Joanna Kotze

Joanna Kotze

Joanna Kotze is a Brooklyn-based dancer, choreographer and teacher. She was awarded the 2013 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for Outstanding Emerging Choreographer and has received support from the Jerome Foundation, Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, Harkness Foundation for Dance, New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) BUILD, New Music USA, Brooklyn Arts Council, Yellowhouse, and two Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grants.

Her choreography has been presented at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Velocity Dance Center, the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, The Yard, Bates Dance Festival, Stonington Opera House, Baryshnikov Arts Center, American Dance Institute (ADI), Bard College, Danspace Project, New York Live Arts, Jacob’s Pillow, Dance New Amsterdam, Movement Research at Judson Church, Roulette, Dixon Place, 92nd Street Y, WAXworks, Lu Magnus gallery, Soho20 gallery, Show Room Gowanus gallery, Industry City and the Thelma Sadoff Center for the Arts (WI). Joanna has created new works on, Toronto Dance Theatre, Ririe-Woodbury (Salt Lake City), Zenon Dance (Minneapolis), the James Sewell Ballet (Minneapolis), and Gibney Dance Company (NYC). She has also created original works on students at Barnard College, The New School, Purchase College, Long Island University, Ohio University, Southern Utah University and Miami University (OH).

Joanna has upcoming residencies through the Alan M. Kriegsmann Creative Residency at Dance Place in Washington, D.C., and Dance Program Malmo in Malmo, Sweden. Last fall (2019), she was an artist-in-residence through Exploring the Metropolis (EtM) Choreographer and Composer residency at Jamaica Center for the Arts and Learning in Queens, New York and was part of Loghaven’s Artist Residency’s pilot program in Knoxville, Tennessee. She has had residencies at The Bogliasco Foundation (Italy- inaugural Van Cleef and Arpels Fellow), The Yard (Bessie Shönberg Fellowship), The Camargo Foundation (France), Milvus Artistic Research Center (Sweden), Jacob’s Pillow, Bennington College, Sedona Arts Center, Marble House, Djerassi, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Movement Research, The 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Center, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC), Gibney Dance Center, and Mt. Tremper Arts. Joanna was a 2012 Fellow for Ailey’s New Directions Choreography Lab and has participated in Sarah Maxfield’s One-Shot, a web-based solo performance relay.

Joanna danced with Wally Cardona from 2000-2010 and again in 2018, performing throughout New York City, the United States, Canada, Europe and Mexico. She currently dances for Kimberly Bartosik/daela, and has worked with Kota Yamazaki, Stacy Spence, Netta Yerushalmy, Sam Kim, Sarah Skaggs, Christopher Williams, the Metropolitan Opera ballet, Daniel Charon, Nina Winthrop and others. Joanna recently served as a Creative Advisor for the Alvin Ailey Dance Center’s New Directions Choreography Lab and has served on panels for the New York Live Arts Fresh Tracks Program, The Bogliasco Foundation, New Music USA, Marble House and Dance New Amsterdam. Joanna is on teaching faculty at Movement Research and has taught at Colleges and Universities and festivals throughout the US. She is originally from South Africa and has a BA in Architecture from Miami University. www.joannakotze.com

Visiting Artist | Residency Postponed

'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 is supported, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts.