Jumpstart Performance Society was dissolved in the fall of 2015

Jumpstart Performance Society was dissolved in fall, 2015.

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JumpStart

Jumpstart was a well-known West Coast interdisciplinary company with its roots in dance. Founded in 1984 by Lee Eisler and Nelson Gray, it established a history of work in new opera, interdisciplinary art and dance theatre.

Throughout the company's history, Jumpstart met with praise for highly kinetic and visual work in which actors move with intense physicality and dancers connect to charged inner emotions. Through collaborative work, notably with designer Nicola Kozakiewicz, works were often set in an environment that creates visual excitement and advances the action of the work. Music was also an important element in these works and composers frequently worked with the company, performing live. Jumpstart received the support of The Canada Council, the B.C. Arts Council, the City of Vancouver, the B.C. Gaming Commission and other foundations and sponsors.

As sole Artistic Director of the company since 1993, Lee Eisler welcomed a new Artistic Director Susan McKenzie in 2012, who led a three year pilot project cultivating dance "jumpstarts" that employed dramaturgy, writing, creative process classes, youth mentorship and rehearsal direction in a variety of settings. At the close of the project, the company was dissolved in fall, 2015.