Johanna Meyer

E-mail: johanna.meyer@lehman.cuny.edu
Office: Apex Building, Room M18
Phone: 718-960-8247
Office Hours: Virtual, by appointment via email
Rank: Adjunct Assistant Professor

Degrees

• B.F.A., New York University; M.F.A., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Biography

Johanna S. Meyer is a choreographer, performer and teacher based in NYC. Her three full-length dance works include Every Hotel TV Plays On (2001), which was commissioned by Dixon Place, and Teaser (1999), presented at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater; and piece.piece (2015) was performed at Gibney Dance Center. She has also created 18 pieces, many in collaboration with Alexandra Hartmann, Tory Vazquez, Maja Rajenovich, and Ahalya Satkunaratnyam.

Meyer was an artist-in-residence at Movement Research and has developed her work at The Kitchen's Dance-In-Progress series, The Field White Oak Dance Project, BAX Space Grant, the University of Santa Barbara Summer Theater Lab and LiftOff Residency. Comedic and intricate, her work sometimes employs video and often draws on historical material such as burlesque routines, medical textbooks, and vintage films collaging theatrical moments woven through movement and character.

Her historical work is filtered through many genres of dance and performance. Johanna was trained in classical Ballet and Limon, Afro-Haitian, and various forms of somatic practices: improvisation, Kinetic Awareness, and Alexander Technique. These practices overlap in her dance making; she is interested juxtaposing physicality and intricate dancing with pedestrian movement. Her work straddles intersections of theater and dance; she is constantly searching for the movement in a theatrical moment, and the theater inherent in abstract dancing.

Meyer has also choreographed for theater works by a number of directors-in-residence at the Ontological Theater at St. Marks Church, including DJ Mendel, Robert Cucuzza, Ann de Mare, Juliana Francis, Tory Vazquez, Mallory Catlett, Ken Nintzel, Judy Bauerlein, and Carmelita Tropicana. She has been a movement consultant for Richard Maxwell in the original version of Defending the Caveman. Her choreography was featured at the Williamstown Theater Festival in a production of Chuck Mee’s Big Love directed by Amanda Charlton. Has choreographed a video project with Marie Losier and Genesis P-Orridge.