative team +++, producing performances installations and workshops showing locally, nationally, and internationally right up to today and all of 2017.
BJP holds her MFA in Dance, summa cum laude, from Arizona State University. Her current research interests include the coalescence of media and movement, the interplay between choreographic structure and movement invention, and curricular design for the dynamic arts environment. This research is evident in her current projects “Sentient” and “Vinegar Spirit”.
A dexterous, powerful performer. A respected, trusted mentor to artists, colleagues and students. A passionate, patient educator. A prolific choreographer. A dynamic creative force. BJP is all that, and so much more.
Visit BJP’s website at https://bjpdance.com/
Current Productions
“Sentient” – June, 2017 [France, Switzerland, London]
In collaboration with +++
The Sentient project brings together techniques from responsive media, dance, and lighting design to engage with the heterogeneous materialities of non-human objects like rocks, lanterns, and teacups. Considering these objects as collaborative partners, we create performative events and immersive installations as experiential space for encounters with non-human rhythmicities. Current performative research and performance is with Lanterns, a hybrid digital-physical system with responsive sound and light for full-bodied interaction.
“Vinegar Spirit” – October, 2017 [Williamsburg Art neXus, NY]
Music by Austen Mack (AZ), performance by Léla Groom (NY) and Maggie Beutner (NY)
Vinegar Spirit is a work for two movers and musician. Within the work, we are looking at the perceived notion of selfishness within the feminine experience. One way that selfishness is perceived is through women taking up metaphorical and literal space—allowing ourselves to be big in body, in movement, in personality, in voice etc.
Past Productions-
“Light” – April 2017 [Washington, D.C.]
Music by Sean Doyle (DC), Aerosol Art by Mr. Joseph Fox (DC), Light by Jason Arnold (DC). Created for American University Dance Company.
Contemporary quartet for 4 movers. Sound by Sean Doyle. Costumes by Joseph Fox, Sydney Moore, Britta Joy Peterson, Barbara Tucker Parker. Light (12:30) is a collaborative work bringing together text, sound, aerosol art, light and movement. As the third riff of BJP’s Cover All Series, the quartet is an internal call to action and an external convening of empowered people. We rise, we begin. The Cover All Series also includes “Moxie” (2014) and “A Manner of Adjourning from the Apex” (2015).
“Tired hearts kick darkness and bleed light” – January 2017, April 2016, October 2015 [Tempe, San Francisco, Rock Springs, Phoenix]
Created, installed and performed by +++ with Coel Rodriguez.
Tired hearts kick darkness and bleed light (16:00) is an audience absorbing interrogation of intimacy. The quartet transforms space through light, movement, and sound—juxtaposing textures, tempos, angles, and qualities/quantities of touch.
“Visible Sketch v.1-v.4” [December 2015-June 2016]
Created and installed by +++ for Desert Dance Theatre, Wyoming
Visible Sketch v.5 (11:30) is an interactive media/dance performance for three movers/vocalists. The performers use sketches to describe each major performance of the piece, referring to an iterative creative process that resists perfectionist temptations.
This project explores a dynamic concealing/revealing in contexts of multiple relationships: individual and ensemble, body and self, open and closed, part and whole, qualities and quantities, knowing and naïveté.
Dance making is an act of synthesizing ideas. The process may take one (or multiple) of many paths depending on variables like the number of dancers, resources at hand, type of idea, intention of product, or type of audience.
Or I may say to hell with it and not worry about any of these.
I find myself paring away, streamlining, removing the frivolous and superfluous. The resulting experience is a clearly designed space full of sensuous materials: bodies meeting light, sound, objects and other bodies.
The human body. A body of human bodies. They are the catalytic agent for the process and the product. The tissues, organs, and spirit of the body move through different methods to analyze, connect, and transform ideas into dances.
Dances that reach out to the viewer.
While the viewer reaches in.