Joanna Kotze
Joanna Kotze is a Brooklyn-based choreographer, dancer, and educator who has been a distinctive force in New York’s dance community since 1998, Kotze 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.
As the eighth RCA, Kotze enters her residency following a prolific period of creative activity. Most recently, she completed a Pillow Lab residency at Jacob’s Pillow developing this is the beginning, this is the end, as well as a five-week solo residency at Loghaven in the fall of 2025. Her 2022 work ‘lectric Eye premiered at The Space at Irondale, was reprised in New York Live Arts’ 2023 Live Artery Festival, and toured to the American Dance Festival and UtahPresents. Her acclaimed outdoor performance BIG BEATS has been realized in multiple communities across the U.S., and her virtual project LONG DISTANCE DANCE DIALOGUES continues to connect choreographers globally through conversation and shared movement.
Her work is recognized for its deep physicality, collaborative spirit, and multi-disciplinary layers, often involving musicians, writers, visual artists , and designers. Kotze is the recipient of a 2024 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award, a 2025 NDP Finalist Grant Award, and a FY2026 New York State Council on the Arts Grant Award, all of which are contributing to the making of this is the beginning, this is the end. Previously, Kotze received the 2013 Bessie Award for Outstanding Emerging Choreographer. Her 2018 piece What will we be like when we get there premiered at New York Live Arts as part of the Live Feed creative residency program and earned a Bessie nomination for Outstanding Music Composition by composer Ryan Seaton.
Her choreography has also been commissioned and presented by leading institutions such as New York Live Arts, The Yard, Danspace Project, Baryshnikov Arts Center, the Wexner Center,and international platforms including, the National Arts Centre in Ottawa and Wanås Konst Sculpture Park in Sweden. Her extensive residency history includes support from MANCC, LMCC, The Camargo Foundation, The Bogliasco Foundation, Marble House Project, and Baryshnikov Arts Center, among many others.
Kotze is also an active performer, currently dancing with Kimberly Bartosik/daela, Stacy Spence, and the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Antony and Cleopatra choreographed by Annie-B Parson. She has performed with Wally Cardona (2000-2010, 2018), Annie-B Parson, Donna Uchizono, Tendayi Kuumba, Kota Yamazaki, Netta Yerushalmy, and many others. As an educator, she has taught at Movement Research, The Ailey School, NYU, Gibney Dance, The New School, and the American Dance Festival, among many others. She is originally from South Africa and has a BA in Architecture from Miami University.
