Joanna Kotze is a Brooklyn-based choreographer, dancer and educator who has been part of the New York dance community since 1998. She creates 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, physical materials and space. Her last evening-length piece, lectric Eye, premiered at The Space at Irondale, in Brooklyn, New York, in February 2022. ‘lectric Eye then toured to New York Live Arts in January 2023, to the American Dance Festival (Durham, North Carolina) in June 2023, and to UtahPresents (Salt Lake City, Utah) in May 2024. Her large cast, outdoor dance, BIG BEATS, has been set on six casts in six different communities and continues to others in the near future.

She also recently finished a short film project called Nothing’s changed except for everything with Tallahassee-based filmmaker, Chris Cameron, and New York-Based composer, Ryan Seaton, and collaborated with writer Lauren Slone on a book that includes observations, reflections and creative writing about the process of making ‘lectric Eye.

Joanna received a 2024 Grant to Artists from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the 2013 New York Dance and Performance Bessie Award for Outstanding Emerging Choreographer, and her 2018 evening-length work, What will we be like when we get there, was nominated for a Bessie Award for Outstanding Music Composition and Sound Design by collaborator Ryan Seaton. Her work has also been supported by the Nathan M. Clark Foundation, City Artist Corps, New Music USA, the Jerome Foundation, Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, Harkness Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts BUILD, Brooklyn Arts Council, Yellowhouse, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant. Her choreography has been presented by UtahPresents, the American Dance Festival, Wanås Konst Sculpture Park in Sweden, The Irondale Center, The Yard, Bates Dance Festival, Stonington Opera House, New York Live Arts, The Wexner Center, Velocity Dance Center, the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Danspace Project, American Dance Institute, Bard College, Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out, Dance New Amsterdam, Roulette, Dixon Place, 92nd Street Y, WAXworks, Movement Research at the Judson Church, and other venues and galleries.

Joanna has had residency support from the Milvus Artistic Research Center, Wanås Konst, Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC), the Alan M. Kriegsmann Creative Residency, Dance Program Malmö, Exploring the Metropolis, Loghaven, The Bogliasco Foundation, The Yard, New York Live Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC), Movement Research, The 92nd Street Y, Jacob’s Pillow, Bennington College, Sedona Arts Center, Marble House Project, The Camargo Foundation, Baryshnikov Arts Center, and Djerassi. She has had commissions to create new works on Gibney Dance Company, Toronto Dance Theatre, Ririe-Woodbury, Zenon Dance, and the James Sewell Ballet and has created original works on students at The Ailey School, University of the Arts, Barnard, The New School, Purchase, Long Island University, Ohio University, Southern Utah University and Miami University. 

Joanna currently dances for Kimberly Bartosik/daela (2009-present) and Stacy Spence, and has worked with Annie-B Parson, Donna Uchizono, Tendayi Kuumba, Wally Cardona, Kota Yamazaki, Netta Yerushalmy, Sam Kim, Sarah Skaggs, Christopher Williams, the Metropolitan Opera ballet, Daniel Charon, Nina Winthrop and others. She is on teaching faculty at Movement Research and has taught at Amherst College, Melbourne University, Toronto Dance Theatre, The Ailey School, Gibney Dance, Sarah Lawrence College, University of the Arts, Barnard College, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, The New School, LIU, Southern Utah University, Ohio University, Miami University, The Field Center, Salt Dance Fest, Bates Dance Festival, and the American Dance Festival. She is originally from South Africa and has a BA in Architecture from Miami University. joannakotze.com