Jan Bartoszek

Jan Bartoszek is an American choreographer.  As the founder and artistic director of Hedwig Dances, the 41-year-old Chicago-based contemporary dance company, she has choreographed over 75 dances that critics have described as “intelligent, accomplished, moving” (Chicago Tribune) and “poignantly human” (Chicago Reader).  Ms. Bartoszek has presented her work in Chicago’s vibrant theaters, national performance venues such as the Aspen Institute and two exclusive performances at Joyce SoHo (NYC) among many others, and internationally in Cuba, Honduras, Mexico, Brazil, Canada.  Most recently, she partnered with the Bauhaus Foundation in Dessau, Germany on two evening-length performances, which were performed in three German cities.   Through her interdisciplinary dance work, she has fostered a spirit of collaboration with prominent artists, merging choreography, objects, media, text and music to create dances that resonate with complexity and depth.

Ms. Bartoszek’s leadership garnered her 2024 Dance Legacy Award from See Chicago Dance as “an artistic leader who has enriched their community and made a significant and sustained impact on dance in Chicago.”  She also received a Ruth Page Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Dance Community for “keeping the spirit and vision of MoMing alive through her work at the Chicago Cultural Center, serving as an educator, mentor, presenter, administrator, and promoter of dance in the city with inspirational excellence.”

Bartoszek has received a combined total of 9 choreographic fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Illinois Arts Council and was one of 12 Illinois choreographers selected to participate in NEFA’s 2016 Regional Dance Development Initiative.  She received a MacArthur International Connections Fund grant and 2014 National Performance Network Creation Fund and Forth Fund grants to develop and tour Trade Winds, a dance collaboration with the Havana-based DanzAbierta.  Her choreography credits include work for theater (Steppenwolf, Northlight, Live Bait and Court theaters, as well as choreographing and assisting in work by director Ping Chong), and opera (Dead Birds: A War Ritual with American Ritual Theater Company composer William Harper and director D.W. Moffet). She has choreographed four dance programs specifically designed for young audiences.  These shows have been performed throughout the Midwest in schools, museums and cultural centers.

As a dancer, she toured nationally and internationally with Ping Chong & Company, performing in BAM’s Next Wave Festival; Montreal’s Festival TransAmeriques; and the Teatro Goldoni for the Venice Carnivale Festival; and, with the Charlie Vernon Performance Company at the American Dance Festival, Dance Theater Workshop (NYC) and the Walker Arts Center (Minneapolis), among many others. Ms. Bartoszek has served on the Advisory Board of the Arts & Business Council of Chicago, the Board of the Chicago Dance Coalition, and dance panels for the Illinois Arts Council and the Oregon Arts Commission.  She has taught dance at Northwestern University as well as at the School of the Art Institute Chicago, Roosevelt University, the University of Chicago, and MoMing Dance & Arts Center, where she was on the faculty for 14 years.  She has led five dance tours to Cuba (2012-2019) and two to Germany (2014 and 2019).

From January 1992 to December 2011, under the administration of Commissioner of Chicago Cultural Affairs Lois Weisberg, Ms. Bartoszek, along with Hedwig Dances’ staff, established an outstanding program of dance performance, mentorship and education as the Dance Company-In-Residence at the Chicago Cultural Center. During these years, over 30,000 people attended 250+ performance events, and Hedwig Dances offered 600+ classes and workshops taught by 35+ nationally and internationally recognized dance artists to more than 8,500 students.  Today’s Chicago Woman Magazine featured her in “100 Women Making a Difference” in recognition of her artistic accomplishments. The dance residency served as a laboratory for the development of new dance work and a sh8owcase for Ms. Bartoszek’s award-winning choreography.

Ms. Bartoszek also has taken an interest in dance made for the camera.  She established and co-curated an annual dance film series at the Chicago Cultural Center (2007-2010) with Sarah Best.  She choreographed, directed, and produced her Emmy-nominated Arch of Repose, a poetic dream-like dance film with cinematographer Daniel Kullman and producer Nicolas DeGrazia of the film production company Bitter Jester Studios (BJS).   Together with BJS, she has produced a behind-the-scenes documentary about Cuban dance.