Program: ‘lectric Eye
Running time: 60 minutes, no intermission
Joanna Kotze Website
For her ADF season debut, Joanna Kotze, who has been described as a “ruthlessly elegant dancer and choreographer” by Time Out New York, brings to ADF ‘lectric Eye. The hour-long dance performance responds to collective and personal loss and isolation and draws attention to the human body’s potential for persistence, resistance, and power. ‘lectric Eye uses the connection between music and movement to push physical and sonic limits, both as a collective and as individuals.
Ten North Carolina artists who appeared in Joanna’s staging of BIG BEATS for ADF this past fall will perform in ‘lectric Eye alongside Kotze, Wendell Gray II, Molly Heller, Symara Johnson, and musician/composer Ryan Seaton. Costumes are by Christian Joy and lighting design by Kathy Kaufmann.
“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.
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.
The work is gutsy. Kotze and company looks you straight in the eye and holds its gaze.”
– Karen Hildebrand, Fjord Review
