Press
‘lectric Eye / BIG BEATS
University of Utah, The Creative Brief, "Moving as one", August 2023
It is not often that University of Utah dance students and faculty find themselves side-by-side on stage. This coming weekend, they will get the chance in a one-of-a-kind public performance.
“We don’t really ever, except when we are teaching, have the opportunity to dance alongside one another in a decentralized power dynamic,” Molly Heller said. “No one is grading anyone. We are all in the same boat, swimming through complex material, figuring it out. For my colleagues and I to experience it together is bonding. I can feel the excitement in our faculty meetings to be sharing this, inviting everyone to come see what we are doing.”
UtahPresents! Blog “A “BIG” OPENING FOR 2023-24, August 2023
Though many people planned to attend, the nature of performance in a public place with loud music is intended to draw passersby, and many additional audience members were drawn in by the spectacle. One nearby resident heard the beat, came to see what was up, and then went home to grab his camera.
As “’lectric Eye” opens, a group of 14 bursts onstage, stepping in formation as runway fashion model swagger meets drill team precision. They criss cross the stage, arms swinging, hips gyrating, assorted gold and coppery mylar apparel flashing. It’s sexy, glitzy and mind-boggling in its intricate unison. As a group they step, turn, lunge, plié, kick, dip, relevé—constantly changing direction to a droning disco beat punctuated by the sound of drumsticks. Sound and movement are equal partners in choreographer Joanna Kotze’s work, and for ’lectric Eye, musical collaborator, Ryan Seaton, emerges from the sound booth to perform a fully integrated role onstage. He plays his original electronic music, he sings, and while the drill team does its thing, he jumps rope. For a very long time.
Eventually the group breaks apart and individuals leap and strut in random traffic patterns. The energy is frenetic. There are near collisions. The stage gradually empties, leaving Kotze crouched alone. Though ‘lectric Eye started development before the pandemic, one clearly feels the effect of lockdown isolation, loss, and the trauma of anxiety and discord. The entertaining opening number is followed with discomfiting solos by Kotze, Wendell Gray II, Symara Johnson, and Molly Heller. These dancers allow us to feel their experience in real time—the exhaustion, the coping, the giving in.
’lectric Eye is not easy to watch. The work is gutsy. Kotze and company looks you straight in the eye and holds its gaze. Yet it has beautiful moments.
Dance Magazine, March 2022: To Post, Or Not To Post? Learn How to Curate Your Digital Dance Footprint by Chava Pearl Lansky
On a blindingly hot Saturday last September, choreographer Joanna Kotze premiered Big Beats for a small audience gathered in Manhattan’s Riverside Park. Just 15 minutes long, Big Beats, which featured a cast of 20 brightly dressed downtown dancers moving synchronously in architectural formations, was presented for free. Having used up her grant money and funding from the presenter to compensate the dancers, Kotze paid for a professional videographer out of pocket. Just as she usually does after a work’s premiere, Kotze posted the whole thing on her website and shared the link with her followers via her newsletter and social media. The approach, particularly in sharing choreography that was shorter than her typical evening-length pieces, worked: Kotze’s now working out commissions to set Big Beats at two schools, a festival and a company. “I know that one of those presenters saw it in person, but the other three saw the video,” she says.
Most everyone in the dance world can agree that seeing something online is simply not the same as seeing it in person. But offering a virtual option doesn’t have to take away from the in-theater experience; instead, it can just make it more accessible. For the premiere of Kotze’s new full-length work ‘lectric Eye at Brooklyn’s Irondale in February, she sold discounted tickets for a one-night-only livestream of the show. “I would prefer people to see it live, but I was excited about having an option for people who don’t feel comfortable going to a live show, or who live across the country,” she says.
The New Yorker, February 2022: Kotze started work on her new dance, “ ’lectric Eye”—which scrutinizes themes of loss, isolation, and resistance—before the pandemic. But life during the past two years has given this artist of intensity plenty more to work with. The début performances feature a strong cast of dancers, goaded by the live and extreme sounds of Kotze’s frequent collaborator the composer Ryan Seaton. The show on Feb. 10 adds the short film “Nothing’s changed except for everything,” which balances between business as usual and total freak-out. The show on Feb. 12 will be live-streamed on irondale.org. –– Brian Seibert
Time Out New York, February 2022
Dance Enthusiast postcard, February 2, 2022, 'Pushing Physical and Sonic Limits' written by Joanna Kotze
"I am a Brooklyn-based choreographer, dancer and teacher who has been part of the New York dance community since 1998 and this will be my fourth evening length piece. This process of making ‘lectric Eye began as it often does for me with a series of questions––How do we inhabit space together? and how do we continue to create change?–– and the “answers” or subject matter emerged from there, from my moving body and from the collaborators in the room."
Exploring the Metropolis Blog, May 4, 2020: A Letter from EtM Choreographer Joanna Kotze
Nothing’s changed except for everything (film, 10 minutes, launched January 11, 2022)
Dance Magazine Friday Film Break, February 4 2022
Intense and powerful, choreographer and performer Joanna Kotze wows in her newest film Nothing’s changed except for everything. Filmed in Tallahassee by Chris Cameron, Kotze used this project as a launchpad for her latest larger ensemble project, ‘lectric Eye, which will premiere February 9 in Brooklyn, New York. Her short film displays visual, physical and verbal storytelling to give an account of “personal and collective loss and the human body’s potential for persistence, resistance, and power.”
What will we be like when we get there (Premiere 2018 at New York Live Arts, NYC)
The New York Times Speaking in Dance feature
This Week in New York, March 2018
“Kotze takes advantage of every part of the New York Live Arts Theater, immersing the audience in the vast unpredictability of life in the twenty-first century through an exhilarating controlled chaos”
Solomons Says, March 2018
"Kotze’s solo displays her uncanny ability to go from careening out of control to instantaneously balancing on a dime. Her body is a miracle of articulation; every motion etches itself in space. Her kinetic essence automatically organizes chaos, making her dancing profoundly clear."
Joanna Kotze and Jonathan Allen Interviewed for Bomb Magazine by Zachary Fabri
Joanna in conversation with Bill T. Jones
Joanna Kotze and Jonathan Allen on Whats Going on With Dance and Stuff podcast
Martha’s Vineyard Times Preview, June 12, 2019
“David R. White, artistic director and executive producer of the Yard, puts the cutting-edge work in perspective: “I do think form can be political although not necessarily in a didactic or literal sense. In the case of this collaboration, one might say ‘the center doesn’t hold.’ The work goes from a kind of intimacy into a world where things fly out of control. One might see the politics — which are conceptually inherent in this piece — as being a reflection of the chaotic, tornadic times in which we are living.” - Wendy Taucher
un petit peu plus (commission for Toronto Dance Theatre)
"Kotze is so skilled at drawing the parameters of her off-kilter world, that we come to recognize what can be uniquely funny inside of it."
The Star, Energetic dance live from New York and Toronto, Michael Crabb, February 12, 2016
"Kotze’s work is quirky, exuberant and good-humoured. In fowl-like fashion, dancers flap arms or jut heads. They run, sashay and stomp; none of the angst that too often weighs heavily on Euro-dance."
FIND YOURSELF HERE
D.C. Dance Watcher, Found Among Chaos, Lisa Traiger, April 25, 2015
"The work lives in real time – and speaks to audiences today who find the charm, lively brightness and vivid beauty, and the unholy mess of their own lives in Kotze’s poetic piece."
"Kotze’s dance is a dance of life, vivid, chaotic, unexpected, moments of subtly and unbridled hamminess, joyful and reserved."
"...examines space as both a performative and a static environment while drawing the audience to come to its own conclusions about the work that rattles expectations about dance and art, collaboration and individuality, harmony and tension."
Broadway World, Excavating the Complexities of Collaboration, Brendan Drake, October 1, 2015
"Collaborations in Dance often operate on the following formula: Choreographer and designated visual, film and/or sound artist decide to collaborate. They meet, they discuss, they agree on a concept, they work independently for several months. The resulting piece is a dance with supported sound and visuals , and we don't see collaboration. It becomes just about the dance, not about crossing disciplines or being inspired by one another. This disconnect is symptomatic of an increasingly insular and bland dance community. If this disconnect is the status quo, then choreographer Joanna Kotze's "Find Yourself Here" at Baryshnikov Arts Center is an act of rebellion."
Culturebot, FIND YOURSELF HERE, Rennie McDougall, September 25, 2015
"What emerges is a fascination in form, its construction and degradation, and the driving necessity to define and redefine oneself in space."
Active attention to form is the fore-grounded performative action in FIND YOURSELF HERE – the title implies this active self-awareness; locate yourself, do it now."
Baryshnikov Arts Center, BAC Stories, Aaron Mattocks, December 15, 2013
"They both keep dancing. Moments of silence, of stillness, shock with power. When they finish, I am speechless."
The rest of everything (commission for the James Sewell Ballet Company)
Star Tribune, James Sewell Ballet: Ballet or something else?, Sheila Regan, February 10, 2015
"Of the four dances, New York-based choreographer Joanna Kotze’s “The Rest of Everything” takes the largest leap into the form of ballet, breaking it open for a look."
It Happened It Had Happened It Is Happening It Will Happen
The New York Times, Learning the Uses of Disorder, Gia Kourlas, June 4, 2013
"As a dancer, Ms. Kotze possesses such clarity of intention that even when she’s losing her balance in an off-kilter position, her body has a natural way of organizing itself. There’s a bit of Lucinda Childs in her coolly beautiful, aristocratic exterior."
"...that’s what “It happened” is all about: leaving room for uncertainty."
"This evening of dance promises to be a gem of this spring season. Anyone with a love of physical art happening right now and a taste for adventure: do not miss this."
Dance Beat, Three Choreographers Grace a Busy Week, Deborah Jowitt, January 14, 2014
"I’m always finding out new things about these people and this place, surprised by what they decide to do next or what has just filtered from their memories into behavior. What happened? For sure, a little marvel of a dance."
The Dance Enthusiast, Collaborative Meldings of Time and Space, Veronica Hackethal, May 24, 2013
Interview: "Recently Kotze spoke with The Dance Enthusiast about her upcoming performance, her sources of inspiration, and her creative process."
Critical Correspondence, Joanna Kotze in conversation with Jesse Zaritt, May 29, 3013
Interview: "Dancer/choreographer/educator Jesse Zaritt talks with dancer/choreographer Joanna Kotze about her creative practices and choreographic investigations, the role that New York has played in her development as an artist, her trajectory as an architect-turned-dance student, and the notions of perception and audience experience."
The "Bessie" Award
"Joanna Kotze won the Outstanding Emerging Choreographer Award for her work, “It happened it had happened it is happening it will happen,” which was also presented at Danspace Project. "
Between You and Me
Solomons Says, SPLICE: DUETspaceQUARTET, Gus Solomons Jr., October 30, 2011
"Kotze’s vocabulary is richly articulated and dynamically unexpected; from a moment of equipoise, she’ll suddenly lurch in the least likely direction and manage to catch herself without crashing to the ground."
Infinite Body, A SPLICE of life, Eva Yaa Asantewaa, October 16, 2011
"Kotze's duet, Between You and Me, sports one of the most elegant and dazzling--and fragile! watch your step!--sets I've seen at DNA, and one that's quite nicely adaptable to DNA's columns."
Culturebot, Raw Material, Jeremy Barker, October 11, 2010
"In other words, it was a lovely and thoughtful use of space and the geometry of performance which is, unfortunately, often lacking in emerging artists. Kudos."