Joanna Kotze

I create highly physical dance performances through a collaborative, multi-disciplinary process, presenting ways to look at effort, labor, humor, violence, unpredictability, and beauty through movement as well as the body’s relationship to sound, light, and space. The subject matter of my work emerges from the persistent questions that guide my choreographic process: How do we inhabit space together? And how do we continue to create change? These principles occupy all of my work but what shifts in each piece is who is in the room and how we respond to the current moment. I expose the work to be experienced with the viewer, not separate from them. This process leads me to discover how the personal, social, and political environment of the present day filters through each person’s body to create a critical dialogue with the viewer that is reflective of the times we are living in now.

Joanna Kotze_What will we be like when we get there_2018_New York Live Arts_photo by Maria Baranova

Joanna Kotze is a Brooklyn-based choreographer, dancer and educator. She received the 2013 Bessie Award for Outstanding Emerging Choreographer and her evening-length work, What will we be like when we get there, was nominated for a 2018 Bessie Award for Outstanding Music Composition by collaborator Ryan Seaton. Her work has been supported by the City Artists Corps Grant, New Music USA, the Jerome Foundation, Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, Harkness Foundation for Dance, NYFA BUILD, Brooklyn Arts Council, Yellowhouse, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant. Her choreography has been presented throughout the U.S. and Canada and she has been an artist-in-residence at many renowned residency programs in the U.S. and Europe. She has created new works on professional and student companies and has taught throughout New York City and the U.S. at Universities, Colleges, and dance festivals. As a dancer she has worked with many prominent choreographers including Wally Cardona, Kimberly Bartosik, and Kota Yamazaki, among others. She is originally from South Africa and has a BA in Architecture from Miami University.