MANCC welcomes Bessie award-winning choreographer Joanna Kotze into residence from December 8-16 to work on her film project, Nothing’s changed except for everything with Tallahassee-based video artist and MANCC Media Specialist Chris Cameron and remotely with New York-based musician/composer Ryan Seaton. While in residence, Kotze and Cameron will visit various Tallahassee locations to film footage for the project. This film will take solo movement from her larger project, ’lectric Eye, that she has been working on for the past two and a half years, to tell a digital story of personal and collective loss and the human body’s potential for persistence, resistance, and power.
In 2021, Kotze will return with her group of collaborators to continue creating ’lectric Eye. This ensemble residency, originally scheduled for spring 2020, had been postponed due to the pandemic. An evening-length piece, ‘lectric Eye highlights collaboration between movement and music while exploring how humans keep going, day to day, surrounded by conflict and bias, yet celebrating connections and beauty while fighting to put one foot in front of the other.
A diverse group of dancers and musicians, this cast asks: How do very different people experience boundaries with joy and struggle as they push to physical and sonic limits? How do they come together to traverse something difficult and how do they see themselves in these situations? How do they see others? ‘lectric Eye 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 the desire for privacy along with the desire to be seen. In a life full of contradiction, what rises to the surface and how does each person decide what is meaningful? These crucial questions will be asked through the prism of this particular group’s experiences and physicality.
This residency is funded, in part, by The National Endowment for the Arts.
www.mancc.org/artists/joanna-kotze
See more on Joanna Kotze
View video footage of her 2018 work What Will We Be Like When We Get There