Art House explores power of touch post-social distancing with ‘in the fold’

Guidelines to curb COVID two years ago mandated or strongly encouraged social distancing. For Jersey City resident Kenia Rosete, as pandemic restrictions rolled back, the idea of returning to a world where it was (sort of) okay to bridge that gap again was challenging.

“We were slowly kind of being reintroduced back into being able to hang out with other people and restaurants were opening up, and a lot of my social gathering typically revolves around food – but it was really the anxiety that I felt in coming back to these social gatherings which surprised me quite a bit,” Rosete said earlier this week.

As the dancer/choreographer gears up for “in the fold,” a multimedia performance taking place at Art House Productions (345 Marin Blvd.) Saturday, March 23 at 7:30 p.m., Rosete recalled reading an article from National Geographic titled “The Power of Touch” in May 2022.

“I was immediately interested in in reading about that … the article kind of goes into touch as being essential to our survival as humans,” Rosete said. “And it goes into the science of touch and how important it is, and so it was really these two concepts that were coexisting in my world – this fear of coming back into social setting where close proximity to somebody or touch could result in something as definitive and scary and dangerous as death. And then being able to go back to being reminded of how touch is actually essential for our survival. (That) kind of generated this idea of getting back in touch with proximity and touch.”

With “in the fold,” Rosete is exploring how the tension of that informs intimacy from the inside out with collaborators Keirnan Robinson, Nicole DeMaio, Bradley Frizzell, Meagan Woods, Hong Wu, Laia Comas, Chloe Schafer, Mingjun Han and Jingxian Chen – a group who bring a mixture of music, physical art and dancing into an immersive experience that starts in Art House Productions’ lobby and moves into the theater.

Click here for the full NJ.com article by David Menzies