Joanna Kotze Named New York Live Arts 2025-2026 Randjelović/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist

New York Live Arts (Live Arts), under the artistic leadership of world renowned choreographer, Tony Award-winning, National Medal of Arts, MacArthur “Genius” Award and Kennedy Center Honors recipient Bill T. Jones and Associate Artistic Director Janet Wong, announced Joanna Kotze as the 2025-2026 Randjelović/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist (RCA).

The award is one of the most substantial awards for a choreographer in the United States and a significant resource for mid-career artists. 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.

The RCA award artist receives two years of salary, healthcare benefits, full-time access to dedicated office space during the entire residency period, creative funds, a technical residency and fully-produced world premiere in our theater, and touring support. Since the creation of the program in 2011, Randjelović/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artists have been Yasuko Yokoshi, Kyle Abraham (MacArthur Genius Fellow 2013), Okwui Okpokwasili (MacArthur Genius Fellow 2018), RoseAnne Spradlin, Raja Feather Kelly (Doris Duke Artist Awards 2025), Faye Driscoll (Obie Award Winner 2023), and Miguel Gutierrez (Doris Duke Artist Awards 2016).

“It is an extreme honor to be awarded the Randjelović/Stryker Residency and commission in this moment when arts funding is disintegrating and health care and the cost of living in New York City are skyrocketing,” said Kotze. “This kind of support structure is a literal life raft for me and my collaborators. We are eager to keep working and continue responding, through our work, to the sociopolitical chaos that is affecting us locally, nationally, and internationally. Live Arts has been a home for me as a dancer and a choreographer for many years, and I am so grateful for the ongoing support at this point in my career when I have so much more to do and say.”

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, and will hold a five-week solo residency at Loghaven in fall 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 received a 2024 Grant to Artists from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and a 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.

“Joanna has been quietly making work that speaks loudly to the times we live in”, remarked Jones and Wong. “With an uncompromising belief in the power and eloquence of the body and movement to go where words fail, she has the enthusiastic support of our entire organization to dig deeply, experiment wildly and imagine beyond. We look forward to the journey ahead.”

New York Live Arts' signature Randjelović/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist award and program is named for lead donors Jon Stryker and Live Arts Board of Directors Vice-Chair Slobodan Randjelović. The 2025-26 RCA is made possible in part with support from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.