Visiting Artist | December 8 - 16, 2020 // Second Residency 2021
'lectric Eye
Award winning choreographer Joanna Kotze will come to MANCC to further her work ‘lectric Eye, which is a multi-disciplinary dance performance collaboration with composer/musician Ryan Seaton. To realize this work’s particular combination of movement and music, they are working with four additional dancers, and two additional musicians. ‘lectric Eye evokes an acute peering into oneself at a very specific time when technology and surveillance are a daily reminder of society’s influence on how we all see ourselves, as well as people and communities different from our own. It is a conscious look into how we keep going, day to day, through the conflict and bias that surrounds us, celebrating connections and beauty while we fight to put one foot in front of the other. The work is personal and communal, intimate and exposed, social and political. It is an ensemble work that highlights the individual. It is violent and playful, intrusive and inclusive, calm and chaotic. It highlights that humans want privacy and also want to be seen. Kotze asks, “In a life full of contradiction, how do we ultimately see each other - and how do we see ourselves?”
In this time of unprecedented political, social, and environmental turmoil, many concerned artists feel like they are under an electric eye, in the ways they are perceived and in terms of how they look back into themselves. Yet, if people are always staring at screens and not interacting with others in real time, how can anyone know if the capacity for change is real? In ‘lectric Eye, Kotze asks this question and other related ones: “How do we keep going in this toxic political climate? Through all of the surveillance, technology, noise and chaos, what rises to the surface for us, as citizens, and as communities? What are we left with and how do we decide what is meaningful?” Kotze asks these critical questions through the prism of the cast she has assembled specifically for this project.
While at MANCC, Kotze looks forward to engaging with scholars across the disciplines of psychology, philosophy, and poetry to further her research in the studio.
This residency, which has been postponed until 2020-2021 due to COVID-19, is supported, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Maggie Allesee
