Bodies of Work ZOE SARNAK
Music, Lyrics and Text by Zoe Sarnak
Directed & Choreographed by Jennifer Jancuska
Developed by BringAbout Development
“...This anthology of Sarnak’s songs set to dance, created with the director and choreographer Jennifer Jancuska, puts Sarnak at the center: Acting as a narrator of sorts, she resets the material so it’s less about a character than what was going through her mind when she was writing those songs.”
Page Contents
1. Synopsis
2. The Music
3. The Choreography
4. Why These Collaborators
5. Why Now
6. Development History
SYNOPSIS
Have you ever felt brash and bold and fearless? Dreaming castles in the air and unafraid to climb for them? And as life happens, what does it mean to realize you’re really in the middle of it, the climb? You’re sure as hell not going to climb back down. But there’s no guarantee that you’ll ever quite get there. In adulthood the world teaches us to manage dreams to know better. But is it possible that while we think we’re making progress, growing up, we’re actually losing something? Somewhere along the way. As we try to keep climbing.
In Bodies of Work ZOE SARNAK, for the first time, award-winning composer and lyricist Zoe Sarnak shares her own personal story from the stage in a piece that leads the audience through the expansive and intimate life moments that are interwoven with her music. From the piano, or with a guitar in hand, Zoe uncovers family cycles of immigration and assimilation, unpacks queerness and the expansive horizon of a different kind of family making, and teeters on the heartbreak and nerves of her risk-reward relationship with work, art, and the future.
This piece is purposefully a mid-career examination of Zoe’s body of work. Rather than a look back at the end of a life's work and story, the piece poignantly addresses the pressing decisions and challenges facing Zoe right now. Even with a significant “body of work” out in the world, so much of the future is still wide-open and ever-evolving. The audience is actively engaged in Zoe's present circumstances, as she seeks answers by delving into her past. They are folded into songs, led to dance, engaged with dialogue, and invited to join Zoe on this pursuit to rediscover what it feels like to do back flips off the diving board, even after you’ve had your first belly flop, to love unabashedly even after the painful end of a marriage, and to continue making art even when that means finding the reserves to start again at a new beginning.
At its core, Bodies of Work ZOE SARNAK is not about finding reassurance that our lives won’t involve failures and falls. Instead, it explores the possibility that not knowing what’s going to happen when you reach—when you care deeply and desperately—might be the whole point.
The Music
Award-Winning Songs from an Uncompromising Voice
A pivotal reflection, showcasing a decade-long journey reimagined.
Bodies of Work ZOE SARNAK flows theatrically, intertwining live music, dance, and dialogue to create a continuous narrative including 17 of Sarnak’s songs written over the past ten years.
The Choreography
In Bodies of Work, physical storytelling transcends traditional theatrical choreography, making it as essential and expressive as the text itself.
When the Zoe character steps onto the stage, she immerses herself directly into—the music, the people, and the energy that together are—her personal body of work.
The choreography incorporates every member of the company throughout, activating a physicality that flows fluidly between pedestrian and spectacular, purposefully illuminating layered memories and emotional landscapes. In this way, choreography is the striking narrative tool that propels and embraces Zoe through emotional transformation.
Ultimately, the piece emboldens both performers and audience with a powerful and elusive sense of hope—particularly resonant in today's uncertain world. Music, words, and dance equally provide the audience with unique and deep ways to connect with the journey, culminating in a unified emotional experience.
The creative process behind Bodies of Work was ignited through physical explorations of Sarnak’s writing process—marked by overlapping genius thought lines and bold aspiration, each infused with lust, love, freedom, queerness, failures, and triumphs. Suddenly, her most expansive and lush songs—typically voiced by fictional characters in musicals—were coursing through bodies, felt viscerally in motion, and reframed within the deeply personal lens of Sarnak’s own life.
The choreographic language of Bodies of Work claims its place in the theater—not as ornament, but as essential narrative force. It speaks to anyone who has ever felt stuck—in love, in work, in family, in society—and offers a shared space to reconnect with the core sparks of hope, together.
WHY THESE COLLABORATORS
Honored on the 2024 “Women to Watch on Broadway”
Zoe Sarnak & Jennifer Jancuska are both named to the prestigious “Women to Watch on Broadway” 2024 list by the Broadway Women’s Fund.
Zoe Sarnak
Composer, Lyricist, Book Writer
@zoesarnak
www.zoesarnak.com
Zoe Sarnak is a New York City-based composer, lyricist, and writer. She is a Jonathan Larson Award winner; and a finalist for the Ebb, Kleban, and Billie Burke Ziegfeld Awards. Her work has been developed with and presented by Second Stage, New York Stage & Film, The Public, Roundabout Theatre Company, Williamstown Theatre Festival, New York Theatre Workshop, WP Theatre and many more. Works include: NY Times Critics Pick, THE LONELY FEW (with Rachel Bonds) at MCC and The Geffen; GALILEO (with Danny Strong and Michael Weiner) at Berkeley Rep; the upcoming world premiere of EMPIRE RECORDS (with Carol Heikkinen) at McCarter Theatre; PARTICLE FEVER (with David Henry Hwang and Bear McCreary), SPLIT (with Michele Lowe) and others soon to be announced. Her music has been featured by the NY Times Live, The Guggenheim, the BBC, and in benefit concerts and albums for Everytown.
Jennifer Jancuska
Director, Choreographer
@jencuska
www.JenniferJancuska.com
As a director, choreographer and conceiver of new works, Jancuska brings Broadway tenure to an experimental approach of driving the creative process of theatrical narrative with pedestrian and surreal physicality. She collaborates across artistic genres, languages, and geographical locations, creating unexpected collaborations with artists who are typically siloed from creative dance making.
Jancuska is the recipient of the Japan-US Creative Fellowship (2024/25), Jerome Robbins “Stories That Move” Residency (2024), CUNY Dance Initiative Fellowship (2024/25), and has been named to the "Women to Watch on Broadway" (2024) by The Broadway Women's Fund. Her work has been commissioned and presented by The Old Globe Theater, Berkeley Rep, The Public Theater, Dallas Theater Center, Goodspeed, Ars Nova, Little Island, Madison Square Garden, New York Musical Festival, The Drama League, The Skirball Center, Trinity Rep, and Universal Theatrical Group, among others.
As Artistic Director of BringAbout for ten consecutive years, Jancuska has collaborated with more than 100 award-winning writers, composers, musicians, creatives and performing artists including Benjamin Velez, Joel Perez, Adam Gwon, Zoe Sarnak, Pig Pen Theatre Company, Taylor Iman Jones, Hannah Cruz, and Scott Wasserman. In this role, she continues to pioneer new methods of integrating dance as a fundamental narrative tool in the development of new musicals and plays. During this time, she also created BC Beat, an acclaimed semi-annual event recognized by The New York Times as “the place to reimagine the possibilities for dance in musical theater.”
Alongside a career of creating new work, Jancuska has held full-time positions with Broadway shows, including seven years as Resident Choreographer and Dance Supervisor of HAMILTON on Broadway.
Jancuska is a graduate of Cornell University. She has spent time studying, teaching and creating in Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, London, Rio, Paris, and Shanghai. She loves live music, languages, jungles, rock climbing, collaboration, and living in Brooklyn as a family of four.
Why Now
Amplifying Authentic Voices: Bodies of Work ZOE SARNAK places a female composer front and center, unflinchingly honest about her experience as a gay, Jewish woman navigating the complexities and pressures of defining her own path. Zoe opens up about her fears, successes, and doubts—offering a connection that is both uniquely personal and broadly relatable. This raw, transparent storytelling makes Bodies of Work profoundly relevant in today’s world.
A Mid-Career Reflection: Bodies of Work challenges the conventional narrative by examining an artist's journey not from a point of culmination but while it is still unfolding, making this exploration timely and urgent. As Zoe noted in a recent New York Times article, “There’s amazing, beautiful content about career retrospectives, but what does it mean to look at a body of work while it’s still in formation?” (New York Times, September 2024)
Innovative Collaboration: As highlighted in BroadwayWorld, “Award-winning composer and lyricist Zoe Sarnak, along with pioneering Artistic Director of BringAbout Development, Jennifer Jancuska, both recently named to the Women to Watch on Broadway 2024 List by the Broadway Women's Fund, have teamed up to create "Bodies of Work Zoe Sarnak.” The project represents not just a new musical but a nuanced approach to storytelling and marks a significant milestone for BringAbout, a 501c3 nonprofit organization known for its transformative integration of dance into new musicals.” (BroadwayWorld, July 2024).
Inspired Tonality: Tonally, Bodies of Work ZOE SARNAK draws inspiration from pieces that challenge and expand the traditional theater format, such as What the Constitution Means to Me and American Utopia. These works balance personal narrative with universal themes, creating a space that is both intimate and expansive. By integrating music, dance, and candid storytelling, Bodies of Work ZOE SRNAK aims to capture this dynamic energy, presenting a theatrical experience that is both reflective and boldly innovative.
Development Strategy
The development of Bodies of Work ZOE SARNAK began with a multi-day BringAbout Residency investigating Zoe's decade-long songwriting journey—over 20 songs, their origins, evolution, and rewrites. From there, we moved into a physical exploration of the work, using memory fragments, monologues, and dialogue to shape characters and narrative. Through this collaborative process, we began sculpting "building blocks" that guide us into and through each song, ultimately shaping the overarching narrative.
The project was further developed and honored by New York Stage and Film (Summer 2024) as part of their Jerome Robbins’ STORIES THAT MOVE: DEVELOPING DANCE MUSICALS residency. This prestigious opportunity allowed us to deepen our work and explore new dimensions of storytelling, thanks to the support of the Jerome Robbins Foundation, the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Frederick Loewe Foundation, and the Mertz Gilmore Foundation. Bodies of Work ZOE SARNAK continues its journey with a multi-week residency at the Baruch Performing Arts Center in NYC.
Bodies of Work copyright Jennifer Jancuska
BringAbout Development Ltd and Bodies of Work is represented by Sendroff & Baruch.