life - breath - soul
JENNA KULACZ
Dancer & Choreographer in Breath
Creativity Team Soul Liaison, Costume Consulting, Production Book Editor
Jenna Kulacz is a native of Westchester, New York. She is currently a senior at Elon University pursuing a B.F.A. in Dance Performance & Choreography. She has a passion for health and wellness and is a certified yoga instructor. Performance credits include Elon’s Fall and Spring Dance Concerts, ACDA, where she performed a duet representing Elon and had her piece selected to be featured in the 2020 Choreography Showcase, and dancing in Florence and Pompeii with Lauren Kearns’ The Kearns Dance Project. She has also danced professionally for Christal Brown’s INSPIRIT In Arts Across America: A Live Virtual Performance with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Jenna is grateful for the talented and dedicated artists who have supported her growth as a dancer over the years and is excited to see what the future holds for her as a performer!
A Note from the Artist:
The human body fascinates me and emotion inspires me to create. Dance has always been something I turn to when I am dealing with any hardship…it is my way to cope and release toxic thoughts that sometimes fill my mind. It intrigues me to see how I can translate specific emotions or compulsions into physical movement. I know that I am not alone in some of the emotional issues I have faced, and I hope that my physical embodiment of these mental states can serve as a release for others. I often use repetitive, beat-oriented music as a method to investigate how emotions and compulsions translate into physical movement. This brings out choreography that illustrates an obsessive yet controlled phrasing to demonstrate my struggle with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).
There is a sense of athleticism, physicality, and strength to my movement that comes from a highly emotional place. By digging deep inside myself and testing my body’s limits through fatigue and exhaustion, I am able to free myself from the box in which my mind constrains me, and overcome mental blocks and doubts that I have. The way that dancers are able to deeply and honestly feel their muscles, joints, tendons, and skin stretch and pull inspires my movement exploration. By challenging myself to expand, pull, and stretch further than I thought possible, I am able to overcome roadblocks that hold me back. Thus, my work is oftentimes athletic, strong, full-bodied, and expansive.
I have found that I enjoy creating contrast between small, specific, accented gestures and uninhibited, wide ranges of motion. Juxtaposing a sense of precision with free, unrestrained movement allows me to convey the ebbs and flows of human emotion and the complexity of the human condition. It is not imperative that the specific emotional subject of my work be fully recognizable by the audience and is up to the audience to interpret it however they like. However, my hope is that the audience can relate to it, allow it to help them to heal and to move forward from any and all personal struggles in their own lives.